Chelsea signed a goalkeeper in August 2022. Then two more in August 2023. Then another in July 2024. They already owned the world’s most expensive goalkeeper. When their owners, Clearlake Capital, bought the club in 2022, they also inherited the reigning world goalkeeper of the year, according to Fifa’s annual awards. Chelsea have eight senior goalkeepers and, it is ever more apparent, they need a new goalkeeper. Or, at the least, a change of goalkeeper.
But Robert Sanchez’s latest mishap shone a light on Chelsea’s farcical goalkeeping situation; in turn, it indicates why they are still more of an expensive experiment than achievers on the pitch. Sanchez thumped the ground in frustration after Erling Haaland put Manchester City ahead on Saturday: a piece of turf he would not have been near but for his ill-advised decision to leave his goal empty.
The Spaniard can be an emblematic figure: signed for £25m, the sort of fee Chelsea routinely pay in punts on supposed potential, worth much less than that, a player who has not improved at Stamford Bridge and a downgrade on his predecessors. When the Roman Abramovich era Chelsea won the Premier League, it was with Petr Cech or Thibaut Courtois in goal, each a world-class player. When they won the Champions League, it was with Cech or Edouard Mendy who, if he did not sustain it, was outstanding for a golden year.
Then there is Sanchez, an attempt at clever recruitment who would not get in some of the division’s weaker teams – not over Jordan Pickford or Mads Hermansen or Aaron Ramsdale – let alone one with designs on being among the best. He does, admittedly, boast one of the best save percentages in the league. Yet he also tops the chart for errors leading to shots (seven) and goals (five).
They are an assortment of misplaced passes, misjudged forays from his line, set-piece failings and an inability to protect his near post. Perhaps he is fortunate that the two against his old club Brighton and the one on Monday against Wolves did not cost points. His luck ran out against City on Saturday.
And if, in an age when goalkeepers are asked to show more bravery, mistakes can be more frequent, the finest still tend to exhibit a reliability. Their judgement is often excellent. Their role, too, involves passing but on Saturday, Sanchez lost possession 19 times. He isn’t good enough on the ball. And if Djordje Petrovic was exiled on loan to Strasbourg in part because his passing was deemed to be poorer, there was a theory he was the better shot-stopper. Now there are questions if last summer’s signing, Filip Jorgensen, is. The Stamford Bridge crowd’s lack of confidence in Sanchez has been audible in home games; it may be evidence fans accustomed to better goalkeepers objects to one who seems imposed upon them.
Sanchez feels Chelsea’s project player, backed from on high. Manager Enzo Maresca said last week there was “no doubt” that the Spaniard would be his first choice this season. Yet having attempted to defend the indefensible, his tone has shifted and he implied that Jorgensen could come in against West Ham next Monday. “We see the reaction and decide for the next game,” he said.
Jorgensen at least made the most saves in LaLiga last season, even if another Chelsea goalkeeper, then on loan at Real Madrid, stopped a higher proportion of shots. Now, and inconveniently for Chelsea, Kepa Arrizabalaga, who often saved too few shots in his own time in their goal, now has, according to FotMob, the highest save percentage in the division while on loan at Bournemouth. If Sanchez, his blunders notwithstanding, figures near him on the charts, Arrizabalaga is substantially better on post-shot expected goals (though still not as good as Petrovic is in Ligue Un).
It makes Sanchez the third-best performing goalkeeper Chelsea own. It is not to suggest Arrizabalaga is the ideal solution, and not merely because of his far higher salary. But he also has more clean sheets than Sanchez this season. Kepa made Chelsea supporters pine for Courtois and Cech. Now Sanchez may make them long for Kepa. Or, preferably, for someone of the calibre of Alisson, David Raya or Emi Martinez. They have spent £71m on goalkeepers under this ownership. They certainly don’t have one goalkeeper worth £71m. It looks a false economy.
Yet, after £1.2bn of spending, when they are targeting wingers after signing three in as many weeks in the summer, perhaps wanting centre-backs after recalling Trevoh Chalobah, who they had tried to sell, because those they bought are either injured, in Wesley Fofana and Benoit Badiashile, or inadequate, in Axel Disasi.
Chelsea can seem to be in permanent transition. And yet this should have proved their breakthrough season, after the costly chaos. Their opportunity to return to the Champions League was exacerbated with both Manchester clubs and Tottenham seriously underperforming, with Maresca able to omit most of his premier players for the Conference League. In that context, they should be a shoo-in for the top four, just as they should have won at the Etihad Stadium. Instead, they are sixth, with their manager claiming they are making progress while, over the last five weeks, they have regressed.
A common denominator among the teams who break into the top four tends to be a goalkeeper enjoying an excellent season: Nick Pope for Newcastle in 2022-23, Martinez for Aston Villa last year and, so far, Matz Sels for Nottingham Forest this season. And instead Sanchez’s bad decision-making reflects Chelsea’s bad decision-making.
