Chelsea's issues from poor recruitment have not just damaged them on the football pitch, with over £250 million worth of talent scoring just 43 goals combined since 2019.
This has created not only a world where Chelsea's biggest assets, prize wise, then become hard to offload when things go wrong, but they have also historically moved to the club on the highest wages.
Examples of this are plentiful. Timo Werner is currently paid the third most at the club despite scoring just six goals last season, Christian Pulisic earns more than double that of Reece James, and Kepa Arrizabalaga is on three times that of the right-back as well.
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Not only can this become a problem where players can become demotivated by the difference in wages within their club, with Raheem Sterling's reported £300,000-per-week contract something that could have that very effect, it makes loan moves and permanent transfers even harder to arrange.
That's all set to change though, as Todd Boehly plans a reshuffle of the club's philosophy, starting with Mason Mount and James. The pair are currently on a combined £146,000 a week, a figure that would only just creep into the top 10 earners at Stamford Bridge.
The new structure would be put in place to reward those who are effectively the most important, with James and Mount are certainly in that bracket. Edouard Mendy belongs in the same category, the No. 1 for Tuchel currently earns one third of that of Kepa, despite being the goalkeeper that took Chelsea to the Champions League.
Although the contract wage issues aren't currently causing obvious issues for this group of underpaid players, as Boehly looks to open contract talks with the trio after the summer window, the benchmark set by Werner, Kepa and also Romelu Lukaku has been set, not to mention Sterling's impacts on their demands.
James and Mount, as a rule, will want to be paid in accordance with their impact at the club, and long-term deals equal or similar to the best players at the club will have to be sanctioned, especially with European superpowers keeping track on the progress being made.
Mount's deal runs now until 2024, so there is no immediate danger, and James in 2025, but given the way Chelsea have already been stung by not renewing deals already this summer, there will be a desire to tie up their star players and also to move on those that are taking up more money than they are worth.
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