Nobody is safe at Chelsea heading into the summer. The club is approaching a period of mass clearout that will only continue and perhaps out-do the extreme levels of change in the corridors of Cobham and Stamford Bridge.
Influential defenders, gone. Physios, gone. Key, experienced directors, gone. Managers, gone, all of them. Players? They've been protected. Piling up in the corner like nobody is watching. Except now they are. Everyone knows just how overflowing Chelsea are with players.
This isn't like the prime Roman Abramovich loan army era either. No longer are we counting 30 or more players being shipped out every year, this is the main squad. There are 32 active players with minutes this season, it would be more but Jorginho was sold in January.
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That has to be merely the start of the outpouring of players. From last summer's failed summer signings - Marc Cucurella, Kalidou Koulibaly and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang - to ones that might have gone previously. Christian Pulisic, Kai Havertz and Hakim Ziyech belong in that huddle.
Then there's Raheem Sterling. What to make of him. The 28-year-old is the second top scorer for the club but only has four league goals. His three Champions League efforts have been important but far from enough. Sterling has failed to produce the output that ranked him alongside Lionel Messi in the summer.
That being said, Chelsea have to shoulder some blame of their own here. This is a man they signed with 109 league goals, years of top-flight experience and expertise in a very specific role. As a touchline-hugging, back-post arriving merchant, the use of Sterling has been odd, at best.
Thomas Tuchel played him up-front and as an inside No10. Graham Potter tried him at wingback. Hello? This is Raheem Sterling we're talking about. Frank Lampard has tried a few things. He's but in a strike partnership with Joao Felix and that went about as well as could have been predicted.
His last outing, a 2-0 defeat to Brentford, saw him play as the only attacker on the pitch. The Brentford side without a win in six and practically sat on the beach with sunglasses on, a towel and flip-flops to hand. Sterling was the most advanced of Chelsea's squad. He wasn't just isolated, he was bored, borderline left-stranded.
Behind him weren't Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva but N'Golo Kante and Conor Gallagher. The pair of specialist pressing attackers did their job but couldn't create or threaten, that's not really their forte and nor has it ever been. Chelsea in this current form must be the only team that would do such a thing. Afterall, if you're going to hit self-destruct then don't beat abut the bush, do it properly.
They most certainly did once more here. Sterling was, as the other attackers have been, both a part of and at fault for the overall problem. He doesn't fit the role he was put in but could have offered more. So with six games left to play the question begs what next.
He is the type of player that could be invaluable to Mauricio Pochettino if the Argentine is, as expected, appointed as the next head coach. Sterling at 28 could add experience that other players simply can't. He is a four-time Premier League winner with success at international level as well.
However, if he doesn't start to fit in better until the end of the season then it may be that his name is put into the pile and category of those who are far from unsellable. Unlike those that are priority sales and have high value, Sterling falls into the middle. There are six games to find out just which camp he sits in.
The choice to play Kante in an attacking unit rather than stitch together any form of cohesive, coherent and threatening unit perhaps says all you need to know about how Sterling and the others are seen right now.
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