Chelsea have at least 10 players considering their futures at the club following this week’s Champions League exit.
The 4-0 aggregate defeat by Real Madrid has effectively left the Blues with nothing to play for this season, with seven League matches remaining and European qualification looking almost impossible.
Some of Chelsea’s players face pay cuts of more than 30 per cent for a season outside the Champions League. A sizeable group of players have instructed their agents to find them alternative clubs — and they could end up joining Premier League rivals.
The Blues are languishing in 11th place in the Premier League, and their poor season has, in part, been caused by an unsettled dressing room.
Players have expressed concerns about the changes to the medical department amid a spate of injury problems, while many others feel the bloating of the squad to 32 players has set them up to fail. They were also unimpressed when Todd Boehly called their display ‘embarrassing’ after the defeat by Brighton.
Chelsea want to trim their squad by at least eight players before pre-season to make it more manageable for the next head coach. They do not, however, want to sell some of their best younger stars to rivals, pricing Mason Mount at £70million, despite him having just one year left on his deal, and insisting they will not sell Brighton loan star Levi Colwill.
The Boehly-Clearlake ownership group face a tricky few months convincing those players and the likes of Kai Havertz and N’Golo Kante to renew terms, while moving on players they would rather sell instead, such as Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Conor Gallagher, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Kalidou Koulibaly, Hakim Ziyech, Christian Pulisic and Edouard Mendy.
