After signing Geovany Quenda and Dario Essugo to add two of Portugal’s best young talents to their ranks, Chelsea will be eyeing attacking help next as they look to go from top-four contenders to legitimate Premier League title contenders in the 2025/26 season.
According to a report from Fabrizio Romano, the priority for Chelsea in the summer 2025 transfer window is to sign a new striker and winger, and they are prepared to sell seven to eight players in order to clear out space for two more marquee attacking signings after the trio of Pedro Neto, Joao Felix, and Jadon Sancho failed to make an impact this season.
So here are seven players Chelsea could sacrifice in the summer 2025 transfer window.
CB Axel Disasi
Chelsea loaned Axel Disasi to Aston Villa this year, and while the former Monaco center back is talented, he doesn’t appear to fit into Enzo Maresca’s plans at all and has been discarded more than the others.
The fact that Chelsea chose Disasi to loan instead of Benoit Badiashile, Wesley Fofana, or even Trevoh Chalobah is an indictment of how they feel about Disasi’s fit and playing style.
He could legitimately end up being better than those guys, but, in all honesty, we haven’t seen it in the Premier League. Ultimately, Disasi is a guy who should have stayed with Monaco, a perfectly good French club.
LB Ben Chilwell
On loan at Crystal Palace, Ben Chilwell can barely get games for a lesser side, and at the age of 28, he already appears to be done at the highest level of European football.
Chilwell can barely get on the pitch after a rash of injuries began a couple of years ago. While he was once one of the better left backs in the Premiership, he is now a player Chelsea may have a difficult time offloading permanently.
FW Raheem Sterling
It says a lot that Chelsea were not only willing to loan Raheem Sterling to rivals Arsenal, but that amidst a difficult season for the Gunners in terms of goal-scoring and overall attacking play, Sterling can barely get on the pitch to help the North London side out.
Sterling stinks. It sounds so immature to put it that way, but I don’t have a better way of describing the lethargic, one-dimensional, and ineffective way in which Sterling plays the game. He’s a fraction of the intelligent, ruthlessly efficient player he was at Manchester City almost a decade ago.
FW Joao Felix
Joao Felix should have never joined Chelsea this past summer. He stunk up the joint at Atletico Madrid, he stunk up the joint on loan at Chelsea, and he wasn’t particularly good for Barcelona last season either.
This season, on loan at AC Milan, Felix has been just a step above completely useless. Chelsea are going to find it tough to obtain a legitimate buyer for Felix, whose bloated wages and 52 million euro price tag for Chelsea make him one of the worst buys of the last summer transfer window.
GK Kepa Arrizabalaga
In all honesty, Kepa Arrizabalaga runs circles around Robert Sanchez in goal, and it speaks to this club’s leadership’s sheer incompetence that they replaced Kepa with a player from his own country who is demonstrably worse.
But Chelsea have no interest in Kepa, so they might as well quit playing this inane game of musical chairs with him and just cut him loose in summer 2025.
AM Christopher Nkunku
Christopher Nkunku was a legitimate Ballon d’Or candidate in 2021/22 and Bundesliga Player of the Season, but he looks utterly lost at Stamford Bridge. He can’t get healthy, he only delivers against terrible opponents, he doesn’t defend well, he looks like he has half the juice in his legs that he did at Leipzig, and fans are growing tired of him.
The Frenchman was one of their best sellable assets a couple of transfer windows ago, but, now, the Blues have killed his value on the market. At 27, Nkunku is slowly creeping out of his prime.
CB Trevoh Chalobah
Why Trevoh Chalobah is still at Stamford Bridge is a total mystery to me. He’s not a bad defender by any means, but he’s only played six games this season. For over a year now, Chelsea have shown no interest in playing or even keeping the England international, and they might as well sell him for what will now be pennies on the dollar compared to what they would have gotten last year. Bad business.
Joe Soriano covers West Ham for Green Street Hammers and writes about Real Madrid for The Real Champs. He has extensive experience covering world football since 2014. Joe is an editor for The Trivela Effect, where he covers the biggest clubs in European football. He has watched professional sports regularly since 2002 and can be found playing the same sports he covers with his friends.