Chelsea acquired Jadon Sancho, Joao Felix, and Pedro Neto on the transfer market last summer, and only the Portuguese international Neto will be back with the Blues for the 2025/26 season.
Felix flopped at both Chelsea and a loan to Milan during the 2024/25 season, and while Sancho did play a positive role for Chelsea in their return to the Champions League and Conference League triumph, his fate is the same as a flop.
Chelsea were even willing to pay a penalty of five million pounds instead of spending the 25 million pounds required to make a Sancho transfer permanent after he played a role in their ability to secure a top-five finish and Champions League football.
On the surface, 25 million pounds doesn’t seem like a bad deal for a player who was a decent Premier League winger in 2024/25 for Chelsea, especially since Manchester United blew 73 million pounds on him a few years ago after he established himself as one of the best wingers in European football while at Dortmund.
Jadon Sancho is blocking an obvious move
Now, Sancho’s career is at a crossroads at the age of 25 when he should be in his prime. According to a report from Give Me Sport’s Danny Rust and Dean Jones, Sancho is already making life difficult while back at Manchester United after a failed loan to Chelsea.
Sancho remains unwilling to reduce his bloated 300,000 pound per week salary in order to facilitate a move back to Borussia Dortmund (or any other club), even though he is interested in reuniting with the club that helped him appear in a Champions League Final and win the DFB Pokal.
The best work of Sancho’s career has easily come in Dortmund, and yet Sancho isn’t even willing to do a reasonable favor in order to help BVB afford him, which any serious player would do if they wanted to improve as a footballer and better their career.
Although Manchester United are at fault for paying Sancho and the player isn’t entitled to lower his salary for the club’s benefit, Sancho has consistently shown a pattern in his career in the Premier League that his main focus is on himself and he’s content to sit on the sidelines (literally) and collect a check.
Chelsea didn’t keep him not because Sancho lacks talent or upside, but that the reality of Sancho is less appealing than the dream of Sancho. He just isn’t a world-class winger in the Premier League and isn’t the caliber of player who can start every week for a team that has serious designs on winning the Premier League, which Chelsea do.
He’s also unwilling to adapt to what a team needs in order to win, whether it’s a change in his style, more discipline, or taking on a more reasonable salary in order to help Dortmund obtain him. Sancho is as immature as he was in 2018 when he first broke out for Dortmund, and Chelsea are better off not dealing with his albatross of a contract for a player who is not any better than Pedro Neto.
The editor of The Trivela Effect, Joe Soriano has been covering world football for nearly a decade. His articles have been read by players, linked to mainstream sites, and gone viral on social media. He also manages the Real Madrid site A Trip to Cibeles and helps run the Tottenham site Hotspur HQ. Joe even covers pro wrestling, managing Let Them Wrestle.