£77m down: The 3 biggest drops in Chelsea value since joining the club | OneFootball

The Athletic have put out a really interesting chart which tells you a lot about how Chelsea’s squad building is going.

To bring you up to speed, the new owners have spent far more than £1bn on new young players to bring the wage bill down and construct a squad that uses young players full of potential.

As it stands, their calculations say that on player value alone, we’ve lost £77m in terms of player value, comparing the purchase price with their current value on CIES Sports Observatory.

The fall in value can point to a player declining, or just not being worth the money paid for them, of course. All of these are a mix of factors. The top 3 droppers are Wesley Fofana, who went from £76m to £26m. Marc Cucurella who went from £60m to £15.5m, and Romeo Lavia who went from £53m to £10.4m.

The causes of major decline

Fofana has barely been on the pitch, and Lavia literally hasn’t been on the pitch, save a half hour cameo. In his case it looks a combination of overpaying and a lack of evidence he’s even ready for the very top level. Fofana has shown more in his career, but has now been out for 3 of the last 4 years, and just can’t be trusted to ever play at a high level again until we see him put a full season behind him.

What’s the upshot of all this? Well Chelsea’s bright idea already looks up in smoke. They’re going to have to see vast increases in player value across the board just to break even now.

On the other hand, there’s certainly a world in which Fofana and Lavia return and become regulars next season, and put their issues behind them. Things can turn around very quickly, and stranger things have certainly happened.