What Thiago Silva did in January proves his commitment for Chelsea and ensures he’ll always be loved at Stamford Bridge | OneFootball

Fabrizio Romano has just put out a Tweet confirming that Thiago Silva is going to leave Chelsea at the end of this season when his current deal expires.

This is hardly breaking news – things have been moving gradually in this direction, and it was pretty clear that this would be the next step, especially with no noise at all about a contract extension.

What was interesting was the added snippet from Romano that Silva had offers in January, which he turned down:

“He rejected proposals in January to stay and help Chelsea until the end,” the insider claimed.

We can imagine that Saudi Arabian teams would have been all over him – he’s not just a good player, he’s a household name and a living legend in many ways. Any team looking to boost their profile would love to have him, even just for a year or two. But he decided to stay at Chelsea and fight to try and earn one last trophy.

No wonder he was so upset on the pitch after our defeat to Man City on Saturday evening when it became clear that was no longer going to happen.

Moving on

Silva should be leaving us with a nice succession plan. There’s Wesley Fofana, Benoit Badiashile, Trevoh Chalobah, Levi Colwill and Axel Disasi all in place. But thanks to injury or poor form, or the threat of sale, there’s a sense that none can yet be relied on.

Silva’s form dropped off in the last 12 months, but there’s still no doubt he’s great on his day, and none of that group look ready to step up and replace him, certainly in terms of leadership. There will have to be major talks upstairs this summer about whether that group is really sufficient to go into next season with.