Chelsea to pay stunning £750k to improve massive weakness in their setup | OneFootball

Fabrizio Romano has just confirmed the news that Brentford set piece coach Bernardo Cueva is leaving the Bees to come to Chelsea this summer.

This has been known for a while, and was reported on earlier in the spring. What’s interesting about this update from the insider is that it puts a price on his move – £750,000. That’s the sum that the Blues have had to pay to get their West London rivals to hand over the keys to their head of corners.

Set piece coaches emerging as the new frontier of marginal gains has been one of the features of this season, with Arsenal man Nicolas Jover becoming a minor household name among football nerds after helping the Gunners to a massive improvement this year.

Modern football gone mad – or a sensible investment

Paying that kind of money for a coach, and not only a coach but a set piece coach is something which would have been unthinkable not long ago. But that’s the direction that football has gone, and it does make sense now.

We’re not sure if Cueva is really the guy we think he is, or if he can have the kind of effect that the owners clearly believe he can. But given the money being splashed around at a top club like Chelsea, £750k is a small price to pay if he can increase the goals we score from set pieces and reduce the number we concede. Even just a swing of a few in either direction will mean more wins and more points. Given that sort of money amounts to just a couple of weeks of Raheem Sterling’s wages (for example), it’s probably a risk worth taking as we look to assemble a truly elite coaching setup.