How one result majorly changed Chelsea’s transfer and loan plans this summer | OneFootball

A couple of years ago, Chelsea reached the Carabao Cup and FA Cup finals, plus the Champions League semi finals, leaving them just a game short of playing every single possible match in that campaign. That gave them a total of 61 games.

They could blow that out of the water this year after making it into the Europa Conference League. Man City’s defeat means no Europa League for us.

If they make it to the final of the Conference League, and to the finals of the domestic cups again, they would play an insane (and possibly record breaking for a Premier League team) 74 games.

That’s not even including the 5 preseason game they’ve got lined up. Those friendlies actually start to look a little excessive now we know we’ve also got a two-legged qualifier for the Conference League to play in late August.

Scrambling to get things into place

It’s too late to change the friendlies now, but there are other changes which will have to be made. The squad is going to have to be ready to step back up to European football. Despite good showings in the cups this year they had only 51 games to worry about. Even the bare minimum next year will be more than that, and the chances are we will play more than 60.

We expect that to affect major squad planning decisions this summer – several potential outgoing loans could be cancelled as we look to retain extra depth, and we could even see more incoming transfers than expected if the sporting directors want to fill out the squad a bit.

Who knows – maybe we’ll even be lucky enough to get regular appearances from the youth team players at some point? That will depend in part of who is picked as the new manager, of course…

All in all, we’ve all got to be ready for a remarkably hectic schedule in the weeks and months to come.