Jamie Carragher: Chelsea still need four top players to challenge Manchester City
Jamie Carragher still believes Chelsea are a long way short of challenging for the Premier League title despite their enormous transfer spending in the past year.
The west Londoners have forked out around £320million this summer alone and broke the Premier League transfer record for the second time this year by spending £115m on Moises Caicedo. Their total spending under Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital is verging on the £1billion mark across the past year and their matchday squad for Sunday’s 3-1 defeat to West Ham featured 12 players bought across the last 12 months.
Despite their mammoth outlay, Carragher still feels Chelsea are missing several key components – including a goalkeeper despite spending £25m on Robert Sanchez this month – to get close to the level of reigning Premier League champions Manchester City.
Carragher’s Analysis
Speaking on Sky Sports, the former Liverpool defender explained: ‘I think what you’d say about Chelsea in these first two games, disappointing results for them, but they’ve actually impressed in terms of how they played against Liverpool and I thought they played well at West Ham.
‘But I do feel when you spend that amount of money, it does feel strange when – we’re all asked before the start of the season [for predictions] – not many people are putting Chelsea in the top four.
‘Now we’re not all great tipsters, so it doesn’t mean they won’t finish there, but not many people are thinking that squad, with that much money spent on it, will finish in the top four.
‘And that doesn’t seem right to me, because that is an unbelievable amount of money.
‘And I do feel, even though I’ve been really impressed with them in the first two games, if you asked me how many players they need to challenge Manchester City – I’m not talking about winning the league – I still think they need a new goalkeeper even though they’ve just signed Sanchez.
‘I think they probably still need another top centre-half because Thiago Silva is 38. I don’t think there’s a real out-and-out goalscorer. Your goalscorer doesn’t have to be your centre-forward, Liverpool’s is Mohamed Salah who plays on the right wing so it’s not a dig at Nicolas Jackson.
‘He’s only just come into the club and I’ve been impressed with him.
‘But you think of those really important decisions, it still feels like four players, four top players, would need to go into that team just to challenge Manchester City and that doesn’t feel right when you consider the amount of money that they’ve spent.’
Chelsea’s Spending Spree
