The international break is always when TransferMarkt choose to drop some interesting stats to generate discussion, and the latest graphic they posted is full of interest for Chelsea fans.
We’ve all been hearing in the last couple of weeks about how Christopher Nkunku want to force his way out of Chelsea because of a lack of league minutes, and as it turns out he might not be the only one in that situation before long.
The graphic produced by TM shows that Chelsea are intimately connected with an incredible 6 of the top 10 players with the fewest league minutes relative to their estimated value. To us, that’s a ticking time bomb of unhappiness which will come to a head at some point later this season if nothing changes.
You can see the graphic in the image embedded here:
Chelsea have colossal money going sour on the bench, game by game
Nkunku is top, of course. €65m value for 145 minutes in the league. Ian Maatsen, who Chelsea sold to Aston Villa in the summer is third on the list, with €40m value for 144 minutes. Then there’s Raheem Sterling, who we loaned out to Arsenal, in 5th place (€35m, 121min).
Closing out the top 10 are a Chelsea B team triplet: Joao Felix (€30m, 112min), Benoit Badiashile (€30m, 36min) and Kiernan Dewsbury Hall (€30m, 40min).
So in the top 10 alone, Chelsea have €190m of talent with 454 minutes total played between them. That is a lot of money which is going to slowly go sour and potentially spoil the mood in the camp, just as we saw a couple of years ago when there were not enough games to go around.
The B team concept has worked well up until now – but as we see with Nkunku, it won’t keep everyone happy forever.