What the Levi Colwill to Liverpool rumours reveal about Chelsea's transfer strategy

Recent reports that Liverpool are planning to test Chelsea with a bid for Levi Colwill seem implausible on the surface – another little piece of nonsensical chaff falling off the sides of the rumour mill. But given Chelsea’s moves in the transfer market since Tood Boehly took charge at Stamford Bridge, it feels all too plausible, and the reports (whether they are accurate or not) highlight the need for a course correction by the club’s custodians.

It's estimated that Chelsea have spent over £1bn on transfer fees since the end of Roman Abramovich’s reign – an amount which doesn’t take agent fees, signing bonuses and steepling wages into account. They have splashed more cash than any other club in the game’s history over a comparable period, and yet all that three successive managers have been able to do with the resources bought with that money is achieve mid-table anonymity. That alone should be enough to suggest a change in spending strategy, but the consideration being given to the sale of home-grown assets should give even further pause for thought.

There is a logic behind the idea of selling Colwill, as there would be with moving Conor Gallagher on, a concept which has persistently reared its head throughout the January transfer window. The Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules, the regulations whose teeth have recently been bared in the direction of Everton and Nottingham Forest, consider the sale of academy players to count as pure profit, whereas players bought and later sold only count any profit made against a club’s allowable losses.

That means that if a player was, say, bought for £10m five years ago and is then sold for £20m this winter, that will only give their club £10m of breathing room for further spending. If that same player came through the academy, then it would net £20m of space for further expenditure, regardless of the costs incurred in bringing him through the youth ranks.

That sets an awkward precedent for clubs – on the one hand, it encourages clubs to invest in their academies in order to generate more sellable assets and thus more opportunities to spend money down the line. On the other hand, fans invariably feel a closer connection to home-grown talent, and dislike seeing players who are ‘one of their own’ move on for purely fiscal reasons. Every Chelsea fan would like to see more money spent to fill the remaining holes in the squad, but few would want to see Colwill or Gallagher leave.

Part of that is because they have arguably been Chelsea’s two best players this season, the dazzling form of Cole Palmer notwithstanding. They have certainly been among Mauricio Pochettino’s most consistent performers. For all the cash spent on Enzo Fernández, Roméo Lavia and Moisés Caicedo in midfield, or on Axel Disasi, Wesley Fofana, Benoît Badiashile and others, Gallagher and Colwill have been key cogs in a machine which is less than well-oiled.

Elsewhere, there are problems that need addressing. Up front, Pochettino has to choose between the misfiring Nicolas Jackson, Armando Broja and Christopher Nkunku, who has been injured for most of the season and is arguably better as a support striker anyway. At right-back, Malo Gusto has largely played well but has made several errors that reflect his inexperience, and while a healthy Reece James is a world-class full-back, it’s also an oxymoron.

So you can see the logic in selling Colwill. He would go for a pretty penny and would open up the funds to plug those problematic holes, without leaving too large of a gap himself – one can question the quality and consistency of the remaining centre-backs, and bemoan the fitness record of Ben Chilwell, but one can also make the case that Colwill’s continued presence at Chelsea is less important than finding someone who can consistently hit the back of the net, or provide a better safety blanket on the right-hand side.

Taking a look at the list of players bought, however, suggest an alternative approach. For all that many of the new acquisitions have either struggled with injuries or have failed to gel with one another, they are extremely young and undeniably talented. Colwill is 20, Gallagher still just 23. If you're going to buy in so hard on such a young team, why break it up to cover its inevitable deficiencies? Why not keep them together to grow and develop as a unit, in the hope that you have a more competitive team in a couple of years’ time?

If the thought behind all the immense cash splashing was that it would produce a team that could immediately challenge for trophies, then it has already failed. That leaves two options – either rip it up and start again, but face the fact that profit and sustainability rules will make that much harder and restrict spending again, or keep faith in the quality of the players you have bought and move forward with reduced spending and the belief that they can still come good. The former would require high-level horse-trading of the kind Chelsea’s new owners have yet to prove capable. The latter simply requires time and patience with the right head coach.

The problems that exist with the team now may not last forever. The lack of coherency can be dealt with over time. They may not need a striker if Jackson came come good on the promise he showed at Villarreal – and he showed plenty of it there. Chelsea have a large number of young players who are adapting to life under a new coach, in a new system, in a new country with a new language. It will take time, and their mistake has been buying too many players of whom that could be true, rather than buying players who simply aren’t good enough.

If they sell Colwill to Liverpool, Chelsea are essentially committing themselves to cycling constantly through players until something sticks. The same is true of Gallagher, or indeed of the decision to keep or fire Pochettino. Eventually, something might work, but constant churn has seldom produced consistent excellence. All of the teams which have been successful for long period in the modern era of the game have tended to have one long-term coach managing a stable core of players – Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester City with Pep Guardiola, and so on. Sooner or later, you have to find a system and a coach and stick with it.

If they keep Colwill, however, they can commit to a youthful project which may very well bear fruit down the line. They keep a defender with proven quality and versatility and give their defence a bedrock for years to come. There’s no guarantee it will work, of course – but the odds look better than trying to sell players of known quality in order to gamble on unknowns going forward.

Keeping Colwill would mean reducing spending going forward – but it would also mean that they don’t need to buy yet another defender if Fofana never fully recovers from all his awful injuries, or if Disasi and Badiashile never find the consistent quality of performance that they need. It’s hard to imagine that Colwill will look like a bad investment five or ten years down the line – so it’s best for Chelsea to ensure that the investment is theirs, and not Liverpool’s. If they allow him to leave, then the smart money says that Chelsea will end up chasing their tail in the transfer market for some time to come.