Forget Ivan Toney, Victor Osimhen or anyone else - Chelsea's next transfer move should be painfully obvious

A report from Chelsea News (repeated on a recent podcast from The Athletic) suggests that Chelsea are still looking for two more attacking players before the end of the summer transfer window – a winger and a centre-forward, one of which was sorted within hours of publication when a £54m deal for Pedro Neto was agreed. But as the Blues invest heavily in youth at the same time as they spend on the senior side, can they afford to add yet more players to what is already the largest squad in the Premier League?

Depending on what you quantify as a ‘senior player’, Enzo Maresca has well over 40 players at his disposal already. Some will likely leave on loan or, in the case of players like Trevoh Chalobah and Armando Broja, perhaps permanently, but this is a deeply bloated squad constantly being topped up by a steady stream of talented youngsters signed from overseas.

Once the signing of Atlético Madrid forward Samuel Omorodion is completed (a medical is scheduled with the fee reported to be in the region of £34.5m), Chelsea will have spent an estimated £93m on players under the age of 21 this summer alone, with close to £50m already committed to the signings of Kendry Páez and Estevão Willian in the near future.

Omari Kellyman, Aarón Anselmino, Caleb Wiley, Marc Guiu and Renato Veiga have all joined Chelsea, all aged between 18 and 20 and all hoping to break into Maresca’s first team sooner rather than later. Chelsea themselves will hope they impress, too – they ran the profit and sustainability (PSR) boundaries close over the past season and have already had to sell Conor Gallagher for a fee of around £38m in order to keep the books more or less balanced. They can ill afford to waste too much money on players who don’t cut the mustard.

To make the success of this fresh crop of youngsters even more urgent, they will not be able to sell these youngsters for pure profit, as they can with academy products like Gallagher, Chalobah and Broja. A large number of these players will need to develop into genuine first-teamers in order to be worth enough to sell for a profit or at least close.

Stood in their way are a huge number of more established players – only very slightly more established, in many cases – on whom even larger sums have been spent and who are, for the most part, only slightly older themselves. The simple numbers game suggests that a large percentage of the money outlaid will end up being wasted, simply because only so many of them can actually take the senior minutes available.

Guiu, for instance, will not only have to overcome the usual obstacles placed between an 18-year-old and a starting spot in a competitive Premier League side but will also have to make his way past Nicolas Jackson (23) and Christopher Nkunku (26) as well as rival young signings like Deivid Washington and David Datro Fofana. The odds are stacked against any specific player, and putting enough of these players in a position to impress sufficiently to either become regulars or to dazzle enough suitors to turn a profit down the line will be challenging.

All of which makes the apparent determination to sign more forwards harder to comprehend. The specific targets are unclear, but could include players like Matt O’Riley, Oscar Bobb, Ivan Toney or Victor Osimhen, whose lengthy on-again and off-again pseudo-saga has dragged on without Chelsea going as far as to make an actual bid. But if Chelsea spend big, then they will also risk putting themselves in a position where they need to continue selling while having fewer and fewer players who can be moved on for a meaningful profit.

Such lavish outlay will also turn a top four spot from a goal into a necessity. Qualification for the Champions League earns clubs between £100m and £150m and that provides a great deal of breathing room when it comes to managing the finances. Finishing sixth a couple more times may well create issues, and Chelsea looked some way from top four form last year.

It may be that Chelsea are gambling on a new set of financial rules which would change the equation. Premier League clubs have already voted to replace PSR from the start of the 2025/26 season but its replacement has not been decided, with a number of different models under consideration. If the clubs get their say, then there is every chance that a model which benefits big-spending teams will be the end result – but with the new Labour government committing to an independent football regulator, they may not get a choice should that body be formed quickly.

And even if the financial issues do disappear into thin air, then one wonders what the impact of signing a Toney or an Osimhen or any other senior forward would be on players like Nkunku, who spent most of last season injured but has proven that he can score heavily at the highest level with RB Leipzig, or on Jackson, whose had a roller coaster debut season at Stamford Bridge but who proved to be lethal when he found his best form.

Moving them deeper down the pecking order would stymie their own development and potentially create frustrations in the dressing room, while pushing players like Guiu even further away from getting a chance. If they simply sign, and sign, and sign then they risk creating another generation of Lucas Piazons, of talented youngsters who spend years out on loan or begging for scraps from the bench and fail to reach their potential as a result.

Chelsea have already spent over a billion pounds on players on extremely long contracts who have, for the most part, failed to live up their billing as yet. This latest wave of spending looks like a belt and braces approach, designed to provide another line of young talent able to step in should the first fail – but there is a major fiscal risk being taken and an equally substantial one involved in the development of those players when they don’t play. Perhaps Chelsea should finally stop the spending and give the vast number of players they have their chance to shine – after all, there is no doubt that there is immense talent on the books already. It just needs to be nurtured.