Chelsea’s €248m of talent at other clubs is sign of transfer failure, not success – opinion | OneFootball

Chelsea had a very busy January in the end, but only bought one player. The vast majority of their business was sending players out, and they now have more than a full team out on loan at clubs across Europe.

TransferMarkt’s values for the players loaned out by the Blues adds up to a total of €248m, with a full eleven worth €215.5m able to be built with subs left over.

Adding Joao Felix, Carney Chukwuemeka, Ben Chilwell, Renato Veiga and Axel Disasi last month took the Blues to a new level in terms of players playing for other clubs.

In some cases, this will be seen as a good thing – someone like Alfie Gilchrist is getting valuable minutes and improving. But in most cases, those moves are just trying to salvage some value from poor transfer decisions. The majority of these players have their values falling, not rising, and a loan just mitigates that.

You can see the full list in the graphic from TransferMarkt embedded here:

Chelsea’s stars on loan and their values as of February 2025, courtesy of TransferMarkt.

Chelsea’s loan army continue to dominate rivals

The new rules about loans introduced by FIFA were supposed to put an end to Chelsea’s legendary “loan army”, but that’s clearly been a failure. In fact, Chelsea now have more than double the value of player on loan that the second placed team in Europe have.

The wave of players bought in the last 4 windows is now turning into a wave out on loan – and that’s not a very healthy position to be in. Unless some of these deals turn permanent (likely at a loss), summer moves are going to be seriously restricted.

You can see the Blues’ total loaned player value in comparison to their rivals in the image embedded here:

Transfermarkt’s estimated values of selected top European clubs’ loan players this season.sp