Chelsea have £138m elephant in the room as Enzo Maresca struggles with impossible task

With three wins in his first five Premier League games, Enzo Maresca already seems to have a fairly good idea about his best Chelsea XI.

While that’s good news for the likes of Levi Colwill, Moises Caicedo and Marc Cucurella, who have all established themselves as pillars of the new manager’s line-ups, others have been left to feed off scraps of game time.

And others have been given no game time at all. In Chelsea’s first-team squad, there is a staggering £138million worth of talented players who have not seen a single minute of Premier League action this season – not accounting for those out injured.

Maresca having a wealth of exciting options at his disposal is both a blessing and a curse, as keeping every player happy is proving to be an impossible task.

Goalkeeper Filip Jorgensen will have had his eyes on the starting spot between the sticks when he signed from Villarreal in a £21m deal during the summer. But the Dane has been forced to sit on the bench and watch Robert Sanchez, whose shot-stopping and playing out from the back has been of such high quality so far this season that he is bound to keep his place.

Benoit Badiashile, signed for £35m from Monaco last year, was in and out of the team in 2023/24. This season has been decidedly more out than in, as he is yet to see any Premier League action whatsoever.

Maresca has been open and honest about the fact £50m signing Ben Chilwell does not fit into his system. The England international almost moved on during the summer but now faces several months in the wilderness before another opportunity to leave arises in January.

Carney Chukwuemeka, who joined from Aston Villa for £20m in 2022, is another who was linked with a summer exit. Maresca hinted that the midfielder was not in his plans, and he did not even make the matchday squad for Saturday’s win over West Ham.

Cesare Casadei worked with Maresca at Leicester City last season but he has not had a look-in since reuniting with the Italian at Stamford Bridge. The 21-year-old has only made 11 appearances for the club since completing a £12m move from Inter Milan, and they all came last season.

Cup competitions will allow Maresca to give some of his peripheral players a chance to impress this campaign, but the scale of the transfer fees splashed on those who are nowhere near Premier League selection shows that Chelsea still have a long way to go before their squad is trimmed down to the perfect size.