Chelsea have repeated their Salah mistake by selling “mentality monster”

Enzo Maresca is an imperfect head coach, but there’s no denying the progress he has made at Chelsea since replacing Mauricio Pochettino at the end of the 2023/24 campaign.

Last season, Chelsea finished fifth in the Premier League and recovered their place in the Champions League, having gone two years without a taste of top-drawer European action.

The Blues are rebuilding, and their sights are set on the biggest prizes out there, aforementioned. The transfer strategy has been polished in the windows since those turbulent early BlueCo days, but there is work still to be done, even with exciting additions across the summer.

It’s not just ensuring Chelsea get bang for their buck with incomings, but getting it right when selling a first-teamer too. There have been a few to frustratingly slip through the Stamford Bridge turnstiles over the years.

Chelsea’s worst modern sales

Chelsea typically sell well. While the Londoners catch their rivals’ frustrations with big-money transfer windows, this is enabled through the calculated and extensive impetus on the exit front, raking in hundreds of millions each year.

But it doesn’t always go to plan, and more historical cases would reveal the rueful sales of Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne, both of whom left Chelsea in the early stages of their careers and built themselves up in Europe before returning and cementing their legacies.

It would not be outrageous to claim that both would get into the Premier League all-time 11. Not outrageous, only contestable.

Romelu Lukaku also falls into that bracket, having left the young for Everton when young and since becoming one of the most prolific strikers of his generation. The fact that the Blues re-signed him for £97.5m and then he flopped emphasises the bungled club-player relationship.

Salah might be the most egregious of the lot, though, leaving for Roma in a £15m deal before returning to England two years later and going on to achieve greatness on Merseyside. Now he’s 33, still starring for an indomitable Liverpool team.

And there may be fears in the Chelsea offices that they have repeated that former mistake.

Why Chelsea sold Noni Madueke

Madueke arrived at Chelsea as an untested and unknown prospect. He had found regional acclaim in Holland with PSV Eindhoven and made the leap back to his homeland to form part of a new world order at Stamford Bridge.

It was a testing period for the club, and Madueke, at times, toiled, but that was to be expected; the winger was 20 years old at the time, after all.

Described as a “mentality monster” by personal coach Saul Isaksson-Hurst during his younger days, the 23-year-old struggled to maintain a consistent clinical level across his two-and-a-half years at Chelsea, but his attitude was right and the talent was there for all to see.

Arsenal certainly saw it, snapping him up this summer for £55m. A healthy sum, and one Maresca’s side can be forgiven for accepting, especially when considering the wave of attacking signings welcomed to the Bridge.

It was only last season, of course, that the England international scored a hat-trick in his favourite place, underscoring his potential in the Premier League.

And his start to life over in north London has shown Chelsea the error of their ways, with Madueke already making startling headway in Mikel Arteta’s system, even hailed by ex-Manchester United defender Paul Parker as being “better than Bukayo Saka.”

Some might take offence to that one, but it does underscore the player within, now coming into his own.

Madueke’s potential was always a lofty thing, and it’s telling that he has played six times for Arsenal and has yet to register a goal contribution. Even so, the consensus is unanimous: he’s been great.

According to data-led platform FBref, Madueke ranks among the top 1% of attacking midfielders and wingers across Europe’s top five leagues over the past year for progressive carries per 90, highlighting an incredible well of athleticism and pace from which he draws on each match.

Might Chelsea have a Salah repeat on their hands? Let’s hope not. It’s worth remembering that the Egyptian only left Italy and signed for Liverpool after he had turned 25, and eyebrows were raised in a similar fashion to Madueke’s cross-London switch.

Now, he’s an all-timer in the English game. Like Madueke, Salah is a right-sided forward, and he’s one of the greatest goalscorers to do it.

His is a tale which hammers home the fact that development in football is not linear. He came into his own at a later age, but, as with Madueke, both were talented enough as youngsters as to warrant Chelsea’s attention.

Chelsea have more than enough quality in the locker to ensure this does not detrimentally hamper them in their ambitions, but there’s no question that, if Madueke makes considerable progress over the next few years, this might become another sale to join the rueful departures of Salah, De Bruyne and the like.

Roman Abramovich, at least, didn’t sell Salah to a direct rival, and instead shipped him out to Italy, where he developed and grew the fundamentals that allowed him to return to the Premier League and become a superstar.

But Madueke already looks like a more polished and incisive player over at the Emirates, and while Arsenal have swept up so much of Chelsea’s rubbish over the years, it’s beginning to look like Madueke will buck that trend.