FanPost

Next Seasons Team, Without Spending a Single Penny

We are nearing the end of a season that probably won't linger long in anyone's memory. The season has had its peaks and troughs, its Robbie's and Rafa's, but at the end we've fell well short of what should be our objective every year: silverware (or at least fighting for it). The summer transfer window cannot come soon enough for us Blues fans so that we can spend our way out of this misery. To quench the never-ending thirst for new, expensive players that we have as the fans of this club. And spend we will, of course, be certain of it. This post doesn't explore that, though. Here I wanted to consider an extreme scenario, one where we don't spend at all. Now I can't imagine many of us feeling too great without the yearly shelling out of money on players, some excellent players too since Emenalo became head of transfers. But we won't need to really do that because we can have a better squad for freeeee! Read on.

Okay, so I might have misled you a bit there and lured you into reading this post with low cunning. You see pennies will be spent, actually. The spending of pennies will be financed by players getting sold and wages are going to be freed up. Don't worry. This is not a sell-this player and buy-that player type of post. I'm not going to advocate selling one of our players because he's had a couple of shockers nor am I going stupidly think we can a decent transfer fee out of Torres. I'll only include players that have a good chance of being sold and contracts that a have good chance of expiring.

Onto the real stuff. So the sales:

-- Marko Marin, Eternal Benchwarmer: I reckon he's going to be sold and that it's going to be to a German side for about £4m to £5m. I see no reason why we would keep him, specially when Kevin de Bruyne or maybe even Lucas Piazon could do a better job than him next season.

-- Gael Kakuta: Kakuta's not a blooming flower anymore, and with every year he gets older his stock plummets. I don't see a good reason to hold onto him any longer. We should get a decent fee out of him while we can. Kakuta to go for £5m.

-- Michael Essien: I keep wondering why we sent him on loan when we have more need of him than Real Madrid do at the moment. The most logical answer is that we didn't want to pay his wages and were looking to offload him. I believe he'll be sold next season. For how much? £7m lets assume.

And money that is going to be freed up courtesy ending contracts:

Frank Lampard: Mr. Consistent, Goalscorer Extraordinaire makes about £8m a year. That money puts the whole controversy surrounding his contract situation in perspective. He might take a pay-cut but I don't think it's going to end any differently than the Drogba situation last year. We'll be saying adieu to another legend at the end of the season.

Paulo Ferreira: Ever-reliable and never-dislikable, and certain to leave. I think he makes about £2.6m a year.

Yossi Benayoun: £3.6m a year is the estimate. Nothing much to say.

Flourent Malouda: £4.16m. Shocked at the way Malouda's being treated? I can't imagine you being very nice to an employee who's costing you multiple millions without doing shit.

In total this makes about £35m, and this could well go above forty because I haven't considered the wages of the players who'll be sold and have been very modest with transfer fees I projected. This means we can spend in the vicinity of £40m... without actually spending anything. That sort of money can buy you and pay the wages for two quality players and possibly a world-class one if the scouts know what they're doing. Also, we already have two quality players who you can be sure will part of the squad next season: Lukaku and de Bruyne, and then we have the likes of Chalobah, Kalas, van Aanholt or Josh to choose from to further strengthen next years squad. Even if we don't do any hefty additional spending, we'll be an improved team next season. Much to look forward to!

This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any sort of approval process. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions held by the editors of this site.