Chelsea have spent a lucrative wad of money since last summer, with new owner Todd Boehly looking to craft the Premier League outfit into a team capable of competing for silverware both domestically and continently season upon season, but millions might have been saved had trust been placed in one particular academy option.
The west London outfit are remarkably efficient and pull no punches in their transfer strategy, heaping emphasis on ensuring perpetual success.
And having spent £550m on new faces since the beginning of the previous summer transfer window, a plethora of fresh options now offer boss Graham Potter with the tools to rectify the slide that has left the club in ninth place in the Premier League after 21 matches, ten points off fourth place Newcastle United.
However, there is certainly a tendency to fail to aptly utilise many of the Cobham Academy’s bountiful graduates, with the likes of Declan Rice, Fikayo Tomori, Tammy Abraham and Nathan Ake all recent former youth prospects not quite offered the platform to flourish at Stamford Bridge, to different degrees.
One other name to join this talented crowd is centre-back Marc Guehi, who displayed heaps of promise but failed to break into the first-team and was consequently sold to London rivals Crystal Palace on a five-year £18m deal in 2021.
Guehi made just two appearances for the Blues before his departure, impressing on loan at EFL Championship outfit Swansea City during the two seasons prior to his sale.
And now, having cemented himself as a key component for Patrick Vieira’s Eagles, the 22-year-old has been lauded as a “leader” and a “giant” by talent scout Jacek Kulig, playing a regular role in ensuring Palace tread water above the relegation scrap season upon season.
Having made 65 total outings for his Selhurst Park side, scoring four goals and registering an assist, Guehi has finally found a home in the English top flight and looks set to continue his meteoric rise to prominence.
Via Sofascore, Guehi recorded an average league rating of 7.03 last term, before continuing his solid development with a 6.93 rating for the current campaign, where he has completed 87% of his passes as a marker of his “supreme composure” – as per journalist James Benge.
His defensive influence can be found in his 1.6 tackles and 3.6 clearances per game while he won a remarkable 67% of his ground duels.
It is his ball-playing aptitude in particular that would suit Potter’s fluid philosophy as the Chelsea manager, with the defender continuing to refine his skill set and unlikely to be the finished article at present, which bodes well for his future aspirations to soar to the very top of the game.
With the heavy expenditure on centre-backs in the last year alone – £75m on Wesley Fofana, £33m on Kalidou Koulibaly and £35m on Benoit Badiashile – the Blues hierarchy must surely be scratching their heads and pondering over the decision to sell Guehi in the first place, whose expected transfer value (xTV) now stands at £44m, as per Football Transfers.
With such consistency in the Premier League, Guehi looks to be a steal for Palace, and if they were to cash in on their prized defender, they would almost certainly make a lucrative profit.