Chelsea currently have 43 players on their men's senior squad page of the official website. 14 forwards, 11 midfielders, 12 defenders and six goalkeepers. It is of course expected that some will leave with Conor Gallagher expected to join Atletico Madrid and Romelu Lukaku in a state of purgatory as discussions over a switch to Napoli go on.
New signing Pedro Neto was only recently added to the page and there is talk that even more players could still join as Joao Felix is considered for a return to Stamford Bridge. Compare that to Arsenal who currently have just 24 players on their men's senior squad page.
It should be noted this doesn’t include some youth players like Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly who are expected to make their breakthroughs in the forthcoming season. Summer signings are also not yet done with strong links to Mikel Merino.
That said, it is not just the size of the squads but how they have been built too. The spending of Chelsea on its own is massive and while Arsenal have also spent hundreds of millions of pounds under Mikel Arteta on players, how it has been spent relevant to player valuations is starling.
Scott Willis, a statistical hub of interesting data surrounding mainly Arsenal, on X provided a comparison of Arsenal and Chelsea’s spending on players over the last three summers according to the website Transfermarkt’s understanding of the fees paid for players but also compared to their own estimated market value of players.
The website explains how it calculates market value using a number of different factors both quantitative and qualitative with updates occurring twice per season. Factors such as market demand for a player, paid transfer fees, salary, league, age, club, contract length and more are taken into consideration.
When looking at Arsenal’s spending on 13 players from Marquinhos in the summer of 2022 to Riccardo Calafiori this year, the Gunners had spent €494.9million (£423.3million) on players which Transfermarkt’s value was €525.2million (£449.2million). This meant that they had brought in those players around £26million less than what their market value.
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Compared to Chelsea who had bought 35 players in the same time period (not including Pedro Neto) for €1.209billion (£1.034billion) with a Transfermarkt market value of €883.5million (£755.7million). This represents an overspend relative to their market value of more than £278million.
Funnily enough, Neto was bought for around €60million (£51.3million) with a Transfermarkt market value of €55million (£47.1million). So another £4.2million relevant overspend by the Blues for yet another player.
Patience does not last long in west London and with more signings still expected, Enzo Maresca has the job of tying everything together where Mauricio Pochettino failed. Mikel Arteta meanwhile looks ready to continue his side’s ascent and take on Manchester City for the third time.
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