How Chelsea's stunning £583m starting XI could look with Joao Felix addition

Sky Sports are reporting that João Félix has completed his medical ahead of an unlikely return to Chelsea – it’s another slightly head-scratching signing made by a club with an inconsistent and perhaps even incoherent transfer policy and yet another name for Enzo Maresca to try and remember when he writes the team sheets.

In fairness to Chelsea and to Félix himself, he has plenty of natural talent in those feet – he just hasn’t managed to consistently turn talent into productivity at the highest level, and certainly hasn’t managed to prove himself worthy of the £110m that Atlético Madrid spent on him. Perhaps Maresca is the coach who finally get the best out of the Portugal international, and perhaps this will look like a fabulous piece of business down the line.

For now, all that can be said for certain is that trying to guess what Chelsea’s starting line-up might look like in the long run is a fool’s errand – but then again, nobody has accused 3 Added Minutes of being especially sensible in the past. So this is a wild stab at the eleven that Maresca might settle on by the time he’s managed to remember who everybody is. There’s a cool £582.7m worth of talent here, and that’s before we even get to the bench… so this lot had better turn out alright in the end, really.

GK: Filip Jörgensen (£20.7m)

Robert Sánchez was given the gloves for the opening game of the season but didn’t really do anything to convince people that he was the long-term solution after a disappointing first season at Stamford Bridge – we suspect that it won’t be long before the 22-year-old Jörgensen, signed from Villarreal this summer, gets his chance. He only has one season of senior football under his belt, so heaven knows whether he’s ready for the responsibility or not, but if he isn’t then at least Chelsea have another six goalkeepers on the books they can try.

LB: Marc Cucurella (£62m)

Cucurella was pretty poor after signing from Brighton & Hove Albion for a hefty sum, but between a hugely impressive performance at Euro 2024, the sale of Ian Maatsen and the decision to jettison Ben Chilwell (after some light public humiliation), the poodle-haired Spaniard seems set to get another chance this season. Based on his outing against Manchester City on the opening day, a left-back may well be top of the shopping list come January.

CB: Levi Colwill (home-grown)

An actual academy product, a home-grown player who didn’t cost a penny, and evidence (which the board apparently need) that sometimes developing talent from within is the best way to move forward. Colwill was excellent before a frustrating toe injury prematurely scuppered his 2023/24 season and there’s no reason that he can’t nail down a long-term starting place under Maresca – or, more likely, a starting place for one year before he is forcibly sold next summer to provide sufficient funds to pass the Premier League’s profit and sustainability checks.

CB: Wesley Fofana (£75m)

The unfortunate Fofana has spent two years on a treatment table with a series of serious injuries after signing for mega money from Leicester City, but having finally had a full pre-season with which to build his fitness up, he was ready to start on Sunday and looked solid enough for a player who has barely touched grass without wearing a protective boot for the past couple of seasons. If he can stay fit, he could easily be the first-choice for some time, although he has a way to go before he can start meaningfully paying back the massive initial investment.

RB: Malo Gusto (£30.7m)

In a perfect world, we’d have Reece James in this slot, but after the captain’s own seemingly endless battle against fitness issues, we’re beginning to worry that it’s a fight he’s likely to lose. Should he struggle to stay fit once more, then Gusto does at least look like a good long-term replacement – he’s young, quick, handy going forward and is no slouch at the back either.

DM: Enzo Fernández (£106.8m)

The most expensive player in British history for a very brief period, the Argentine midfield has yet to really look like he’s worth as much as the Blues paid for him – but as he’s only a year into a nine-year deal, the club are surely going to give him plenty of time. They probably don’t have much of a choice. The decision to hand him the captain’s armband ahead of the Manchester City match suggested that they intend to back him as a player, and that they are remarkably tone-deaf given that it’s barely been a month since he filmed himself singing a racist and transphobic song with the Argentina team at the Copa América.

DM: Moisés Caicedo (£115m)

The eventual most expensive player in British history. Much like Enzo, it’s not quite fair to say that Caicedo has been terrible, but he certainly hasn’t lived up to the hype and price tag just yet. Both wildly expensive midfielders will need to step up quite a bit to keep their places ahead of Roméo Lavia, who cost half as much but looked twice as good at the weekend.

AM: Christopher Nkunku (£52m)

It isn’t necessarily clear that the French striker (another with a laundry list of injury issues in his recent past) will play as a number ten for long, but that seems to be where Maresca envisions him for now and there were some flashes of quality against City at least – but if Nicolas Jackson can’t find his shooting boots again or another striker isn’t signed, then don’t be surprised if he gets some minutes up top.

LW: João Félix (£46m)

£46m including add-ons is the best estimate of the Portuguese winger’s price tag that we’ve heard so far, but that may of course end up being a digit or two out. Whatever the final accounting, bringing a player who was indifferent on loan back to Stamford Bridge solely because it allows the club to sell a more successful and popular player who they, in turn, only want to get rid of because they need to balance the books after wasting hundreds of millions on entirely different players… Well, it doesn’t read like good management, does it? Anyway, for Félix’s sake at the very least, let’s hope it works out well for him. He’ll get a chance to supplant Mykhaylo Mudryk, at the very least.

RW: Cole Palmer (£42.5m)

For all the money that Chelsea have wasted in recent years, they definitely got at least one transfer exactly right – Palmer was a revelation last season and without his vision, creativity and goal threat they wouldn’t have been able to return to European competition this season. Whatever changes at Chelsea over the coming years (and based on the past couple of years, plenty will), Palmer should be the centrepiece of the squad for a long time to come. Which means that another recent big-money acquisition, Pedro Neto, will have to play... somewhere else. Noni Madueke, too.

CF: Nicolas Jackson (£32m)

Jackson is brilliant at many things and he is deeply underappreciated by a lot of fans who can’t see past his habit of spurning simple chances, but the fact is that missing inside the six yard box isn’t something you want to be doing as a central striker and he does it a fair amount. The bigger question, however, isn’t about how good Jackson is or will be, but whether Chelsea can finally land Victor Osimhen before the end of the summer – because he would certainly take this spot. And bump the cost up a bit further still.

Can a side like that challenge for top four? Well… perhaps. If the manager does a great job with a lot of players on both an individual and collective level then the talent is there to do so much better, something we started to see in the second half of last season under Mauricio Pochettino – before the owners fired him and started signing an endless procession of young players who won’t even make the first-team squad. And there’s your problem, really, because even when things settle down, the board can’t wait to upend it all once more. Best of luck, Chelsea fans.