The players who could cost Chelsea a brutal £232m as they depart Stamford Bridge this summer

The huge summer clearout at Chelsea is well underway, and it’s no great surprise or secret that it will be an expensive and unedifying process for the club. A number of players who arrived with great fanfare and big fees are being shipped out for hefty losses, and while it’s all necessary to get in line with FFP requirements and keep the squad size manageable, the balance sheet won’t look any better for it.

Looking at the transfer fees already recouped (and the prices suggested so far in the press for players who are liable to leave) Chelsea are set to lose £232m on transfer fees alone, a staggering sum which doesn’t even take into account signing-on fees, agent fees, wages and the like. Todd Boehly is overseeing one of the most expensive squad turnovers in history – so it had better work, eh?

Let’s take a look at who’s left or likely leaving, and how much money Chelsea will likely lose on each deal. We’ve excluded players like Ruben Loftus-Cheek who came through the youth academy (which would take at least some of the edge off) and Malang Sarr, who may leave for Strasbourg, a club who are part-owned by Clearlake Capital. We’ll leave figuring out the profit margin on selling a player to yourself to the real football finance experts.

N’Golo Kanté - £32m loss

£32m was an undeniably good price for one of the biggest midfielders on the planet, and he helped to transform Chelsea into English and European champions – so it’s fair to say he’s already repaid that fee with interest, even if he does now depart on a free transfer. Chelsea make a loss on the balance books, then, but the player certainly doesn’t – the 32-year-old will earn a cool €100m per year at Al-Ittihad.

Kai Havertz - £6m loss

If we’re honest, it’s something of a shock that Chelsea have managed to get back so much of their £71m outlay from Arsenal. The German has struggled since arriving at Stamford Bridge, and despite scoring the winning goal in the 2021 Champions League final has never really lived up to his billing or his exorbitant fee. Few would have thought he would go for as much as £65m, so fair play to the Chelsea moneymen on this one, really.

Mateo Kovačić - £10m loss

A European champion first with Real Madrid, then with Chelsea – and now he joins the reigning continental kings in Manchester City. The Croatian midfielder arrived for a reported £40m – which seems to exclude any loan fee that was paid for his first season at Stamford Bridge – and departs for a deal worth up to £30m if various conditions are met. At 29 years old, he should be somewhere near his peak, so Chelsea may feel that they’ve let a good player go for less than he would have been worth had he not been one of the many players in blue who endured a torrid season.

Edouard Mendy - £6m loss

Another player on his way to the Saudi Pro League, the Senegalese stopper was a key member of the Champions League winning squad but has seen his form deteriorate since, and the 31-year-old ended up losing his first-team place to Kepa Arrizabalaga. Something of a steal at £22m in the first place, he’s another player who ends up leaving less red in Chelsea’s ledger than he could have – and his European champion medal marks him down as one of Africa’s greatest goalkeepers.

Kalidou Koulibaly - £17m loss

One of the more baffling failures of the first season since Roman Abramovic was forced out of the club, Koulibaly was regarded as one of the best centre-backs in Europe during his time at Napoli, started solidly enough at Stamford Bridge (including scoring a cracking goal against Spurs), and then rapidly declined into first indifference and then injury. In any case, he arrived for £34m and leaves for Saudi Arabia for half of that. A bad deal, whichever way you slice it.

Tiémoué Bakayoko - £35m loss

Yes, he’s still at Chelsea – until Saturday, anyway, when his contract finally comes to an end and he leaves on a free transfer. He cost a cool £35m when he arrived from Monaco’s victorious Ligue 1 title-winning side in 2017 but only made 29 league appearances, spending four of the last five seasons out on loan in Serie A or back at Monaco. A fairly unequivocal disaster of a signing, albeit one that nobody can really pin on the current owners.

Hakim Ziyech - £25m loss (likely)

The Moroccan winger cost £33m from Ajax and has been consistently inconsistent since – decent one match and anonymous the next two. At 30 years of age you do wonder if the £8m fee Chelsea are expected to receive from Al-Nassr is a bit on the low side, but given that he was only still at Chelsea because they screwed up the paperwork on a move to Paris Saint-Germain, you suppose they just wanted rid at any price.

Romelu Lukaku - £57.5m loss (likely)

Signed for a club record of £97.5m in 2021 and unwanted a year later, Boehly can at least deny to responsibility for the biggest fiscal flop of the lot. Chelsea apparently want around £40m for his signature, but with perennially cash-strapped Inter Milan the only likely takers, the fee could easily be lower – one Inter news website suggests that Inter want a loan with an eventual €30m fee, although how reliable that may be is up for debate. Chelsea have at least already got about £6m back on their dizzying initial outlay from his loan spell in Italy last season, but the Belgian international has completely wiped out the estimated £15m profit that he generated for the club from his first stint at Stamford Bridge.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang - £10.5m loss (likely)

The only takers so far for the Gabonese centre-forward are Galatasaray, who want him on a free transfer – but Chelsea are holding on grimly for any kind of fee, so they may eventually lose a few million less than this. Perhaps the most clear-cut flop of the Boehly era so far, Aubameyang arrived from Barcelona for about £10.5m more than he proved to be worth and didn’t even feature in the Champions League squad after January. A brilliant player at Arsenal, but plainly past his prime - like most of the strikers the Blues tend to buy.

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Christian Pulisic - £33m loss (likely)

Having signed enough wide forwards to staff half of the division, some of the old guard will inevitably be making way – and the American wide forward looks to have little future in London. Only AC Milan have shown any solid interest just yet, and reports have them looking to spend an awful lot less than Chelsea’s desired price tag of £25m, so this already hefty financial hit could get even bigger. Pulisic arrived for £58m from Borussia Dortmund but has struggled to live up to the early hype – not that you’ll have any joy telling American fans that, of course.