Chelsea: Do owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali have plan for oversized squad?

Chelsea are, to an extent, stockpiling players.

They have spent £1.5bn on young stars from across the world and built a first-team squad that does need slimming down.

There have been between 22 and 28 senior players in Maresca’s group during pre-season, and several will need to leave.

Sterling and Chilwell have been offered to clubs, Chalobah is widely known to be available for sale and talks are ongoing to send Romelu Lukaku and Chukwuemeka to Napoli.

All six overseas loan spots will be filled by the end of the summer. It is likely three players will join partner club Strasbourg in France, and others will go out on loan within English football.

The idea is to reduce the wage bill and sign younger players before they become stars, saving Chelsea money but hedging their bets across multiple youngsters in the hope some become superstars.

The long contracts allow Chelsea to keep their wage bill down, spread the cost of the transfer over a long period and when contract renewal talks come up, it gives them increased leverage – as players could get left with take-it-or-leave-it offers, with the club able to extend negotiations over a longer period.

Chelsea claim to have reduced their wage bill by more than 50% under the new Boehly and Eghbali-led ownership group.

It is hard to independently verify that figure without the data being released but, of the contracts we do know about, it appears the wages are below market rate for many players.

Before midfielder Cole Palmer’s contract renewal, he was known to be on less than £100,000 a week, British transfer-record midfielder Moises Caicedo is on £150,000 a week, according to comments made by his agent last season, and Ukraine winger Mykhailo Mudryk is known to be on £97,000 a week despite costing an initial £62m.

If prospects do not become stars, Chelsea believe there will be a market to sell them while they are on comparatively low wages.