Chelsea may have to get creative to sack Ben Chilwell this month, with the defender refusing to take a pay cut to leave the club.
Chilwell joined Chelsea from Leicester for £50million in 2020 and has two-and-a-half years left on his £190,000-a-week contract. He has been dropped from the first team by Enzo Maresca, who has made it clear he has no future at Stamford Bridge.
The left-back was left out of the squad for the Conference League – a competition in which Chelsea have given minutes to their fringe players – and his only appearance of the season came for 45 minutes in a 5-0 Carabao Cup win over Barrow.
The 28-year-old is frustrated by the lack of playing time, but is equally unwilling to give up his lucrative contract to help the club that handed it to him. The Sun therefore reports that Chelsea may have to pay off Chilwell with a severance package, or arrange a heavily subsidized loan to move him to another club in the January transfer window.
He is one of five players scheduled for a transfer this month, along with Carney Chukwuemeka, Cesare Casadei, Harvey Vale and Alex Matos. Chukwuemeka cost Chelsea £20m from Aston Villa in 2022 but has barely featured, while Maresca has been keen to work with a select group of players.
“There are players who unfortunately haven't played much for us in all competitions, like Chilwell, like Carney,” the Chelsea manager recently explained. “They are probably the first to want to leave because they work every day, train every day, want to play matches – and if they don't play matches, they think about leaving.
'So we're going to see if some of them come knocking on the door and say I want to leave. It's a different situation for every player.”
Chilwell made just 13 appearances in the Premier League last season due to hamstring and knee problems – factors that added to the difficulty in finding a buyer over the summer after missing out on the England squad for the 2024 Euros. Because the defender has had little playing time, those difficulties will continue in January despite previous interest from Manchester United.
He was previously part of Chelsea's 'bomb squad', who were forced to train away from the main group in an attempt to progress them. Maresca explained in September: “We are going to sit down with him and find a solution because he is the only one. He will probably be with us again in training, we will see, because at the moment he is not training with us.”
Asked if Chilwell could rejoin the group, he added: “The reason why he is training separately is because he was meant to leave but as he has not found a solution he will probably join us going to train.”
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