Maresca: ‘Nobody told Noni he had to leave’

There’s little doubt that Noni Madueke’s (imminent) departure to Arsenal in a deal worth around £50m, will be a welcome boost to Chelsea’s financial spreadsheets.

After all, by some calculations, we need about £60m to offset our transfer spend this summer, in order to register all our new signings (so far), like João Pedro, Liam Delap, and Jamie Gittens for the Champions League next season. (And that’s assuming we’re done acquiring more players, which may not be the case.) Our settlement with UEFA makes it clear that we cannot register new players for “List A” without offsetting their transfer values with matching outgoing transfers.

The exact provisions of how that “List A Transfer Balance” is calculated are not super clear. Do we have to consider the values of, say, Wesley Fofana and Roméo Lavia even if they were not signed this year but were not registered last season? Does the offsetting transfer income have to come strictly from List A players (such as Madueke), or can we include any incoming transfer fees (such as from the Bomb Squad, or Đorđe Petrović)?

Either way, the £50m will be helpful in balancing the books. We cannot just keep spending, despite creative private equity accounting.

All that said, the story we’re going with in Madueke’s case is the he wanted to leave the club. Enzo Maresca planted this seed the other week, and harvested its juicy narrative fruit in Friday’s press conference.

“I said in one of the last press conference that at the end, if players want to leave, at the end, it’s difficult for the club and for the manager. Noni decided to leave, nobody told Noni he had to leave. If he is happy, we are happy.” -Enzo Maresca; source: Football.London

If Madueke was truly unhappy, it surely wasn’t because of playing time. He set new career highs for appearances (46), minutes (2650+), and goals (11), and was at times one of the few players in the squad who could change the game on their own. Whether we truly believed or not that he had already plateaued, or were concerned about his injury issues, his departure leaves the team with fewer attacking options and makes us a worse team (at the moment).

“He is cold, and I am fire, so it mixes well.” -Noni Madueke; August 2024

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