5 Chelsea players who need to secure a move in January

#5 Danny Drinkwater

Why Danny Drinkwater even joined Chelsea is somewhat of a mystery

We’re now over a year removed since Danny Drinkwater made a somewhat surprising move from Leicester City to Chelsea for a large fee of £35m, and in all honesty the move still doesn’t make any sense at all. One of Leicester’s outstanding performers in their stunning Premier League-winning 2015/16 campaign, Drinkwater has played just 12 league games for Chelsea and hasn’t made a Premier League appearance under Maurizio Sarri.

It’s also hard to see a way – injury crisis notwithstanding – that he could find himself in Chelsea’s first team right now. Sarri tends to use three central midfielders and Drinkwater’s former teammate N’Golo Kante and new signing Jorginho are clearly the first names on the team sheet right now. That leaves one more slot – and it just doesn’t look like Drinkwater can make it his own given his similarity in style to those two players.

Realistically, Drinkwater has Kante and Jorginho ahead of him, as well as Mateo Kovacic, Cesc Fabregas, Ross Barkley, and perhaps even youngsters Loftus-Cheek and Ampadu. That means that even game time in the lesser cup competitions might be lacking for him.

In reality, he should never have left Leicester – but unfortunately, since he did so his career has stalled so much that the likelihood of him gaining a move to a club of even that calibre might be tricky. Even if it involves a heavy pay cut – or dare it to be said, a move to the Championship – Drinkwater needs to secure a move, preferably a permanent one, in January. At 28 he simply doesn’t have the time to waste.