5 of the worst transfer campaigns in the Premier League era

#2 Chelsea (2017-18)

Morata was symptomatic of the nonsense Chelsea did last season

If a book were to be written on how not to conduct a transfer campaign after a title-winning season, Chelsea’s 2017-2018 campaign would be the cover.

The Blues had stormed to the Premier League title in the 2016-2017 season in Antonio Conte’s debut year at Stamford Bridge.

Helped by a solid transfer campaign (Marcos Alonso, David Luiz, and others) as well as a lack of European football, Conte’s army beat all comers hands down. This included the favoured Manchester clubs with their new managers: Pep Guardiola (Manchester City) and Jose Mourinho (Manchester United).

Going into the 2017-2018 season, it was expected that the wallet would be opened and qualify reinforcements brought in. However, the summer window was dominated by a barrage of news about Conte’s unhappiness with the club’s alleged failure to get him his targets.

The pursuit of a striker to replace the goals of Diego Costa who had gone AWOL was the primary aim. Alvaro Morata was brought in for a club-record £70m fee in the summer (Olivier Giroud also came in January for £18m). Both players formed part of a £252.3m outlay which included others like Antonio Rudiger, Emerson Palmieri, Tiemoue Bakayoko among others.

These transfers were not to Conte’s liking. He took the opportunity to moan about his team’s quality in every chance he got.

The Blues never really got going in the league as they were never in the hunt for the title. The team finished a disappointing 5th and was thrown out of the UCL by Barcelona. The F.A Cup came a little too late and was not enough to save Conte’s job.