Why are Chelsea stockpiling so many young players?

Transfers in March?

Should we be surprised when Chelsea sign two young players for a combined £62m outside of the transfer window... or is this just the latest quirk of the club hierarchy's unquenching appetite for deals?

Sporting winger Geovany Quenda, 17, will join the Blues in 2026, while midfielder Dario Essugo, 20, will move this summer to deputise for Moises Caicedo.

A recent Uefa report declared Chelsea's 2024 squad was "comfortably the most expensive ever assembled", 24% higher than the previous record by Real Madrid in 2020.

The report also says Chelsea spent almost 2bn euros (£1.7bn) in transfer fees in the five-year period to 2024.

And yet they keep spending.

Several other teenagers are lined up to join Chelsea in the next few transfer windows, for fees worth more than £150m in total.

They include:

Quenda, Essugo, Paez, Estevao, Penders and Sarr may all be exciting talents - but what is the masterplan at Stamford Bridge, and how can they afford it?

Buy young stars on lower wages, spread the payments over long contracts, keep flipping players and sell on unwanted talent for a profit - that is Chelsea's strategy in a nutshell. Oh, and try to win things at the same time.

With an average age of 23 years and five months, the Blues already have the youngest squad in the Premier League - and it is set to get even younger from next season.

The club has had a radical shift in transfer strategy since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital took over from Roman Abramovich in 2022.

Most Abramovich-era players have been sold in an attempt to reduce the age of the squad - and the wage bill.

That money has then been reinvested in young talent in what appears to be a 'supercharged Brighton' approach to transfer business.

Young players are being signed on long contracts, usually between seven and nine years, for reasons which co-owner Boehly explained at last month's FT Business of Football event.

"It is the way this market operates," the American billionaire said. "I don't see it as good or bad.

"You always focus on how you keep something together for a very long time. How? You identify a younger portfolio of players to be consistent and reliable over a long period of time - and that's an option that's valuable...

"A seven-year contract is really a five-year contract as 90% of the time you have to make a decision or shoot yourself in the foot [with a player trying to run down their contract].

"You either agree terms, or shoot yourself in the foot, or agree there are greener pastures out there."

A recent CIES Football Observatory report, external revealed Chelsea are the best performing team in world football when measuring how many minutes (almost 92%) are being played by players under contracts beyond 2026.

In other words - the clubs where squad planning is "most likely to bring stability" in the coming years or to "generate substantial capital gains" from transfers.

Chelsea are clearly betting on a host of highly rated youngsters from across the globe in the hope they will unearth more stars like Cole Palmer or Nicolas Jackson.

They also want to beat clubs like Benfica to rising stars in markets like South America to avoid paying a 'Portuguese premium', like they did when signing Enzo Fernandez for £107m in 2023.

"We knew there was going to be a big transition," Chelsea co-sporting director Paul Winstanley said in 2023. "No chance to sit back and relax, that's for sure. Did we think we would oversee a Premier League record of transactions? Probably not."

That constant desire to trade players has slowed down a little after a series of record-breaking transfer windows in terms of both volume and spending.

The accounting model makes some sense as the long contracts and amortisation - spreading the cost of a transfer over an extended period - have enabled Chelsea to get players like Caicedo on comparatively 'lower' £180,000-a-week wages, despite him costing a British transfer record £115m when joining in 2023 from Brighton.

Ukraine winger Mykhailo Mudryk - who joined Chelsea for up to £89m, inclusive of add-ons, from Shakhtar Donetsk in 2023 - is on 'just' £97,000 a week on a contract running to 2031. He is one example of how players can spread lower baseline earnings across a longer deal.

But there can be issues with those lengthier contracts.

Mudryk is currently suspended after testing positive for a banned substance. If found guilty, he could face up to a four-year ban, while still having years on his Chelsea deal.

And then what if a player wants out? On the Overlap podcast, Jamie Carragher asked whether any club could afford to buy Chelsea's star man Palmer.

Last year, the playmaker renewed his contract until 2033, but Carragher said he can see the 22-year-old's "frustration" with some underperforming team-mates.

"It reminded me of Stevie [Gerrard] at Liverpool at times, because he was so much better than everyone else and he got frustrated. Stevie was a local player, but he was never going to leave, whereas Cole Palmer isn't.

"This is when I go back to those eight-year contracts, and whether they are good for the club and players.

"If you're Palmer, who's got six or seven years left on his deal, and he should be playing for a team looking to win the Champions League, how does he get out?"

This is uncharted territory and, although it makes sense on a balance sheet, is the human aspect being overlooked?

There are also young players like Cesare Casadei, Renato Veiga and Carney Chukwuemeka who all left Chelsea in January amid various frustrations about a lack of minutes available, with multiple young stars all vying for the same roles.

Forward Christopher Nkunku, who was made available to other clubs in January - and other players such as midfielder Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who only joined last summer - face uncertainty before the next transfer window.

Chelsea sources continue to insist they have no issues with the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules (PSR) and have yet to fall foul of them under this ownership.

However, it took what was described as a 'fire sale' of talent and the sale of two hotels to a sister company to continue adhering to the financial controls.

in a couple of so-called 'PSR swap deals', such as when academy talent Ian Maatsen moved to Aston Villa as Omari Kellyman joined the Blues.

Qualifying for the Champions League would also help bolster the club's finances - and major factor behind playing without a front-of-shirt sponsor is that the Blues are waiting to qualify for Europe's premier competition to negotiate a better rate.

Another positive on the horizon for Chelsea's finances is their involvement in this summer's expanded Club World Cup in the United States, when the club are expected to receive more than £50m to take part.

It is unlikely, therefore, that any marquee players will be sold but academy defender Trevoh Chalobah is still expected to leave to create more PSR headroom in the summer.

Kieron O'Connor, who writes the Swiss Ramble football finance blog, told BBC Sport: "The only thing we know for sure with Chelsea's PSR situation is that they were compliant for the three-year monitoring period up to 2023-24, as the Premier League has confirmed that no clubs were in breach.

"Chelsea have not yet published their accounts for last season, but I reckon that the only way that they could have kept below the maximum £105m loss was by applying some fancy financial footwork.

"The expectation is they will have made a huge operating loss, as they did not qualify for Europe, while they have also struggled to replace shirt and sleeve sponsors. This will be partially offset by hefty player sales, but they will still need to find money elsewhere, such as the sale of the women's football club.

"The 2024-25 assessment will benefit from dropping the large 2021-22 loss, but compliance would still be dependent on the significant inter-company transactions. The big question is whether Uefa will also accept these exceptional credits, as their regulations are tighter than the Premier League's."

Where there is a real need to sell players is simply to get the squad numbers down as Chelsea look to move away from using loans for unwanted talent, like Ben Chilwell to Crystal Palace and Raheem Sterling to Arsenal, and instead try to develop young players at lower league and European clubs.

Chelsea believe within two loan spells they should be able to tell whether a young player is capable of making it at Stamford Bridge, and would look to sell a player quickly if they do not believe they can make the grade.

During a vocal minority protest against the ownership at the recent match against Southampton, one common complaint was whether Chelsea could win trophies with a strategy similar to Brighton.

If Chelsea do not pay top-level wages, will the best players join the club? And doesn't experience count for something?

Chelsea's owners, and those close to them, have always highlighted their desire to win and ambitions to match expectations in the longer term.

However, they want to do so with this current approach and have urged patience to wait for their players and this project to reach a mature stage.

One source suggested to BBC Sport that the project is at 'Everest Base Camp' - the starting point to climb the world's largest mountain.

Those ambitions for major honours extend beyond just the Conference League, where Chelsea's squad was worth as much as the other 31 teams combined.

Sources close to senior players at Chelsea say they want stability having had three permanent managers and five including interim bosses across two seasons.

After the 1-0 defeat by Arsenal at Emirates Stadium last weekend, Caicedo said "they are working seven years together, and us just two years".

Maresca has also echoed those calls when explaining why Chelsea cannot be title contenders this season, pointing towards the time needed for Mikel Arteta, Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp to build their imposing teams.

Chelsea's ownership subscribe to that view and currently believe Maresca works within the project better than his predecessors Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel did, while getting better results than Graham Potter - who was sacked over results rather than a culture clash.

Here are some fan views on the latest signings from the BBC Sport Chelsea page:

Garry: Will either of them play in goal or as a striker then? I thought not. This is just more pointless stockpiling of young talent, with a view to cash in on potential demand further down the line. We are slowly becoming irrelevant as a club. I can't even be bothered to get annoyed with it all any more.

Clive: Off the back of rumours that we are going to be selling Enzo Fernandez, we have signed two more midfielders. That is OK, but where is the experienced and proven striker who is able to back up Nicolas Jackson and help his decision-making and scoring skills?

Nicholas: It's building a portfolio of players not building a team. I've become numb to the players coming into the club.

Tristan: These latest deals have summed up the Boehly ownership era, showing a lack of direction. When you think we are done spending too much money on young players, Boehly comes up trumps and spends insane amounts on players. Our ownership and management are equally poor - dramatic change is needed now.