What on earth are Chelsea doing?! Potential £100m Pedro Neto and Joao Felix transfers further highlight Blues' failure to understand how to build a coherent squad

"I’m very excited, he can offer many things. He can play on the right side, he can play on the left side, he’s very good one-on-one." That was Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca's enthusiastic reaction to Neto's £54m arrival from Wolves, but he notably ignored the elephant in the room.

There is no doubting Neto's quality, a player who made 14 goal contributions in just 24 appearances in 2023-24, but when you delve into the reason why he was limited to so few outings there is serious cause for concern.

A glance at the 24-year-old's injury record should have given Chelsea pause for thought, especially after their now-infamous struggles with incessant fitness problems across the squad in recent times. The winger suffered two separate serious hamstring injuries last term, which sidelined him for around four months of the season as a whole. He also missed a significant portion of the 2022-23 campaign with an ankle problem.

In his five years at Wolves, Neto averaged just 15 Premier League starts per season and was absent for as many as 108 games, per Charlie Gregory. As much as he is one of the best wingers in the league when fit, Chelsea's recent injury history should have resulted in a far more cautious approach to signing Neto, with the costly transfer seemingly agreed in no time at all as Wolves jumped at the chance to cash in.

A possible return to Chelsea for Felix poses similar questions: is he worth the money? Do Chelsea need yet another attacker who operates predominantly from out wide? And will he actually be a difference-maker?

Felix's value is arguably at an all-time low following an unspectacular loan at Barcelona, where he failed to earn a dream permanent transfer after contributing six goals and 10 assists in 44 appearances. Atletico Madrid remain desperate to sell, as they have been for the past couple of years, and the player is said to be keen to return to Stamford Bridge having had chants of 'son of a b*tch' aimed at him by his own fans in Spain.

The chance to sign Felix for a relatively cut price - at least against Atletico's valuation - could be what is motivating the unexpected pursuit of the player, as well as facilitating Gallagher's move the other way, but it's hardly like Chelsea need him. Having literally just added his compatriot Neto, the Blues are overstocked for wide forwards or those who operate in the half space, with Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke, Mykhailo Mudryk and Christopher Nkunku already on the books.

Ultimately, Felix is a player who passes the eye test but does not make a tangible impact, which has been his biggest problem since leaving Benfica for €126m (£113m/$138m) in 2019. His six-month loan at Chelsea last season encapsulated his career as a whole, albeit he was at the club at a time when standards reached a nadir under Graham Potter and Frank Lampard; although he oozed class and demonstrated his obvious talent with flicks, tricks and dazzling dribbles, he only showed his ability in flashes and would often drift out of games without making telling attacking contributions, while his defensive work rate has been called into question.

A trend of Chelsea's recent transfer windows has been sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart avoiding much of the scrutiny as they work away from the spotlight, with co-owners Todd Boehly and - to a lesser extent - Behdad Eghbali more often than not the butt of the joke on social media.

However, attitudes towards the two men who have been put in charge of recruitment are beginning to shift despite the unwavering backing of the owners. They will face the scorn of the fanbase if they don't get it right this time around, especially after hiring and swiftly letting go of Mauricio Pochettino despite the progress made in the second half of 2023-24.

Winstanley and Stewart only officially started work at the end of the January 2023 transfer window, notably after the Blues had extraordinarily splurged £290m ($370m) on the likes of Enzo Fernandez, Mudryk and Madueke, although Winstanley was heavily involved in that recruitment drive.

The summer 2023 transfer window was therefore the first they oversaw as Boehly and Eghbali bankrolled a spend that soared beyond £400m ($505m). Palmer emerged as the biggest hit, but the fanbase will reserve judgement on the rest; supporters revelled in the ruthless double capture of midfielders Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia ahead of Liverpool, but the former struggled for form for a long period and the latter missed almost all of the season through injury.

A deal for Nkunku had been long pre-agreed, but he too fell foul of Chelsea's injury curse as he damaged knee ligaments in pre-season. Meanwhile, further additions Axel Disasi and Nicolas Jackson impressed at times but are widely considered to be quite raw.

After a quiet January transfer window, Chelsea have followed a different strategy in what has been a busy and often baffling window so far. While Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Renato Veiga have supposedly been signed to fit Maresca's tactical system, the Blues have otherwise insisted on almost exclusively going after what the recruitment team consider to be low-cost, high-potential young players, shelling out tens of millions of pounds on the likes of Marc Guiu, Omari Kellyman and Filip Jorgensen, while prodigious Palmeiras talent Estevao Willian will join the club in 2025.

Both 24, Neto and Felix are still technically yet to reach their respective peaks, but both feel like a departure from the policy of targeting less established names for relatively low fees, with the latter's potential return in particular hinting at possible intervention from Boehly or Eghbali. Recent reports suggest Felix's asking price still stands at €60m (£51m/$66m), meaning the Portuguese pair could cost north of £100m ($128m).

The club's own academy products will continue to be the victims of the outlay, which is a sure-fire way to lose the favour of fans as the connection between the playing staff and those in the stands is eroded. Ian Maatsen and Lewis Hall have already been sold off for pure profit amid the threat of breaching the Premier League's Profitability and Sustainability rules (PSR), and Gallagher - a star of the team last season, stand-in captain and fan favourite - is set to suffer the same fate despite being Chelsea through and through, as the club try to emotionlessly flog him to Atletico.

Although amortisation of some transfer fees muddies the waters, the strategy of almost solely targeting youngsters deserves to be called into question, too, when players such as Carney Chukwuemeka and Madueke - both of whom only joined in the 2022-23 season - are already being touted for an exit; the former was signed from Aston Villa for £20m ($26m) and has been linked with a move to Crystal Palace for the same fee, while Newcastle supposedly hold an interest in the latter. Goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic only joined from MLS last summer and enjoyed a good first season, but he has already been put up for sale.

Indeed, on the eve of the new season and facing the unenviable task of taking on champions Manchester City on day one of their Premier League campaign, it is evident that head coach Maresca does not know his best team.

Speaking after the friendly draw with Inter on Sunday, which brought Chelsea's mightily underwhelming pre-season to a close, the Italian tactician said: "I don’t know my team yet [for Man City]. Pre-season has been very tough, intense, many games going from one city to another city. Now finally we start a normal week. Tomorrow we are off and then we start to prepare the game."

There are alarming echoes of former boss Thomas Tuchel's words following Chelsea's similarly disastrous pre-season two years ago, where he lamented a "tiring and exhausting" tour of the United States and insisted his squad wasn't prepared for the new campaign. He was proven right as the Blues made a dreadful start to 2022-23, and the German would swiftly pay with his job.

What's clear is that, once again, Chelsea find themselves staring down the barrel of one hell of a clear-out job in what remains of the transfer window as they look to create space, with Stewart and Winstanley said to be working around the clock to reduce the numbers

The sporting directors have a little over a fortnight to get that work done, but these are by no means straightforward deals to negotiate; Neto's arrival and the discussions over Felix have thrown Raheem Sterling's future into doubt, but he has no desire to leave and is on huge wages in west London; convincing Napoli to cough up Romelu Lukaku's £38m ($49m) release clause is unsurprisingly proving to be a struggle; Kepa Arrizabalaga is still on the books amid limited interest in his goalkeeping services; Ben Chilwell could be surplus to requirements, but he is also on a significant salary.

Elsewhere, shifting the likes of Petrovic, academy graduates Trevoh Chalobah and Armando Broja, David Datro Fofana and Cesare Casadei may be a simpler task, but time is running out.

There is the inescapable feeling that Chelsea are going into the new season under a cloud, which has not been helped by them winning just one game in pre-season, being held by Wrexham and thumped by Celtic before downing Club America, which preceded two more defeats to Man City and Real Madrid on their US tour before the draw with Inter at Stamford Bridge.

Off the pitch, the Blues' muddled transfer activity has done little to lift the mood. The overriding feeling is that, to date, the frenzied business in this window has left the squad bloated, imbalanced, and desperately lacking quality, those who understand the club and top-level experience.

The chances are that injury-prone Neto and underachiever Felix will not be the saving grace, with plenty of work to do both in terms of incomings and outgoings in what little time remains in the 2024 summer window, as the pressure cranks up on Winstanley and Stewart.

There is a genuine sense that whatever happens could tip the balance between relative success and more failure this season. Chelsea's transfer decision-makers must think long and hard about what direction they want to go in.