Chelsea sent Cole Palmer transfer warning in Champions League battle as club legend admits Blues are risking their ‘status’ with £1 billion youth project

The west London outfit have spent heavily across several transfer windows since their Todd Boehly-led ownership team completed a big-money takeover in May 2022. Huge fees have been paid out – with the likes of Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo costing over £100m ($126m) apiece – but little return has been seen on that investment.

Value has been found in a £40m ($50m) deal for England international Palmer, with the 22-year-old hitting 39 goals for the club while landing the 2023-24 PFA Young Player of the Year award. He is now tied to a contract until 2033, but has already generated talk of supposed interest from the likes of Real Madrid.

Blues legend Gus Poyet, speaking in association with makthavare.se, told GOAL when asked if Chelsea need elite European competition in order to keep key men such as Palmer happy: “That’s the main thing. That’s a great point. Sometimes players go to a club, they perform, show what they can do and become really big. I like him because I didn’t know and when I saw him at Chelsea I went ‘wow’. Now, after two years being there, if he sees he isn’t going to get the Chelsea he thought was coming, maybe he will think about moving on as well.

“It’s an issue. Not for the fans, I know them well and from when the team was just starting to win and a cup was magic for them – an FA Cup, a Carling Cup, the Cup Winners’ Cup, those situations were incredible. Then it was [Jose] Mourinho and [Roman] Abramovich and they wanted to win the league. Then you don’t want to lose that status. Now it is ‘where are we going?’ I understand the Chelsea fans. The most important thing is the top message to the fans, so you know the aim and what is realistic for Chelsea. They should be aiming for the top four, and that’s it.”

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Poyet added on that “message” when addressing the pressure that every Chelsea manager now finds themselves under as a result of a lavish £1bn ($1.2bn) spending spree: “It needs to be more clear, the objective from the club. Not from [Enzo] Marseca, from the club. Someone needs to come and speak and say ‘this year we want top four, that’s it’. Say it, clear.

“Now it’s not the coach. He’s getting all the punches, the coach, because he says what he knows. The Chelsea fans still expect to win trophies. Sometimes we say it is better not to say the truth. If you tell the truth, everybody kills you. I don’t like when you can’t be honest. He was honest and is getting punished for being honest. That is unfair. In the society we live in nowadays we ask people not to be honest, which is incredible.”

Ex-Uruguay international Poyet went on to say of the Chelsea project requiring time after showing so much faith in youth: “It has been a big improvement. The start of the season was okay and then there was a big improvement for three or four months.

“I remember after one day someone asked him ‘are you ready to fight for the title?’ They were not that good, but they are not that bad now. They have had a bad spell. What they need is a win now. Not tomorrow, not the day after, today. We say ‘we need a win yesterday’. They need to change that momentum.”

Chelsea have made it through to the last-16 of the Europa Conference League, will be competing in the FIFA Club World Cup this summer, and know that a top-five finish in the Premier League is likely to be enough for Champions League qualification – helping to match the ambition of Palmer and Co.