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 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 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 , 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 ', like they did when g 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 of both volume and spending.

The ing 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 ing in 2023 from Brighton.

Ukraine winger Mykhailo Mudryk - who ed 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">