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When Chelsea sold Thibaut Courtois to Real Madrid for £31.5m in summer 2018 they probably didn’t envision that they would spent over five times that amount in search of a reliable replacement.
But Chelsea’s outlay on goalkeepers since the Belgian international’s departure has been pretty staggering, with a rotating cast of stoppers passing through the club over the past six years for a substantial amount of money.
Enzo Maresca has arrived to find over a hundred million pounds’ worth of keepers to choose from – and that’s just between three options who didn’t make so much as an appearance for the club last season.
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Chelsea’s rotating cast of goalkeepers since Thibaut Courtois left
Kepa Arrizabalaga was the immediate replacement for Courtois, signed for £71.6m from Athletic Club just a day before his predecessor’s move to the Bernabeu was officially announced.
Kepa played regularly throughout his first two seasons at the club, but fell out of favour in 2020 after a poor run of form – and an infamous incident in the 2019 EFL Cup final in which he refused to be substituted for a looming penalty shootout against Manchester City (which Chelsea then lost).
Kepa came back into contention under Graham Potter in 2022/23, but was sent away to replace Courtois again last season, joining Real Madrid on loan after the Belgian picked up an injury.
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Taking over from Arrizabalaga during his time out of the side was Edouard Mendy, who arrived in the extended summer 2020 transfer window from Rennes for a reported £22m.
Mendy was generally reliable for a good couple of years, but some high-profile errors meant he lost his place to Arrizabalaga in 2022/23, with Mendy starting just 12 times.
He made the move to Saudi side Al Ahli last summer, with Chelsea at least clawing back £16m as a transfer fee for his services.
In the meantime, Chelsea had signed United States international Gabriel Slonina from Chicago Fire for a reported £8.1m, though they sent him back to his old club immediately after signing him to see out the MLS season.
Then still a teenager, Slonina went out on loan again to Belgian side Eupen last season.
He tended goal for the entire campaign, bar missing one relegation play-off game with a knock, but was unable to prevent them finishing bottom of the league and dropping into the second tier.
Chelsea made a double-dip into the transfer market for yet more goalkeepers last summer, with Brighton’s Spanish international Robert Sanchez and New England Revolution’s Serbian international Djordje Petrovic arriving for a combined £37.5m including add-ons.
Sanchez cost twice as much, but ended up playing fewer games after missing almost the entire second half of the season with injury problems. When he was briefly fit in February-March, his only involvement was as an unused substitute in the league and starting in the FA Cup.
That meant Petrovic kept his place after being called into action in December, playing every minute of Chelsea’s last 22 games of the Premier League season, as well as in their FA Cup semi-final defeat to Manchester City and Carabao Cup final loss to Liverpool.
Chelsea have now dipped into the transfer market for yet another goalkeeper, with Villarreal’s Filip Jorgensen confirmed earlier this week for a fee believed to be around £20m.
That takes Chelsea’s total spending on goalkeepers since 2018 to something in the region of £160m, with Mendy the only one of the six arrivals in that time to have left at all, let alone for a transfer fee.
Just bring back Rob Green on a free, we saw.
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