Chelsea signed a goalkeeper in August 2022. Then two more in August 2023. Then another in July 2024. They already owned the world’s most expensive goalkeeper. When their owners, Clearlake Capital, bought the club in 2022, they also inherited the reigning world goalkeeper of the year, according to Fifa’s annual awards. Chelsea have eight senior goalkeepers and, it is ever more apparent, they need a new goalkeeper. Or, at the least, a change of goalkeeper.
But Robert Sanchez’s latest mishap shone a light on Chelsea’s farcical goalkeeping situation; in turn, it indicates why they are still more of an expensive experiment than achievers on the pitch. Sanchez thumped the ground in frustration after Erling Haaland put Manchester City ahead on Saturday: a piece of turf he would not have been near but for his ill-advised decision to leave his goal empty.
