2 months ago
39
6th summer signing
©IMAGO
Chelsea look set to take their summer spending to over €200 million after João Pedro's arrival from Brighton. Chelsea announced the signing of Pedro on Wednesday afternoon after agreeing an initial €63.7million fee with Brighton, with potentially €5.8m in add-ons. Following the arrival of Liam Delap, Estêvão, Dário Essugo, Mamadou Sarr, Kendry Páez and the reportedly agreed deal to sign Jamie Gittens from Dortmund, Chelsea’s spending on new players this summer looks set to pass the €200m mark for the fourth successive season.
Pedro departs Brighton just two years after joining the club from Watford for €34.2m and became their third most expensive sale in history, behind Moises Caicedo and Marc Cucurella. That will come as no great surprise to fans of the Premier League, who’ve watched Pedro go from strength to strength since making the move to the American Express Stadium. Over the course of his time with the Seagulls, Pedro bagged 30 goals and 10 assists in 70 games across all competitions, averaging an impressive 0.63 goal contributions per 90 minutes of league matches.
However, while Pedro clearly benefited from a starring role at Brighton, it remains to be seen how he fits into Chelsea’s team next season. Although Enzo Maresca’s squad finished the 2024/25 season clearly needing some additional firepower to help Nicolas Jackson, the club have since signed former Ipswich Town No.9 Delap and have at least four other strikers on the books, even if we exclude second striker João Félix. Pedro can of course play across the front line and as a second striker, but he’ll also find a lot of competition for places there too.
That, unsurprisingly, is due to the remarkable sums of money Chelsea have spent since the club changed ownership in 2022. In total, the Stamford Bridge side have spent an incredible €1.55b since then - €700m more than the next highest spenders in that period, Paris Saint-Germain. If that wasn’t impressive enough, when we then narrow in on money spent on forward players it comes to an incredible total of €521.3m. Which is again the highest figure spent on forward players by any club since the summer of 2022.
