Why Chelsea needs to quickly sort out the future of Andreas Christensen
Andreas Christensen is easily among Chelsea’s top five best youth prospects, despite having already made just over 50 appearances. This includes the 40 games he played in all competitions last season, which saw the 22-year old become a mainstay in Chelsea’s back-line amid a rift between Antonio Conte and David Luiz. The Dane effortlessly stepped in and took over from Luiz in the back-three, and was among the Blues’ best players.
However, under Maurizio Sarri, Andreas Christensen has found game-time hard to come by, with the Italian boss preferring to use David Luiz and Antonio Rudiger in a flat back-four instead.
The young Dane’s lack of game time under Sarri seemed to catch the attention of a host of clubs in January, with the Evening Standard adding that Bayern Munich, Juventus and Borussia Dortmund made approaches to Chelsea.
But the report further claims that Chelsea rejected all the approaches, which also includes interest from Barcelona in December. So at the moment, Chelsea aren’t letting Andreas Christensen go but neither are they letting the highly rated centre-back do what he does best and that’s play football. And at 22 years old, he’s losing time to further improve his game and become among the Premier League, if not world football’s best defenders.
That’s exactly why either Chelsea or Andreas Christensen himself needs to decide his future and then decide what needs to be done next. Because if nothing else, the 22-year-old is simply wasted sitting on the bench game after game and this is the time he won’t get back. And given Chelsea’s current defensive problems, they simply cannot afford to lose a highly-rated young centre-back.
Especially not when their main centre-back is making far too many mistakes, which does beg the question as to why is his name one of the first on the team-sheet? In the end, neither party are winning and both lose out, so either Chelsea need to make the first move or Christensen needs to do something if he values his career at all.
Either way, something needs to happen soon, and while there might be something in the pipeline that people outside the football club aren’t aware of, Sarri’s Chelsea need to sort out Christensen’s future quickly before time runs out.
