Ranking the 10 best Chelsea signings in Premier League history – Drogba 3rd; Palmer creeps in

The BlueCo ownership has overseen a procession of utter dross rock up at Chelsea in a football experiment that was failing spectacularly before Xabi Alonso arrived this summer and insisted they saw sense by mixing some experience with the children in the Stamford Bridge nursery.

Just one player – it doesn’t take a genius to guess who – from Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali’s reign of scarcity and negligence makes it into this top ten Chelsea transfers of the Premier League era. Almost all others predictably hail from Roman Abramovich’s entirely above board spell as owner.

We start with a captain, leader, legend, but not that one…

10) Cesar Azpilicueta

Arrived for just £6.5m, understandably under the radar in the same post-Champions League-winning summer which saw Eden Hazard move to Stamford Bridge, and went on to make 508 appearances for the club. Only Frank Lampard (648) and John Terry (717) have played more games for the Blues in the Premier League era.

9) Cole Palmer

Far fewer titles than most others on this list and Palmer‘s only into his fourth season at Stamford Bridge, the last of which was poor by his exalted standards, but no signing has seen their value skyrocket to anywhere near the same extent as the chippy-chip eating joy of a footballer.

Chelsea paid Manchester City what most thought was an excessive £40m for his services in the summer of 2023 and 18 months later, after a debut season of 22 Premier League goals and 11 assists, he was valued by Transfermarkt at £110m. Chelsea would want a fair bit more than that for him now.

Palmer is a tonic for the increasingly sterile and formulaic world of Premier League football. He’s got the physicality – he has to – but his is a craft you often feel can’t be coached, despite the reality being it absolutely can. He’s a maverick flourishing beautifully in a sea of conformists.

8) N’Golo Kante

Leicester signing him from Caen for £5.6m might be the greatest Premier League transfer in history giving how central he was to the greatest story in Premier League history, as he arrived on these shores and immediately won the big gong with the East Midlands minnows.

And it’s no coincidence that he then left for Chelsea for £32m and won it again. We wonder if Kante might have been better off continually moving and collecting Premier League titles with each next club.

No further Premier League titles came his way at Stamford Bridge, but he was outstanding in the knockout stages of the Blues’ run to the Champions League title in 2021, incredibly awarded the Man of the Match awards in both semi-final legs against Real Madrid and in the final vs Manchester City.

Eden Hazard said “he’s like a rat” as he “goes everywhere” and Thierry Henry revealed after watching him in a Chelsea training session that he “poked him in the chest just to check he was real”.

7) Gianfranco Zola

If Cole Palmer is the edge-of-your-seat star that resulted in Gen Alpha falling in love with Chelsea and Eden Hazard forced the Blues into the hearts of Gen Z, then Zola is the cause of Chelsea worship among Millenials. The diminutive Italian was the OG entertainer of the Premier League era.

One of the great Premier League imports – signed from Parma for £5m in 1996 – Zola did things with a football that we hadn’t seen on these shores before, always with a smile on his face.

Without him Chelsea may not have enjoyed any of their dominance this century, not least because his mere presence at the club made them a notable and attractive prospect for foreign players, but chiefly because he was outstanding in the 2002/03 season which secured them a Champions League place and prompted Roman Abramovich to buy the club.

Zola was named player of the season for Chelsea after 14 goals and seven assists, before leaving the club with his head held high as one of the gentlemen of football as the dirty oil money rolled in.

6) Ashley Cole

A tortuous transfer saga which involved Arsenal demanding £25m for Cole and Chelsea instead wanting a straight swap with William Gallas, eventually saw the trade take place on transfer deadline day in 2006, with the Blues giving the Gunners a £5m sweetener to seal the deal.

Cole was already one of the world’s best left-backs and cemented that status at Stamford Bridge, with Cristiano Ronaldo famously naming the England international as his toughest opponent. “He doesn’t give you a second to breathe,” Ronaldo said.

5) Claude Makelele

The last-gasp £16m signing in that mad first summer of the Roman Abramovich cash which saw Chelsea fans checking Ceefax on a half-hourly basis to see who had been added to Claudio Ranieri’s squad.

Makelele was the game-changing addition, for Chelsea in their bid to compete with Manchester United and Arsenal, but also for the Premier League in general as what came to be known as the ‘Makelele Role’ – a specialised defensive midfield position focused on shielding the defence, breaking up opponent plays, and distributing the ball simply to restart attacks – has been key to the success of dominant teams ever since.

4) Petr Cech

Signed for £7m from Rennes, his arrival came as something of a surprise as Chelsea already had a very good goalkeeper in Carlo Cudicini. Much like David Raya replacing Aaron Ramsdale at Arsenal, Cech was on a different level to the incumbent.

Is he the Premier League’s greatest-ever goalkeeper? It’s surely Cech or Peter Schmeichel.

No goalkeeper has kept more clean sheets (207) in the Premier League and no goalkeeper who has kept ten or more clean sheets has a superior percentage than Cech’s frankly absurd 46.7 per cent.

3) Didier Drogba

Those ‘most expensive Premier League transfers when adjusted for inflation’ articles typically have readers scoffing over, for example, Stan Collymore costing £166m in the modern day or Chelsea signing a crocked Fernando Torres from Liverpool for £148m. But Chelsea would 100 per cent pay £120m for a new Didier Drogba in 2026.

That’s Enzo Fernandez and change, FFS. It’s not far off a straight swap with Liam Delap and Nicolas Jackson.

He scored 164 goals – mostly against Arsenal – but his greatest quality was as a big-game player. He scored nine goals in ten finals, winning eight of them, including his last-minute header against Bayern Munich in the 2012 Champions League final, and then the gong-clinching penalty. The kids call it ‘clutch’.

2) Eden Hazard

Chelsea fans the world over, still basking in the glow of their first-ever Champions League title, had another treat delivered to them ahead of the 2012/2013 season in the form of a grammatically suspect seven-word tweet from the hottest young prospect in European football: ‘I’m signing for the champion’s league winner.’ 

No-one could have predicted the significance of the Lille magician’s message ahead of a Chelsea career which saw him score 110 goals and lay on 88 assists while winning six major honours including two Premier League titles. Excellent though those stats are, to judge Hazard by his numbers is to do him a disservice.

The brilliance of the man wasn’t in his measurable contributions but the way he made us feel. There arguably hasn’t been as joyous a footballer in the Premier League; particularly at such a high level. He was a ‘streets won’t forget’ footballer who was also the best footballer.

As Mourinho said in 2015, “people in love with football in this country must also be in love with Eden Hazard.”

1) Frank Lampard

Records are made to be broken but a midfielder scoring 178 Premier League goals to bypass Lampard’s extraordinary record feels impossible.

He’s seventh on the all-time goalscoring list, the next midfielder down is Seven Gerrard on 121 and the highest ranking active midfielder is Bruno Fernandes on 74. He achieved double figures for goals in the Premier League in ten consecutive seasons.

He was a freak who as uncle Harry Redknapp warned us all, did indeed “go right to the very top”. And the masses baulked when Chelsea paid West Ham a measly £11m for him.