Will Chelsea be allowed a transitional season? Barcelona have left them ill-prepared

Chelsea have spent the summer fighting with Barcelona over players, and they will start the new season as something of an unfinished article.

We all already know that Joan Laporta is about as shameless as football executives come, but even so his interview with CBS Sports ahead of the start of the new season raised an eyebrow or two. Barcelona have spent the summer acting as though Chelsea were their scouting network, repeatedly parachuting themselves in to hijack whichever transfers the Premier League club were trying to seal.

Raphinha, Lewandowski, Kounde and Dembele would have made a pretty decent backbone for the start of the Boehly era at Stamford Bridge (remember that £200m transfer budget that was being thrown about earlier in the summer? Well, they haven’t spent half of that yet), but all of these players will now be plying their trade in Spain instead, thanks to Barcelona’s decision to mortgage their summer spending spree against future television contracts.

It remains true to say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but annoyance at the way in which Barcelona have behaved has been increasing at Stamford Bridge all summer, and now we’re at a point at which Chelsea are reportedly blocking the possibility of Cesar Azpilicueta and Marcos Alonso – both of whom have just a year left on their Chelsea contracts – from joining that particular exodus.

But despite all of this, Laporta told CBS, presumably while wiping a bead of drool from his mouth, that “I respect Cesar and Marcos as footballers. They are very, very good players. They show their quality and talent at Chelsea. But I don’t want to talk about them as a matter of respect for Chelsea.” Respect, huh? He’s got a funny way of showing it.

None of this faux humility will have buttered any parsnips in west London, of course. It remains to be seen where Azpilicueta and Alonso end up by the end of the transfer window, but even without their departures this summer, Chelsea had work to do. Antonio Rudiger left for Real Madrid and those are huge boots to fill. Chelsea’s defence needed reshaping, and the arrival of Kalidou Koulibaly from Napoli – talented though he is – only partly resolves that particular issue.

It’s fair to say that this summer has been a baptism of fire for Todd Boehly, who took over player negotiations when he assumed control of the club at the very end of last season. But the Premier League is an unsentimental place, and with less than a…