Salah and de Bruyne couldn’t handle the level of Chelsea training claims club legend | OneFootball

John Terry has been on Jon Obi Mikel’s podcast, and he had some really interesting things to say about his legendary Chelsea career.

A lot of the juicy stuff came when he was speaking about the famous period when Chelsea had future Premier League legends Kevin de Bruyne and Mo Salah on their books. Terry defended the club’s decision to move those players on when they asked to be sold.

John Terry backs Chelsea’s decisions over future legends

“Kevin de Bruyne came in, Mo Salah came in, have gone on to be absolute world beaters in the game, like incredible players. They came in at a time where they wasn’t ready for the group,” the former captain said.

“Now, they showed little bits of quality, but I have to say the level that Chelsea had at training was as hard as I’ve ever known training in our time.

“You know, people coming in that are really good, experienced players, just not understanding the level and falling by the wayside very quickly. It was very demanding.”

While it proved to be a huge mistake in the end, we’ve always backed the decision to let the pair go at the time. It’s too easy to look back and pretend we all knew how good they would end up being. The real mistake was not adding buy-back clauses to their deals…

Back in the present day…

Meanwhile in the present day, Chelsea have reached the quarter mile mark of the current season, and we can now compare their efforts to the equivalent fixtures last season. It’s broadly good, considering context.

A major reason for these stats not looking as healthy as they could is the huge absence of Cole Palmer, which has disrupted the whole season. He’s closing in a return to action, however.