And here is where the problems start. What if players simply refuse to leave now?
Felix - loan expiring
Zakaria - loan expiring
Mount - contract up 2024
Kovacic - contract up 2024
Azpi - contract up 2024
Pulisic - contract up 2024
Aubameyang - contract up 2024
Loftus-Cheek - contract up 2024
Hudson-Odoi - contract up 2024
Ziyech - contract up 2025
Gallagher - contract up 2025
Havertz - contract up 2025
Mendy - contract up 2025
Kepa - contract up 2025
To sum that up there are two loan players who will automatically leave after the season if the club so wishes, a whopping seven players with just one year left on their contract and another five with two years left.
Obviously not all of them will leave and some of these the club will even want to keep but generally speaking it's usually not that difficult to sell players with just 1-2 years left on their contracts, especially if they get told they're not in the club's plans going forward.
Most players want to play and if they're not going to do it at Chelsea, chances are they'll start looking for alternative destinations and worst case scenario the club compensate for a portion of their wages for the remaining 1-2 years and they negotiate a new deal elsewhere with a lower salary.
Of the 14 players listed above I would be quite surprised if more than half were still at the club come next season. I didn't include the likes of Lukaku and Koulibaly because those two will absolutely be very difficult to move on due to their salary levels but I really don't think binning around 8 players from the list above is going to be unrealistic at all.