da aposte e ganhe： A nightmare for everyone involved, the 2022-23 campaign is finally over – but who deserves the least criticism after a shambolic season at the Bridge?
da bet sport： Finally and thankfully, the curtain has come down on one of the worst seasons in Chelsea's modern history. It's been painful viewing; three managers later, the campaign culminated in the Blues' lowest league finish since 1993-94 and being dumped out of the Champions League with barely a whimper.
The club is clearly very keen to move swiftly on from the fiasco and look ahead to better things, with Mauricio Pochettino appointed as head coach ahead of a fresh start, but there must first be a period of reflection so the same mistakes are not repeated.
After scattergun spending across both transfer windows, Chelsea's bloated squad has been pointed to as a huge hindrance across a nightmare season, but GOAL has taken on the challenge of ranking every single one of them against expectation at the start of the season or when they signed.
It's largely a case of 'who has been the least sh*t', but let's get into it…
Getty32Gabriel Slonina – N/A
It's far too early to judge Slonina, who only joined up with the Blues in January following his summer transfer from MLS' Chicago Fire. The 19-year-old is yet to make his first-team debut for Chelsea, but he has been plying his trade in Premier League 2 and his work ethic has been impressing at Cobham.
The USMNT prospect is currently demonstrating his potential at the Under-20 World Cup in Argentina, where he's kept four clean sheets in as many games so far. One for the future.
AdvertisementGetty Images31Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – 2/10
The man who was signed as the solution to Chelsea's goalscoring woes hardly kicked a ball all season. Things got off to an awful start when the manager who signed him, Thomas Tuchel, was sacked a week later. Who knows what happened behind the scenes, but Aubameyang subsequently failed to earn the trust of either Graham Potter or Frank Lampard, having been omitted from the Champions League squad to make way for the raft of January signings.
He will leave the club with a solitary Premier League goal to his name.
Getty Images30Denis Zakaria – 2/10
The writing was on the wall for Zakaria when he was forced to wait until late December to make his Premier League debut, with both Tuchel and Potter reluctant to throw him into action for one reason or another.
Even so, there were fleeting moments when it seemed as though Zakaria's loan at Chelsea from Juventus would be a success and a permanent transfer was on the cards – but ultimately it was a damp squib as injury brought his season to a premature end.
Getty29Christian Pulisic – 2/10
It's only upon reflection that it becomes clear just how underwhelming Pulisic's season was; the USMNT talisman – who was really supposed to be a superstar by this stage in his career – managed just 1,012 minutes of action all season long.
A knee injury certainly disrupted his campaign, but he simply never did enough to be relied upon as a regular starter under any of the three managers he played under in 2022-23. A decision over his future will come into sharp focus this summer.