Chelsea news: Blues face familiar problem before deadline day - have your say on squad

Chelsea have had the positive debut of £117m club record signing Morgan Rogers and excitement around new manager Xabi Alonso, but the same old issue persists: the size of the squad.

Every summer since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital bought the club, there has been a fire sale of players which, this summer, has been made worse by the shock outcome of failing to qualify for Europe.

Chelsea have 40 players on their books and, by Tuesday, will need to sell a player every day to reduce the squad to 25, with only 15 days left to do so.

Alonso has already spoken about the need to reduce his defensive options from nine to "four or five", while Chelsea will carry only three strikers into the new season, expected to be Joao Pedro, Danny Welbeck and probably Emmanuel Emegha.

Although five players were left out of the 3-1 win over Real Sociedad on Saturday because of fitness-related issues, Chelsea also omitted Nicolas Jackson, Liam Delap, Tosin Adarabioyo, Mamadou Sarr and Mykhailo Mudryk, all of whom had previously been involved in pre-season.

Benoit Badiashile is expected to complete a move to Napoli this week, but Marc Guiu, Axel Disasi and David Datro Fofana continue to train away from the squad with no obvious suitors.

There is clearly a plan under Alonso, with a settled core of senior players, but Chelsea will not want those on the fringes to affect the atmosphere because, as former manager Jose Mourinho said in his recent docuseries, "one bad orange can spoil the rest".