One ‘phenomenal’ player left Chelsea for ‘no reason’ seven years ago and the Blues still miss him now

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There are a lot of players Chelsea will have regrets about selling, with Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne instantly coming to mind.

Once on Chelsea‘s books, Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne are now two of the best footballers in the world and have won everything the game has to offer.

Romeo Lavia recently spoke about De Bruyne, claiming that he is the toughest opponent that he has had to face in his career.

Chelsea could obviously do with having the Manchester City playmaker and Liverpool forward now, but they are not the only players the club will have regrets about.

• READ MORE: Who is Mike Penders? Chelsea’s £17m new signing who could be the next Thibaut Courtois

Thibaut Courtois never wanted to leave Chelsea

Now arguably the best goalkeeper in football, Chelsea will wish that they still had Thibaut Courtois.

In fairness to those who were running the club at the time, there was not much that they could do to prevent the 32-year-old from leaving Stamford Bridge.

His contract was running down and he wanted to return to Madrid, where his family were living.

From Courtois’ perspective, he was actually keen to stay at Chelsea and had “no reason”, other than his family, to leave the Blues, according to his agent.

“If the family were in London it would have been totally different,” Christophe Henrotay told BBC’s Sportsweek (via Sky Sports) in 2018. “He would have stayed, there is no reason to leave a club like Chelsea, he could have won trophies.”

Courtois’ replacement, Kepa Arrizabalaga, is performing well in the Premier League today. But the Belgian’s shoes proved to be too big for Kepa to fill, while the 30-year-old’s price tag also weighed him down.

Chelsea missing world-class goalkeeper like Thibaut Courtois

It has been almost seven years since Chelsea sold Courtois to Real Madrid, and the Blues have still not managed to find a consistent goalkeeper.

Again, Kepa was never able to successfully replace Courtois, while Edouard Mendy’s excellent form in the Chelsea goal proved to be a really long purple patch in the end.

Robert Sanchez has since come in from Brighton & Hove Albion and become the No.1 shot-stopper. But after all of the mistakes that he has made this season, the Spaniard does not look like a reliable option either.

Kepa has actually outperformed Sanchez in the current campaign, not making anywhere near the same amount of errors as his compatriot.

The above shows how much Chelsea miss having someone like Courtois, who was described as “phenomenal” by Jose Mourinho (via The Guardian) after less than a season working with the Special One.