Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness has questioned why Chelsea decided to pay so much to bring in Marc Cucurella and Wesley Fofana this summer.

The Blues spent £62m on Cucurella but Souness says the Spanish international isn’t someone who will improve the club’s starting eleven:

“The money they have spent on Marc Cucurella makes no sense, considering Chelsea already had Marcos Alonso, Ben Chilwell and, at a push, Reece James in the same position. Is Cucurella that much of an upgrade on them? I don’t think so. Chelsea only seem to have taken him because Manchester City wanted him.”

Souness also raised concerns about the decision to recruit Fofana from Leicester. While he feels that Thomas Tuchel needed to reinforce his options at the back, he doesn’t understand why they splashed out so much on a 21-year-old:

“I get that they needed centre-backs because of Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen going and having 37-year-old Thiago Silva, an age when your game can fall off a cliff inside a month. But £70million for Wesley Fofana? At 21, he only brings potential.”

In Fofana’s case, it should be said that the Frenchman has already shown himself to be a very capable Premier League defender, even though he has only spent a short time in England. The £70m will be well worth it if he is a fixture in the first team over the next decade.

When it comes to Cucurella, there is definitely a case to be made that Chelsea did overpay, but the fact that he is very comfortable playing in a three-man defence means he is a good fit for Tuchel’s system.