5 players Chelsea should have kept

With the Premier League title all but gone after the 1-0 defeat to West Ham, Chelsea's best chance of silverware this season will be in the domestic league cups and the Champions League. The over-dependence on Hazard and Morata was telling with no other Chelsea player managing to penetrate the West Ham defence.

Manager Antonio Conte is likely to go back to the drawing board to find out a way to break down teams that flood the midfield just like West Ham did. Money will be splurged in the January transfer window with reinforcements likely to be brought in the midfield and fullback positions.

However, Chelsea has been quite naïve in the transfer window over the recent years with many players leaving the club who have proved to be world beaters elsewhere.

Here is a look at 5 such players who Chelsea should have persisted with.

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#5 Ryan Bertrand

Ryan Bertrand made his first start for Chelsea in the 2012 Champions League Final

Fullback is one position that has always troubled Chelsea over the years. After an unsuccessful bid for Alex Sandro in the summer transfer window, Chelsea had to settle for Davide Zappacosta in the end. Zappacosta has proved to be an able understudy for Victor Moses over the course of the season, performing reasonably well in the limited opportunities he has been provided so far. Marcos Alonso has done reasonably well on the other flank, scoring his fair share of goals, but does tend to get caught out defensively sometimes.

Ryan Bertrand although not an upgrade to the existing fullbacks, would have been an ideal option for the Chelsea backline. He was at Chelsea for ten long years before being sold to Southampton where he has established himself as a regular. With Bertrand, Chelsea would have saved the extra money that they have had to splurge on other similar players. Another advantage is that, with him being grown an English player, he would have certainly helped Chelsea to complete the home-grown quota of players.

Not a very big miss, but a miss nonetheless.

#4 Romelu Lukaku

Lukaku during his time at Chelsea

With over 80 goals in the Premier League and the highest goal scorer for Belgium at just 24 years of age, Romelu Lukaku is a goal scoring machine. Strong, powerful and good in the air, Lukaku is the classical centre-forward who likes to play with his back towards the goal, holding up the ball and bringing his teammates into play.

After the departure of Didier Drogba, Chelsea have never been able to replace him. Diego Costa's goalscoring prowess offered a ray of hope, but that too flickered out after a couple of good seasons. The gravity of Chelsea's mistake was understood when the £75m striker snubbed a return to the Blues in favour of Old Trafford where he has done reasonably well.

Morata has been in tremendous form this season no doubt but Lukaku remains one of Chelsea's biggest transfer fails.

#3 Nemanja Matic

Matic was a towering presence in the Chelsea midfield

Nemanja Matic was brought back to Chelsea in 2014 after his departure to Benefica. He showed his class on his return after putting an exceptional display in midfield in a 1-0 win against Manchester City.

Last season he formed a formidable partnership with the exceptional N'Golo Kante, providing the foundation for the likes of Hazard Pedro and Costa to shine. One of the best defensive midfielders in the game today, Matic is tactically astute, powerful and has a very powerful left foot. Although Chelsea signed Tiémoué Bakayoko to replace him, the jury is still out on Bakayako, who is still finding his feet in the English game.

Steven Gerrard recently mentioned in an interview how he could not understand why Chelsea sold Matic to their direct domestic rivals- nor can the Chelsea fans.

#2 Mohamed Salah

Mohamed Salah scoring his first Chelsea goal.

Mohamed Salah has taken the Premier League by storm on his return, scoring 12 goals and providing 3 assists- he is the front-runner for the Premier League golden boot this season. The talismanic Egyptian was never given the opportunities at Chelsea to prove his worth.

If he had stayed back at Chelsea, the prospect of Eden Hazard terrorising defences on one flank and Mohammad Salah on the other would have been a sight to behold.

Unfortunately, Jose Mourinho and the Chelsea board thought differently and he was loaned out to Fiorentina in 2015, thus bringing to an end his short Chelsea career.

#1 Kevin De Bruyne

A young De Bruyne at Chelsea

Can a midfield get any better with Eden Hazard and Mohamed Salah on two opposite flanks? Well, it can. With Kevin De Bruyne- perhaps the best playmaker in the world right now, playing in the centre, that midfield would be enough to strike fear into any defence in the world.

But alas it was not to be. He was not on the best of terms with the then manager Jose Mourinho, and he was sold to Wolfsburg for £18m, which looked like a good deal then, though not so now.

Chelsea would be ruining that transfer more so today as while Chelsea failed to breach the West Ham defence, it was De Bruyne's trickery in a Manchester City shirt that enabled them to keep their record winning run intact last week

Oh, what might have been..!