John Terry has offered a clear assessment of why Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne did not make an impact during their early spells at Chelsea. Terry, who was captain at the time both players arrived, argued that neither was ready to adapt to the club\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n
\u201cKevin De Bruyne came in, Mo Salah came in, have gone on to be absolute world beaters in the game, like incredible players. They came in at a time where they wasn\u2019t ready for the group,\u201d Terry told his former teammate John Obi Mikel on the podcast, The Obi One.<\/p>\n
Terry described Chelsea training as exceptionally intense and said newcomers who were technically gifted sometimes struggled to match the group\u2019s standards. \u201cNow, they showed little bits of quality, but I have to say the level that Chelsea had at training was as hard as I\u2019ve ever known training in our time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, people coming in that are really good, experienced players, just not understanding the level and falling by the wayside very quickly. It was very demanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contrasting trajectories of the two players are noted in the record of their time at Chelsea and how they performed against the club after leaving. Appearances for Chelsea: Mohamed Salah 19, Kevin De Bruyne 9. Goals for Chelsea: Mohamed Salah 2, Kevin De Bruyne 0. Appearances vs. Chelsea: Mohamed Salah 25, Kevin De Bruyne 22. Goals vs. Chelsea: Mohamed Salah 8, Kevin De Bruyne 5. Stats via Transfermarkt.<\/p>\n
Both players subsequently returned to the Premier League with Manchester City and Liverpool respectively, and went on to become central figures for those clubs during a period in which those teams dominated domestic and continental competition, often outperforming Chelsea.<\/p>\n
Terry\u2019s reflections place the emphasis on adaptation to a particular environment and the demanding standards at Chelsea at that time, offering context for why two players who later became stars struggled in their initial spells at the club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John Terry says Salah and De Bruyne were not ready for Chelsea, reflecting on training standards.2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1081,1162,1089],"class_list":["post-4442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-adaptation","tag-analytics","tag-chelsea-struggles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}