Chelsea move could damage John Stones' career - and other players will be wary too

Chelsea’s transfer activity this summer has been very quiet. Maybe it’s because, as reigning champions, they don’t want to disrupt the squad dynamic too much. But I also wonder whether they are struggling to attract certain players due to the nature of the Jose Mourinho regime.

Are players looking at Chelsea and thinking, ‘maybe I don’t want to go there as I might not get a game’? Look at Filipe Luis, who is returning to Atletico Madrid after just one season at Stamford Bridge. He played in the Champions League final and won a Spanish league title but turned up at Chelsea and suddenly found there was a right-footer playing at left-back ahead of him, who wasn't as good as him at going forward.

Luis couldn’t get a game, and it wasn’t down to his quality. It was down to the fact that Mourinho had an idea of what he wanted his left-back to do and Cesar Azpilicueta did just that: he sat back and never looked like attacking as Branislav Ivanovic handled all that on the right.

I think players now worry that if they go to Chelsea their careers will diminish. Look at Mohamed Salah or Juan Cuadrado. They have struggled to get anywhere near the necessary amount of game time.

If there’s one thing which won Chelsea the league last season it was continuity, and that means that the same players play every game when fit. That has its benefits, but while most teams want a spine, Chelsea have the thickest backbone ever. There’s no chance of rotation under Mourinho at the moment.

And look at the way Chelsea play. However much Mourinho goes and spends he will get his new players playing the same way. The Chelsea way. They will have to conform and sometimes that doesn’t work out. Cuadrado and Salah failed to adapt to it.

Chelsea have been linked with Pedro but if he came to Stamford Bridge he’d have to change the way he plays the game. Mourinho has his way of playing and he doesn’t deviate from it. He likes players who adore him and I think to be a regular you almost have to go down on one knee and tell him you love him. Any player who dissents or shows any resentment – it doesn’t matter what they do on the football pitch, they are not going to be there for long. He demands respect and loyalty, rather than earning it.

The press have called some of the players who left Chelsea recently ‘failures’, but they never got the chance to show what they could do. How can they be failures? It’s very difficult coming in for one League Cup game and knowing that whatever happens, it isn’t going to make a difference regarding your first-team chances.

It’s right that when you win the league in the manner that Chelsea did, you don’t want to go and overspend. You want continuity. You don’t suddenly need three or four signings who could potentially upset the applecart. But let’s not forget, they didn’t do very well in the Champions League, so maybe they do need to bring a few extra bodies in.

Mourinho says he wants one more defender to add to his well-balanced squad and it could be John Stones with reports suggesting Everton would sell at around £30 million. But that is a heavy price tag to bear because he still has a long way to go.

He would be better off staying at Everton for another season, not going off to Chelsea and struggling to get a game. Is Mourinho going to leave out John Terry? No chance. Gary Cahill? Maybe not, and then there’s big Kurt Zouma to come in as well. Stones will become another English player on the fringes of a big club if he goes to Chelsea. His international hopes, ahead of Euro 2016, could be damaged by an inability to play every week at Chelsea in the coming season.

His education will continue at Everton but if he moves to Chelsea it will be disrupted. He will never really get going with so much competition. It doesn’t make any sense at all for him to switch clubs. Yes it’s flattering, and he could double his wages, but it could harm his career.