From Brighton’s second choice goalkeeper to Chelsea’s number one. Robert Sanchez has had quite the 6 months.
Dropped rather unexpectedly by Roberto De Zerbi around the turn of the year, the once highly rated stopper was snapped up by Chelsea earlier this summer for £25m, and installed right away as our first choice keeper.
It was quite the turnaround for a player who likely would have thought things were going to get worse before they got better. His connection with Ben Roberts, his old goalkeeping coach at Brighton who came to Chelsea with Graham Potter a year ago.
Speaking in an interesting interview with Sky Sports, the Spaniard admits that even he hadn’t seen his big move coming:
“You hear things as the transfer window goes on, and when Chelsea got in touch I couldn’t say no. What they presented for me, the plan that they had, it was unbelievable.”
“The whole thing just looked like a real family environment here,” he says. “There was Ben [Roberts] and the relationship I used to have with him, Moises Caicedo, [Marc] Cucarella, Levi [Colwill], a couple of Spanish talkers.
“Ben knows my level, he always thinks I’m one of the best and he helped with the move – he put a good word in and helped to get me to Chelsea. I love him, I’ve had an amazing relationship with him for seven years, and I wanted to come here and work with him.
“I’d played against a lot of the boys for a few years – and I also had a couple of chats with the manager, I know what kind of manager he is.
“He knows when to tell you that you need to do better, when to give you a hug, put his arm around you. He’s a great manager tactically, but especially managing players, he gets to know each player individually and everyone’s different, and he gets the best out of us.”
Let’s hope this is all part of a grand restoration, with Sanchez working his way back to his peak and then beyond, hopefully fulfilling all of the promise that he was once thought to have. He will need to play better than he has so far – but given Chelsea’s struggles at goalkeeper in the last couple of years, he won’t have to be that good to be an improvement.
