'Simply woeful' - Chelsea star the worst loan signing of the season

Robin Bairner

• Updated: 23 May 2023 08:55 CDT
• 4 min read

Chelsea centre-back Malang Sarr is staking a claim to be one of the worst loan signings of the season in European football, with his spell at Monaco increasingly catastrophic.

Sarr has featured in eight matches for Philippe Clement’s side this season, starting on just five occasions for the Ligue 1 side.

His record in that period is simply woeful. Despite five of his outings for the club being for 45 minutes or less, only twice when he has been on the field have Monaco avoided conceding.

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One of these occasions came in Sunday’s match with Angers, which ended in a 2-0 victory. Sarr was given a rare start, but although his side did keep a clean sheet, he was so poor in the first half that he was withdrawn at half-time.

His performance was given a rating of 2/10 by L’Equipe, the paper went on to explain: “Messed up a pass from Ismael Jakobs after 16 minutes, close to costing his side a penalty against Adrien Hunou because of a technical error (18 minutes), clumsy and booked in the 25th minute, he failed in almost all of the meagre work he had to do. Replaced at the break by Vanderson, who created the first Monegasque goal.”

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Sarr’s Monaco nightmare

Such performances have come as par for Sarr this season. When he has been on the field this season, Monaco have conceded 10 goals and scored only four. At any level, this would be an embarrassing statistic, but it is particularly chronic given that this is a team that is three points off the Champions League spots in Ligue 1.

Even in matches when Sarr has been drafted in as a late replacement to try to keep things tight, he has failed in his duties. Ligue 1 victories over Lyon (2-1) and Nantes (4-1) saw him come into the game with 22 and 24 minutes remaining respectively. With the Chelsea centre-back on the field, the Monegasques have lost 1-0.

Chelsea’s sole consolation in the Sarr case is that they signed him on a free transfer. FootballTransfers now values him at €12 million.

Monaco will surely not seek to make this a permanent deal, and with Sarr having two-and-a-half years on his Chelsea contract still to run, he will become the Stamford Bridge’s side problem again next summer.