If reports are to be believed and processes are followed and completed without any unforeseen hitches, Roman Abramovich's near two-decade period at Chelsea will come to an end over the coming months, perhaps even weeks.
In comparable speed to which he arrived in the Premier League back in 2003, the Russian billionaire will make his departure having introduced once-deemed insurmountable funds which have brought controversy, entertainment and chaos to English football, the goal of breaking up the division's status quo being achieved.
However, for all of the masses of players which have arrived and departed Stamford Bridge over the past 19 years, there have been transfers which have only made sense to the powers-that-be at Chelsea at that time.
This is not a list of the club's 10 worst signings under Abramovich's watch. That would be taking the complexity of assessing transfer deals to a whole new level. Instead, this is Sports Mole taking a look back at what we deem to be the most random incomings of the Abramovich era.
Chelsea have had their fair share of misfiring number nines since 2003, but none more so than Khalid Boulahrouz. That is because the Dutchman was a defender, one who was signed for his versatility by Jose Mourinho, and allegedly only accepted the shirt number nine because the kit man failed to tell him that number two was available.
In all fairness to Boulahrouz, he moved to Chelsea having been part of a Hamburg backline which had conceded just 30 goals during the 2005-06 Bundesliga campaign, so he at least had a growing reputation. Still, like Mourinho had hinted, the then-25-year-old only became a backup member in the short term, making each of his 20 appearances for Chelsea during an injury-hit 2006-07.
Boulahrouz's career never got going again. He had spells at Sevilla, Stuttgart, Sporting Lisbon, Brondby and Feyenoord over the next eight years, making just 134 outings in all competitions before retiring in 2016.
Marginally behind Boulahrouz in the most random number nines for Chelsea is Steve Sidwell. Coincidentally, Mourinho signed the Englishman to add squad-depth, the midfielder being brought in after an eye-catching spell with Reading.
The similarities with Boulahrouz continue in the sense that his stay at Chelsea only lasted one season. making a total of 25 appearances in all competitions. All things considered, each party probably got as much out of the deal as they wanted and expected before an exit to Aston Villa occurred in 2008, Chelsea making a £5m profit.
Sidwell, then still only 25 years of age, went on to enjoy a productive career, making a further 150 Premier League appearances for Villa, Fulham and Stoke City. At the back end of his playing days, he also played a key role in helping Brighton & Hove Albion earn promotion into the division, 2016-17 proving to be his last due to injury.
The theme of picking up value-for-money squad members also extended to signing Tal Ben Haim on a free transfer during the same summer as Sidwell's arrival. The defender's stock had risen during his time at Bolton Wanderers, but he would not have been signed on the dotted line in West London had his contract not been expiring at the Reebok Stadium.
Ten of his 23 appearances during his solitary campaign came in Premier League starting lineups, realistically as many as he could have expected given the level of competition in front of him. Like Sidwell, however, he was sold to Manchester City for £5m, starting a journey which would see him represent 10 more clubs before the end of his career.
Another five of those stints came at English clubs - Sunderland, Portsmouth, West Ham United, Queens Park Rangers and Charlton Athletic - with the final chapters of his career spent in his homeland Israel with Maccabi Tel Aviv and Beitar Jerusalem.
Who? We heard you because even the most hardcore of Chelsea fans may not remember this random loan addition soon after Luiz Felipe Scolari's arrival in 2008. Fabio Paim was arriving on loan from Sporting Lisbon as a 20-year-old who had yet to represent his parent club in a league fixture, instead ending the previous campaign on loan at Pacos de Ferreira.
To all extent and purposes, this move felt like a punt all because Cristiano Ronaldo had once spoken highly of the winger's ability, but he never made a single senior outing for Chelsea, instead only featuring in the reserves.
Once the loan was cut short in January, Paim went on to endure a nomadic career. Well, that is an understatement. Paim spent time in Angola, Portugal's third tier, Qatar, Malta, Luxembourg's second tier and on the amateur scene in Brazil before hanging up his boots.
While the acquisition of Mineiro also occurred under Scolari, there at least seemed to be a method behind the madness, so to speak. The veteran midfielder was brought in as a replacement for Michael Essien, who had been ruled out in the long term, with Scolari familiar with the player from the Brazil national team.
Comparisons were made to Claude Makelele, but the 33-year-old went on to play just 15 minutes of Premier League football, a token outing during a routine win over Sunderland. He did, however, feature for the full 120 minutes of a League Cup tie with Burnley, one which Chelsea lost on penalties.
That was it as far as his Chelsea career was concerned. Already at the back end of his playing days, Mineiro returned to Germany with Schalke 04, but only made seven appearances. Two years after his Chelsea exit, he was down at the fourth tier of German football with Koblenz.
While it would be unfair to say that Chelsea only signed Ulises Davila for commercial and historical reasons, the subsequent trajectory of the playmaker's career adds strength to that argument. Despite Davila becoming the first Mexican to sign for Chelsea, penning a five-year contract, he has never made a senior appearance for his country.
The same situation would materialise with his Blues career. Instead, Davila spent loan spells at Vitesse, Sabadell, Cordoba, Tenerife and Vitoria de Setubal before he eventually signed a three-year contract back in his homeland with Santos Laguna.
In fairness to Davila, he has since gone on to make a name for himself, particularly in the A-League since 2019. As many as 23 goals and 14 assists have come from 64 appearances for Wellington Phoenix and Macarthur FC, and still only 30 years of age, maybe the best it yet to come.
By 2012, Chelsea signing a young foreign player was nothing out of the ordinary, but eyebrows were naturally raised when they spent £5.1m on signing 19-year-old Wallace from Fluminense. At this stage, the defender had only just broken into the Brazil Under-20s squad.
Work permit issues meant that he was not eligible to represent Chelsea, and a subsequent loan period with Inter Milan ensued. Once at San Siro, it became apparent that he would realistically never make the grade at Stamford Bridge with just 130 minutes being accumulated in Italy across four appearances.
More productive loans at Vitesse, Carpi and Gremio followed before his Chelsea career officially ended in 2018. The 27-year-old was last seen at Brazilian third-tier outfit Figueirense.
To a certain degree, you can debate with authority that the addition of Baba Rahman was not particularly random. The numbers that the attacking full-back was producing in the Bundesliga were on par with his more illustrious counterparts, but this was still a player who was still just 21 years of age and had only just broken into the Ghana squad.
Making 23 appearances in all competitions during his debut year was satisfactory, but Rahman did not do enough to impress Mourinho's eventual replacement Antonio Conte. Back in Germany on loan at Schalke 04, Rahman was showing his quality, but a serious knee injury on international duty effectively ended his career at the highest level.
Although Rahman is still contracted to Chelsea, his career has continued elsewhere, most recently at Championship side Reading where he has made 24 starts, the most in any season since his injury. Before his spell at the Royals, Rahman rebuilt his career in similar spells at Reims, Mallorca and PAOK.
Our last two entries represent a double-header at the back end of the summer transfer window in 2015. After weeks of trying to sign John Stones, Chelsea ended up bringing in Papy Djilobodji, who had also interested lower-end Premier League clubs, as an alternative.
Djilobodji left Nantes as one of their stars, but he was never a Chelsea player in the waiting. Such was the step up that he did not even feature in the club's Champions League squad for that season. When all was said and done, his one appearance came in added-on time against Walsall in the EFL Cup. Incredibly, the Blues hierarchy still doubled their money in selling him to Sunderland for £8m a year later.
Since 2016, Djilobodji's career has been far from a disaster. After 18 Premier League outings for the Black Cats, he made 29 appearances for Dijon back in Ligue 1, and the Senegal international has spent the past three seasons with Gaziantep, scoring 13 goals in his 103 games.
The other bizarre piece of business that day saw Michael Hector sign from Reading before immediately rejoining the Royals on loan. The 23-year-old was signing for his boyhood club but an eventual first-team role looked highly unlikely, as it was proved.
Nevertheless, the centre-back will have few complaints about how his career has panned out. After his Reading spell came to an end, the Jamaica international got to spend a year in the Bundesliga with Eintracht Frankfurt, making a total of 22 appearances.
Further temporary spells came at Hull City and Sheffield Wednesday respectively before Fulham signed Hector for an undisclosed fee. He allegedly cost in the region of £8m, another example of Chelsea making a profit from taking a calculated risk on a player with little to no chance of senior action.
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