Chelsea could have player challenging Antonio Rudiger record next season if they make Champions League | OneFootball

Chelsea have just one league game left this season, a huge Champions League decider against Nottingham Forest this Sunday at the City ground.

Chelsea’s minute monsters from last few years

We can pretty confidently that key man Marc Cucurella will play 90 minutes in that game, which will bring him to 3684 minutes played this season in all competitions. Despite only making 32 Premier League (fewer than Moises Caicedo, Cole Palmer and Levi Colwill), the left back’s status as pretty much the only player who crosses over from the Conference League team to the Premier League team got him the gold overall.

Last season, the leader was Conor Gallagher, who racked up an impressive 4061 as the Blues went deep in both domestic cups.

The season before, Kai Havertz was top outfielder with 3249. A year before that, in the 2021-2022 season which started so brightly but ended up falling apart as injuries tore into us, Antonio Rudiger topped the list with the highest of all, clocking a crazy 4805 in central defence.

Next season to pose new squad rotation puzzles for Enzo Maresca

It will very interesting to see how the pattern goes next season. We’re likely to be in the Europa League or (hopefully) the Champions League, so there will be far less scope for manager Enzo Maresca to make wholesale changes and play effectively a B team, as he has this season.

The manager will have more first team options to play with of course – the likes of Dario Essugo should allow Caicedo to get more of a rest, and a backup to Cucurella is clearly needed to take the pressure off him – but the expectation is that we could see a player challenging Rudiger’s recent record, especially if we progress in the FA Cup and EFL Cup.

Don’t forget, there are more Champions League group stage games to play next season that there were in 2021-2022 too.

Will we see a Blue coming for that 4805 minute record?