{"id":17502,"date":"2026-07-15T06:05:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T06:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=17502"},"modified":"2026-07-15T06:05:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T06:05:26","slug":"a-no-brainer-we-dont-need-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=17502","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;A No Brainer&#8217; &#8216;We Don&#8217;t Need Him&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p><em>This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chelsea legend Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink thinks his former club should snap up John Stones on a free transfer.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The England international is currently without a club after his contract at Manchester City expired last month, and Hasselbaink says manager Xabi Alonso should seriously consider signing the defender:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would love to see him (Alonso) go and get (John) Stones, who is a free agent. Everybody will say, \u2018Oh, but he\u2019s injured a lot\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think this year he will be a very good buy for Chelsea because Chelsea doesn\u2019t play in the Champions League or in Europe, so it\u2019s from Saturday to Saturday. He will have more rest, and he brings a lot of experience as well. So he can at least play 30 matches.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"sra_unit\"><link rel=\"stylesheet\" id=\"block-sra\" href=\"https:\/\/chelseanews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/snack-related-articles\/dist\/css\/snack-related.min.css?230424-120159\" type=\"text\/css\" media=\"all\"\/>\n<aside class=\"sra-group sra-related-list\">\n<h2 class=\"sra-group-head\">Most Read on Chelsea News<\/h2>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p>Supporters on X are very much split on whether a move for Stones is a good idea:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This to me personally is a no brainer. I\u2019d love nothing more<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Screwdrive (@echoandnineo) July 14, 2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Chelsea love injured players \ud83e\udd17<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 king jom unch (@buatsaja_budi) July 14, 2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Me too would love Chelsea to sign him<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Liquid Metal\ud83d\udde3\ufe0f (@Mrsuccess23) July 14, 2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We don&#8217;t need him<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 God\u2019Son (@Timilehin0) July 14, 2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Said this before\u2026 we need stones experience<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ebenezer Edozie (@UnboundNero) July 14, 2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We can\u2019t keep signing injury prone players. We\u2019ve already got Lavia, James, Fofana and the rest, so why add Stones too? Make it make sense<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 OG \ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddf7 (@YikescleverOG) July 14, 2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h2>Stones\u2019 injury record is very poor<\/h2>\n<p>The 32-year-old has spent more time on the treatment table than out on the pitch in recent seasons. He was sidelined for 24 games during the 2025\/26 campaign and 34 matches the year before.<\/p>\n<p>Stones has suffered from foot, hamstring, thigh and calf muscle problems over the past two years, so he is simply prone to picking up injuries, rather than just being unlucky with one or two serious setbacks.<\/p>\n<p>Get a brand new Chelsea 26\/27 home Aero-FIT shirt from Fanatics here<\/p>\n<h2>Chelsea have their eye on another centre-half<\/h2>\n<p><smartframe-embed customer-id=\"84d65181a95c24c4fea73e44b4e27a17\" v=\"f216f6d5d0b6ef819f6e02bf8357cefd\" image-id=\"ltKDAoUOs7LZ\" theme=\"iy-theme\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; aspect-ratio: 1.5; max-width: 4740px;\"\/><!-- https:\/\/smartframe.io\/embedding-support --><br \/>It is believed that Alonso\u2019s top target to strengthen the middle of defence is Crystal Palace\u2019s Maxence Lacroix, but a formal bid has still not been lodged for the France international.<\/p>\n<p>There are suggestions that the Blues need to offload Trevoh Chalobah first before they can step up their pursuit of the player.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}