Like selling Mata, offloading Schurrle was ruthless and the right thing to do

Letting go a 24-year-old, exciting, pacy winger who was a star of the German World Cup-winning squad might sound like a mistake.

But for all those qualities – and a handful of memorable performances for Chelsea – Andre Schurrle was inconsistent, never sure of a place in the team, and often didn’t seem like a typical Jose Mourinho player.

So if his move has been key to enabling Chelsea signing Juan Cuadrado from Fiorentina, perhaps it is the right move for everyone?

Schurrle gets a move back to Germany, to join the side second in the Bundesliga, for whom he will probably play more regularly than he has done so far this season.

And he gets the chance to remind the Germany manager that he deserves to carry on being a vital part of the squad – like he was when he scored three goals during the World Cup last summer.

Chelsea have sold Schurrle for more than he cost, freeing up the funds and a squad place to bring in Colombian Cuadrado, who also shone at the World Cup and has been a star in Italian football.

He’s talented, quick, hard working and – presumably – Mourinho has seen something in Cuadrado that suggests he will track back and defend in a way he was maybe never sure he could rely upon Schurrle to do.

Some Chelsea fans will be very disappointed to see Schurrle go. They will look back on some of his great performances – the brilliant hat-trick at Fulham, the star turn in the defeat at Stoke last season, or the 14 goals he scored in a season-and-a-half without ever really being a first-choice player, and may wonder if he was really given a chance.

But, particularly this season, there have been too many occasions on which he was given a chance and just didn’t take it, most recently when he made rare starts against Southampton and Watford but got taken off at half-time in each game, having made little impact.

There was a time when Chelsea would never have willingly let a player as good as Schurrle go but these days we have such a good squad that some fine players just cannot get in the team and so look to move on.

This time a year ago we sold Juan Mata, who had been our player of the year for two seasons. And if we can cope without Mata, we can definitely cope without Schurrle.

James Clarke is the author of Moody Blues: Following the second-best team in Europe

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