Why Chelsea must keep hold of John Terry

The 35-year-old Chelsea skipper is set to leave our beloved club come the end of the season.

I think the majority of fans would agree that he is vital to the club’s success and, therefore, the club should be doing everything possible to keep him for a further year.

Let’s start by taking a quick look at his career honours:

Four Premier League titles, five FA Cups, three League Cups, two Community Shields, one Europa League and one Champions League winner’s medal.

As you can tell, John Terry has collected an extraordinary amount of silverware since making his first appearance in 1998. His most recent being the 2014-2015 Premier League trophy in which he played every single minute of every single game; surely clearing up any doubt about his fitness.

Now that we’ve established that Terry is one of the most successful players in Chelsea’s history, let’s take a closer look at a couple of stats.

Chelsea have a top flight win percentage of just 47.7% without Terry leading the back four. When you compare this to the 63.3 win percentage with him in the team, is that alone not enough evidence alone to offer him a new one-year deal?

Terry also has an eye for goal, netting 40 times for the blues (66 in all competitions) making him the highest scoring defender in the Premier League era; proving that he is able to do it at both ends of the pitch.

Not only is he Chelsea’s greatest ever captain but he is massively influential both on and off the pitch. We saw what happens when big-name players leave the club such as, Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard and Petr Cech.

During the 2014-2015 season, Jose bought back Drogba as he realised the importance of his presence in and around the dressing room. With Terry being at the club for an additional nine years, can we really afford to let him go?

Now it’s not just Chelsea fans that are desperate to keep our leader at the bridge with Thierry Henry and Graeme Souness both telling Sky Sports that it would be a mistake for Chelsea to let Terry go.

Souness said:

    It would be a mistake at every level if you get rid of John Terry. I can’t think of one reason why they wouldn’t want him.

Henry also praised the Chelsea captain:

    His desire is there and he has been showing it for a long time. I cannot understand why you would keep that guy in the dark. You need him around. He has to stay.

As you can tell, no one is able to find a logical answer to why Terry hasn’t been offered another contract, especially when his 32-year-old teammate Branislav Ivanovic, put pen to paper towards the end of January signing a new one-year deal.

I think we can all agree that Ivanovic had an awful start to the season, yet still managed to sign on for another year.

So the question still remains, why haven’t Chelsea offered Terry a new deal?