Chelsea transfer policy shrouded in confusion.

When pressed on his potential January transfer activity, Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti said, "we are looking at a lot of players to find the right solutions. If we want to do something we are able to."

Those musings suggest the Italian, with Roman Abramovich's backing, is looking to operate during the window, with a central defender and potentially another striker on his January sales list. However, when Ancelotti talks of 'finding the right solutions', the Chelsea transfer policy appears to be stirring into life after the horse has bolted.

Where Chelsea now find themselves is the sum of all parts and not solely down to one or the other. To analyse the situation we must have an overview of the club as it was of May 2010, when the Blues swept to a league and cup double in Ancelotti's first season since arriving from Serie A.

The general consensus is, was and has been for some time that Chelsea's squad had grown too old together and after finally finding the right successor to Jose Mourinho, the club made a conscious decision to evolve the age and status of an ageing and expensive player pool.

For all the initial input since Abramovich took over, Chelsea there was a recurring and resonating theme that eventually the club would operate as a self sufficient and successful business. The early lavish spending was the springboard to on and off-field financial prosperity through commercial, marketing and media gains, but what it also did was provide the Blues with an arsenal of players to compete on all fronts for a sustained period of time whilst the future recruitment policy was put in place.

Essentially, behind the management speak, that meant that Chelsea bought themselves time to build a strong and reputable team whilst the phases of the next stage of the business development were supposed to come to fruition. Similar to the multi-million pound investments in the likes of Drogba, Essien, Shevchenko et al, Abramovich also poured great resource into funding smaller cogs to help to continually move the bigger wheel.

Since 2003 a plethora of faces have come and gone, most notably Frank Arnesen, in an attempt to fine tune this perceived Chelsea production line of future talent.

The facilities at Chelsea's cobham training base are technologically some of the most advanced in the world, their scouting network runs far and deep and player recruitment has brought in talented youngsters from all over europe, south america and africa.

Seven years the project has been in place and at some point the concept car needed to be test driven.

Ominously or with honour, Carlo Ancelotti found himself being the man entrusted with the transition, with so far mixed fortunes.

During the summer, with a further eye on financial prudence, the champions thought it was necessary to replace the old with the new and embark on almost the second coming of the Abramovich era.

Upon reflection the decision to dispose of Juliano Belletti, Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Ballack, Joe Cole and Deco was bold rather than reckless. Of that quintet, only Ballack and Carvalho started over 20 Premier League games during the title campaign, with the other three offering peripheral support.

Between them an estimated weekly wage of approaching half a million pounds a week was shelved at an annual saving in the region of £25m. Such savings, against the loss of arguably replaceable input appeared a logical cutback from the Chelsea hierarchy.

What was more problematic was how to replace those that had gone and in hindsight the replenishment looks short of what was necessary, but when analysed on paper the chelsea squad is not that far short of what it was last time out.

Jose Bosingwa only played a handful of games in 2009/10 and therefore was a like-for-like for Belletti. Joe Cole traded places with Yossi Benayoun and Ramires - albeit having not yet demonstrated as such - replaced ballack.

Deco - largely ineffective since his switch from Barcelona in 2008 - will have been missed by few and was surplus with the excellent 17-year-old Josh McEachran making positive strides forward, but it was what to do with Carvalho which makes Chelsea's transfer prospectus appear muddled.

Last term Branislav Ivanovic largely played at right back with Bosingwa sidelined. With the Portuguese full-back returned, that meant Chelsea had Bosingwa and compatriot Paulo Ferreira to fill the right defensive berth, meaning Ivanovic could revert to his preferred station of centre-back, competing with Alex for the slot alongside John Terry.

That meant Ancelotti had three specialised first team central defenders with academy graduate Jeffrey Bruma making the fourth. This was the kind of ascension Abramovich had in mind when he authorised the cull of the senior players in the summer, and the sort of gradual bedding-in which Sir Alex Ferguson has cyclically mastered with his fledglings at Manchester United.

Had Chelsea opted to recruit for a bonafide replacement for Carvalho, then they may or may not have resisted the alarming slump which has left them desperately clinging to their Premier League crown. However, it would also have opposed the ideology that now is time for a return on the roubles spent on propelling them forward in the future.

The suggestions now then is that Abramovich's cheque book will be dusted down to procure what would amount to an expensive stop-gap signing. Benfica's David Luiz and young englishmen Gary Cahill and Roger Johnson have all been touted as plus £10m answers to a problem which didn't need answering prior to Halloween.

But by purchasing now, Chelsea will set a danger precedent away from their preferred stance of reaping the fruits of their expensively assembled youth production line. It will also mark the watershed of the end of the big spending era redundant if they revert to type and spend big whenever a 'crisis' of some description rocks the good ship Chelsea.

By reinforcing their defensive ranks now, the Blues must admit they wrong, either by entering the campaign with an under strength squad, or more cynically, that Bruma is not good enough to make the Chelsea first team.

Aged 19 and already a full Dutch international, he now faces the prospect of falling further down the Stamford Bridge pecking order if their is an arrival. With Terry, Alex and Ivanovic all well set, the new recruit would block any immediate avenue for Bruma to break into the first team squad

In truth, the defensive limitations have not been the main reason for Chelsea's fall from grace. In all games bar the Sunderland home defeat and Sunday's draw to Aston Villa the Blues have fielded two of their three first choice stoppers. Granted, in both of those games at Stamford Bridge the Champions shipped in three goals, but at the other end of the field they have also only scored six goals in nine Premier League games prior to hitting three against Villa.

It still remains to be seen as to whether Chelsea will become active during the January transfer window, although by doing so, they will be bowing to the sort of short term fix they consciously tried to eradicate with the perseverance in their academy and stance to promote that youth over the course of this season.