There are a few immediate takeaways from the news that Chelsea have a verbal agreement in place to sign Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa for £117million (€137m, $157m) — exclusively revealed by The Athletic’s David Ornstein.One: How much? Two: Premier League champions Arsenal must be pretty miffed at missing out on one of their top targets to a team who finished below Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth and Sunderland last season.Three: How do Chelsea keep doing it?The obvious answer to the last question is: Money. Chelsea are absolutely loaded and they don’t mind spending it liberally, often seemingly without forethought as to how said player will fit into a long-term vision (ironically, having just been handed a long contract).Players whom you may have never heard of are purchased for tens of millions of pounds and will sometimes depart having never played for the club.Cesare Casadei, Lesley Ugochukwu, Deivid Washington, Omari Kellyman, Aaron Anselmino, Mathis Amougou and Caleb Wiley have been Chelsea players at one point or another in the past four years and cost £110million between them.Rogers is a superb signing, a gifted footballer and should be a huge asset to Chelsea, particularly under Xabi Alonso, who helped creative attacking midfielders such as Florian Wirtz and Amine Adli thrive at Bayer Leverkusen, and to an extent, Granit Xhaka from a deeper role.Xabi Alonso has helped attacking midfielders flourish (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)That’s the theory anyway, but of course Stamford Bridge has long been established as a graveyard where many flourishing English club careers have gone to die.Ross Barkley, Danny Drinkwater, Liam Delap, Raheem Sterling and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall — or, back in the day, Steve Sidwell and Scott Parker — were all good players who (except in Sterling’s case) went from being big fishes in small ponds to small fishes in a gluttonous blue ocean of squad rotation.