Chelsea keeper Kepa Arrizabalaga will be dumped for new signing Edouard Mendy.
That is the view of former Chelsea defender Frank Leboeuf who believes Kepa’s confidence is shot to pieces and must be taken out of the firing line.
Chelsea are binging in Rennes keeper Mendy in a £22m deal and Willy Caballero is set to play against Barnsley in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday, which means Kepa is out in the cold after another howler against Liverpool.
France World Cup winner Leboeuf told ESPN: “He cannot play, his head is on another planet.
"He doesn’t feel football, he doesn’t even live football, he’s just wondering if he is still a goalkeeper. He shouldn’t play, he should see a shrink.
“It’s maybe the first mistake from Frank to keep putting Kepa in goal. The guy has lost his confidence completely.
“It reminds me of Fernando Torres. But when you’re a striker, you miss a chance and they give him another game. But with a keeper you make a mistake and you concede a goal.
“Comparing to Kepa, Mendy is much better than that and has had a very good season at Rennes and much better than Kepa.
"For that money, Mendy is a very good keeper, he’s much taller, very agile and better at Kepa at the moment.”
Mendy has been brought in to challenge Kepa and provide back up for the £73m Spain keeper but looks likely to be thrust straight into the Premier League starting line-up.
Chelsea midfielder Mason Mount insists that the team must rally round Kepa and help him rebuild his confidence after mistakes in his first two games of the season.
Mount said: “We know that Kepa is an experienced goalkeeper, he will look at it and he knows where he needs to look at it and improve but we are all going to be behind him.
“We all make mistakes, I make mistakes, I give the ball away but it’s just in their half and I can give the ball away and it’s different when it’s the back four.
“But as I said, we are all behind him, we all support him and it doesn’t matter because now we need to look towards the next game now.”
Mount still believes that Chelsea can push on after the defeat to Liverpool and insists they ambitions are much higher than just top four this season and the new signings will quickly fit in.
Mount added: “We definitely got better expectations than last season. We know we can do very well, we’ve got a very good team.
"But probably it takes some time to bond and to click together.
“We’ve got quite a few new players coming in and, as I said, it takes time sometimes to gel and we know it’s going to take a couple of games to understand each other and understand the way other people play.
“But when we get our full rhythm, I think we’ll be firing and we’ll be scoring goals and hopefully get as many three points as we can.
“For me, if I look at the team we want to do better. We don’t want to accept fourth place, we want to push to the top. I think we can do that with the team that we’ve got, as I said.
"We just need to keep getting better and better and hopefully we can do that.”
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