Chelsea’s highest earner on a reported £325,000-a-week is England forward Sterling and he has now remained unsold in this window, along with France international defender Disasi.
The 30-year-old Sterling spent last season on loan at Arsenal but struggled to make an impact with Mikel Arteta’s side, while Disasi, 27, spent the second half of the campaign on loan at Aston Villa.
Neither was selected for the summer’s Fifa Club World Cup tournament, which Chelsea won by beating Paris St-Germain 3-0 in the final, and they trained in a separate ‘bomb squad’ after returning for pre-season.
Sterling is known to have had interest from Fulham and Bayer Leverkusen, but neither club formalised their interest, with a London move having been the forward’s preference so he could stay close to his school-age children.
Disasi wanted to move back to his native Monaco, but Chelsea ran out of international loan spots, using the last one to bank £14.3m in a loan fee for Nicolas Jackson to join Bayern Munich.
There are no such loan limits within the Premier League and Disasi had options to join Bournemouth or West Ham, but neither option materialised either.