Chelsea: Rumours hold no value for serial loanee trio and Trevoh Chalobah
By George Perry
The latest loan rumours offer nothing worthwhile for a quartet of Chelsea’s youth and fringe players. Kasey Palmer and Jamal Blackman need more than another year in the Championship, and Michael Hector and Trevoh Chalobah have no business in League One.
A pair of rumours cropped up on Monday linking four Chelsea players to loans in the Championship and League One. Sheffield United may aim to have Jamal Blackman for another season, and will try to have Kasey Palmer join him. Meanwhile, Blackburn Rovers are looking at two Chelsea players at opposite ends of the loan army: Trevoh Chalobah and Michael Hector. The Blues should reject all of these possibilities.
Let’s go in order of time served. With Matej Delac finally at a forever home in AC Horsens, Michael Hector may be Chelsea’s longest-serving loanee. He is near the top of England’s list of most loans by a single player. Hector has served more loans in non-league football alone than most players should ever have across their entire career, all competitions.
Reading loaned him into the nether regions of the pyramid three times before bouncing him around the Football League, Ireland and Scotland. He played half a season for Reading before Chelsea bought him and loaned him right back to Reading. Hector played 10 times more games for Reading as a Chelsea player than he did as a Reading player. The Blues then loaned him to Eintracht Frankfurt and Hull City.
Hector is now 25 years old with 259 senior-level appearances. Only nine of those are with a parent club. This an embarassment to Chelsea and Reading, and an insult to Hector. He deserves a permanent transfer, and his record speaks to his ability to play in any first-tier league. Chelsea should put Hector on the market for either a top Championship club or any first-tier league. By no means should they loan him again, particularly not to League One.
Jamal Blackman came up through Chelsea’s youth system, but has spent his senior career on loans to Middlesbrough, Ostersund, Wycombe and Sheffield United. If not for Willy Caballero, Blackman would be a sharp backup goalkeeper for the next few seasons. He could play the Asmir Begovic role to whoever replaces Thibaut Courtois. He would have a solid workload in domestic cups and – in 2018/19 – the Europa League. This would give him the experience and development he could then take to nearly any top-tier club in England or Europe, if he was not satsified with that role at Chelsea.
The only thing on offer for Blackman at Sheffield United is the prospect of regular playing time. However, if Chelsea intend to use him as their “first back-up” after Caballero leaves, Blackman will need top-flight experience. Another year in the Championship will be a plateau, not a step up.
Palmer, as we have written about at length before, needs to shake his emerging reputation as a promotion artist. Even going to Derby County to learn from Frank Lampard would be a regression for him, as he needs Premier League football if he is ever going to play for Chelsea. A year at Sheffield United would be another year where he is not where he should be.
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Finally, Trevoh Chalobah is the only one of these four yet to have a loan. We can only imagine what his big brother told him about life in the loan army.
Loaning an experienced player to a team in League One makes little sense. If he is of League One calibre in his mid-20’s, he is unlikely ever to be Chelsea calibre. Loaning a young player to a team in League One makes even less sense. Young players are impressionable. They are eager to learn and extremely malleable – for better or worse. Sending a teenager to play in League One teaches him how to play League One football. That is hardly transferrable to playing Premier League football, let alone Champions League quality. Chelsea’s coaching staff would have to spend considerable time de-training the player from all the bad habits he picked up in the lower tier, making the loan doubly unproductive.
The Blues have made great progress in expanding their loan deployments in the Premier League and at quality destinations on the continent. The Championship is the only second-tier league appropriate for any Chelsea loanee. If the best loan the club can find for a player is in League One or lower, they need to reconsider that player’s future. Staying at Cobham, training with the first team and playing in the Premier League 2 would be a better option for someone with first team potential.
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Chelsea have a lot of decisions to make with their loan army, including which players to pare. The rumours on the table right now should be among the easier decisions.