Chelsea is set to add even more loanees to the army before the window closes. The army is as large as ever without being added to with new names.
The idea of a “loan army” more or less started with Michael Emenalo. The idea was to find young and promising players and loan them out. In addition, academy players that showed promise would be loaned out. On loan, they would get playing time and one of two things would happen.
The first would be the player proves themselves on loan and returns to Chelsea to contribute. This has been an extremely rare occurrence overall with Andreas Christensen being the biggest success story.
The second is the player is bought for an extremely low price (or free) and is then flipped for a massively inflated price. For example, Chelsea could pay two million pounds for a player, loan them for two years, and then sell them for 10 million. Chelsea has more or less used that increase in funds to pay for transfers over the last few years.
But with Emenalo leaving, the army has ceased its growth. The same names are being sent on loan again and again and Chelsea is not replacing them with new names. And yet, Chelsea is still looking to loan out even more players this window and the army is quickly approaching the 40 man mark.
That raises questions of if no names are being added, how is the army remaining so large? And the answer to that is Chelsea does not have a clue what they want to do with most of the players. There are several components to the army that need to be treated differently but Chelsea is unsure as to how to proceed.
There are the younger guys who could stay with the squad but also need minutes. That is where rumors of Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Tammy Abraham going on loan come from. It is how players like Michy Batshuayi and Tiemoue Bakayoko are out on loan. These are the players who can be great but are fringe at best if they remain. They are the trickiest players to deal with.
Then there are the younger guys that absolutely need a loan. Players such as Mason Mount, Trevoh Chalobah, and Reece James fall into this category. There is some question as to the level of their loan, but more or less Chelsea gets this part right. There are players still with Chelsea waiting on a loan, such as Fankaty Dabo. These are the players that only have a question about if the difficultly of the loan is right.
Then there is the part of the loan army that simply has no more place at Chelsea but they remain. Tomas Kalas is the most recent name who has been on loan again and again and simply will not ever break through at Chelsea. And yet, the Blues are looking to add to that contingent with the likes of Lucas Piazon and Michael Hector. These are the players that keep the size of the army large. They are the players Chelsea needs to sell off.
Frankly, Chelsea’s loan army is too large to be manageable. The money making idea of the army seems to have faded for the development side but the Blues seem hesitant to sell. They should consider it. A loan army of 20-30 is still quite large but much more manageable than one over 40.
The Blues should stop looking to loan players for the fourth, fifth, or even sixth year in a row. Instead, they should cut their losses. Chelsea can devote more attention to the players that have a chance this way and make some money in the process. That would also be better for the players themselves.
The loan army divides opinion but it does have its place. That place has been somewhat lost in recent years as the money came rolling in. Now that the money is halted, the Blues should trim the size and revert the army to its original intention: the development of players that will one day play for Chelsea.