Nearly any loan is better than a young player sitting idly on the bench. Chelsea should pursue a strong loan for Callum Hudson-Odoi, but must remember what purpose a loan serves for players like him.
Consider this my concurrence in part and dissent in part from Travis’s article yesterday. Callum Hudson-Odoi is one of Chelsea’s players most in need of a loan for the second half of the season. He has played only 35 minutes this season. Unless he ages six years over the course of the festive period – or if some sort of King Ralph situation befalls the entirety of Chelsea’s winger and attacking midfielder corps – Maurizio Sarri will not give him much more than another 35 in the second half.
As Travis pointed out, the Blues have derailed careers through overambitious loans in the past, and the teams that might take a player like Hudson-Odoi are the ones with the least flexibility to use him. A loan that looks good on paper could be just as unproductive for Hudson-Odoi as having his name on Chelsea FC’s first-team roster for the season.
However, considering how little is on offer at Stamford Bridge for the Englishman, the bar is set low. Very low.
The main thing Chelsea should consider is what tier a prospective loan club is playing at. With the exception of the Championship, Chelsea should not make loans to any club below the first tier in its country. The purpose of a loan is to learn football by playing good football. Players may learn a lot of life skills about the #grind and #hustle in the lower tiers around Europe, but they rarely learn the tactical and technical skills that transfer to – and therefore contribute to – a Premier League career or a profitable sale.
The Championship is an exception in part because of the increasing quality of the league. Leeds United under Marcelo Bielsa are following upon Wolves’ success last year in paving an advanced route out of the second tier and into the Premier League.
The other reason is much more pragmatic. Every year, three clubs from the Championship join the Premier League. The styles of play interact, and the coaches, players and clubs become familiar. This compensates for the reduced quality of the football the loanee encounters outside of those top teams favoured for promotion.
Other second-tier leagues do not have these advantages. A loan to 2. Bundesliga will teach a player how to play second-tier German football. That is interesting from a hipster tactical perspective (sorry, Travis, I’m cutting deep here) but is not very relevant to the Premier League. Given the quality gap between 2. Bundeliga and the top of the Bundesliga table, it may not even be much of a preparation for a player who could get sold to Borussia Dortmund or similar clubs.
Callum Hudson-Odoi absolutely needs playing minutes. At this rate he will retire before he gets the 150-200 senior-level appearances that previous iterations of Chelsea’s youth development system said were necessary for a player to be ready for the first team.
He may not need sexy Premier League appearances, but he does need smart productive appearances. Thankfully, those are not as hard to come by as one might think. Any of the top five leagues in Europe could provide them, as could the Eredivise or – if we really want to go crazy – a few teams in Portugal’s Liga NOS or the Russian Premier League (although that would give Hudson-Odoi more downtime in the winter).
Even controlling for Maurizio Sarri’s disinterest in the youth, Callum Hudson-Odoi is in purgatory. He has mostly outgrown the youth leagues but is not yet ready for a Premier League starting XI, particularly not at a club like Chelsea. That is to say, he’s the kind of player the loan system was built for.
With over 100 possible options across the “Big Five” + 1 leagues, Chelsea should be able to find something worthwhile for Hudson-Odoi this spring. It is their job, after all.