Chelsea fans who rushed out to buy a Matt Miazga jersey in early 2016 have a unique conversation piece but not much hope of seeing it in action again. Miazga’s re-loan to Reading confirms his status as a Blue in name only.
My colleagues have written several pieces about the bottleneck Chelsea have in the centreback depth chart and development pipeline. At the same time, we have written several articles about the players who went on the preseason tour, those who returned early and what those early decisions indicated about Frank Lampard’s squad choices and the futures of those players.
One name has been quite absent from both sets of articles: Matt Miazga.
That’s a pretty good indicator of where Miazga stands in his time as a Blue. Whatever the full top-to-bottom depth chart looks like, Miazga is closer to Kenneth Omeruo than Fikayo Tomori. Hopefully Chelsea won’t drag out Miazga’s ordeal the way they have Omeruo’s, or fellow centre-back Tomas Kalas’ before selling him to Bristol City.
Miazga will return to Reading for the upcoming season, having played every minute in the Championship with them after arriving on January 28. His first loan last season was at Nantes and started off well, with Miazga starting eight of the first nine games. However, the sacking of Miguel Cardoso proved to be the worst thing that happened to Miazga’s career since that muffed clearance against Swansea City that was so bad even Guus Hiddink couldn’t see his way past it.
Miazga played one game Vahid Halilhodzic, who decided to scapegoat Miazga for Nantes being in 19th place in week 10. He dropped Miazga from the squad for six games and kept him on the bench for the next four. Miazga did not play for Nantes again, prompting Chelsea to recall and reassign him.
This will be Matt Miazga’s fourth loan, which on its own is enough to categorize him as a career loanee. Once you factor in the number of players ahead of him in the loan army before you even get to the bottleneck leading into the first team, his future becomes clear: a series of stops before an eventual transfer well after most people – other than that Miazga jersey-owning coworker of yours – have forgotten he is still a Blue.
Miazga’s contract runs through June 2022 and he is already 24 years old, so neither he nor the club should be much interested in an extension. Most clubs that take players on back-to-back loans eventually want to make the deal permanent. Oddly, Chelsea are often reluctant to do this, even when the player helps the team earn promotion and ostensibly earned himself a chance to play at the higher level.
Miazga will have a different situation on his hands, as Reading have been flirting with relegation to League One in recent years. After finishing third in 2016/17 under Jaap Stam, they hired Paul Clement, with predictable results. Clement was replaced by Jose Manuel Gomes in December, but he could not pull them above the same 20th place finish.
If Miazga can help Reading build a margin of safety from another drop, Chelsea have little reason not to sell him if Reading want to buy. Miazga also performed well in his first loan at Vitesse, and would be an attractive transfer target throughout the Eredivisie or the Bundesliga, where he could join the increasing number of his compatriots.
Either way, Chelsea will only have one American in the squad for some time to come. If you feel like you got burned the last time, maybe wait until Christian Pulisic accumulates some minimum number of appearances before you buy his jersey.