Bristol City have emerged as a last-minute destination for Ethan Ampadu, who is doing nothing for his team or his career at RB Leipzig. If Chelsea can wrangle this move without a release clause in his loan contract, they absolutely should.
Bristol City has become Chelsea’s most reliable loan partner over the last few seasons. The Robins make good use of their loanees, which positions them to make their way to a higher-tier loan, a permanent transfer or a place in the Blues’ first team. Tammy Abraham is the ultimate success story, but Tomas Kalas, Kasey Palmer and Jay Dasilva also had successful loans there and are now full-time Robins – in Kalas’s case, his long-overdue forever home after hundreds of games on loan from Chelsea.
Bristol City are now supposedly after another Chelsea loanee, Ethan Ampadu. As The Exiled Robin’s Paul Binning explains, the Robins are “going to lose captain and central midfielder Josh Brownhill to Burnley in the next 24 hours, and it appears manager Lee Johnson is keen to sign someone who can come in and make an immediate impact. We need some dynamism and game control, and Ampadu can provide that in equal parts.”
Ampadu’s season has been a complete debacle at RB Leipzig. He may be learning a lot from Julian Nagelsmann in training, but Nagelsmann either does not rate him or considers him too much of a risk to trust him with meaningful minutes as Leipzig vie for the Bundesliga title.
RB Leipzig and Chelsea each present a obstacle to the prospect of a late switch to Bristol City. Ampadu’s loan contract does not contain a release clause, so the Blues would have to negotiate for his return.
It’s hard to see what RB Leipzig are getting out of Ampadu’s presence this season. Since Naglesmann is not using him in the rotation, it seems like Leipzig would be happy to clear their budget of Ampadu’s wages and whatever it costs to feed him in the club canteen.
But simply as a matter of principle or wanting excessive depth just in case an injury crisis works its way through their squad, they may want to keep him around. However, that latter scenario would be much like what Chelsea are going through with players like Olivier Giroud, Pedro and, to a lesser extent, Michy Batshuayi. By not rotating them in regularly and voluntarily, their performances are understandably subpar when they have to play. You can’t save a player for a rainy day and then be surprised when he’s a bit leaky on that day.
From Chelsea’s side, they may see Bristol City as a step down in Ampadu’s development despite what would likely be a massive increase in his playing time, Bristol City’s recent successes with loanees and their unbroken march towards the Premier League over the last seven years.
The Blues shifted Conor Gallagher from a very successful loan at Charlton Athletic to Swansea City earlier this month. The reasoning was supposedly that Chelsea think young players gain more from a loan at a higher-quality side. That Swansea City have a young, development-oriented coach made the Welsh side even more attractive. Gallagher has played 90 minutes in Swansea’s two games since the switch, so the move has not at this point affected his playing time.
Whereas Bristol City are challenging for a Championship playoff promotion spot, RB Leipzig are challenging for the Bundesliga title. If a club’s quality means more to Chelsea than the minutes a loanee is playing, they will keep Ampadu in Germany. With Julian Nagelsmann being an innovative, up-and-coming young coach, the rationale from the Gallagher move carries over directly to Ampadu.
It all comes down to whether Chelsea think those factors outweigh the lack of playing time. Gallagher was at least playing every game for Charlton Athletic. If they think Ampadu is developing more by training but not playing with the Bundesliga leaders under Julian Nagelsmann than he would by playing every week with the Championship’s sixth-place team under Lee Johnson, they will not bother cajoling RB Leipzig to cancel the loan.
Chelsea don’t really have a precedent for the argument that a young player training with but not playing for a high-level team is better for him than playing with a team one tier down (especially if that lower-tier team is in England’s Championship).
Performance on a loan is usually evaluated the same way as any other season: what a player did on the pitch. This is particularly the case if the Blues may want to loan Ampadu again for next season. They will not be able to showcase his accomplishments and justify another loan on par with RB Leipzig because they will have nothing to show those other clubs.
If Ampadu is not ready for Chelsea’s first team, it is hard to imagine him not taking a step back next season. Preventing that scenario makes Bristol City seem a large step up from RB Leipzig, even if it’s a large step down in the table.
Can you think of a situation where a player did little to nothing for a season on loan with a top team, and then spent the next season playing regularly for an equal or better team? Let us know below if you can.