Chelsea: The Blues’ young players show they can still be trusted

Despite intense criticism from supporters and an influx of world class talent, the young players at Chelsea prove they are still forces to be reckoned with.

Even early on in the 2020/21 Premier League season, people are starting to question Chelsea’s massive summer signing spree. The results have been of a mixed variety, as have the performances of some of the Blues’ new boys. We’ve seen flashes of brilliance from Kai Havertz, Timo Werner and Thiago Silva, but also moments that made us seriously question their value.

Despite these early struggles, Chelsea has taken four points from its first three matches, a pretty good tally considering the level of football has been below average at best. The Blues currently sit slightly above mid-table, in large part because of the performances of Chelsea’s more established players. These vets of the club—including mostly members of Frank Lampard’s youth revolution—have shown that they can still be counted on to perform, even if they are no longer the first names on the team sheet.

The 3-3 draw with West Brom has been a microcosm of the last 10-12 matches of Chelsea football; brilliance followed by laziness that costs the team points. Early on, the Blues looked like they didn’t belong on the same field as the Baggies. Simple defensive mistakes in positioning and ball awareness led to three early goals that essentially erased Chelsea’s chances of taking all three points from the match.

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Lampard’s side was able to come back though, relying on some fantastic skill and slick passing from the forwards. Credit to the manager, his tactical switch to five attacking players—instead of four—in the second half really gave the team a boost going forward by overloading the opposing team’s box with Werner, Havertz, Tammy Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Mason Mount. These five were simply too much to handle, even for West Brom’s notoriously deep-lying defense.

Goals from Mount, Hudson-Odoi and Abraham were a huge relief for Lampard for two reasons. First, if Chelsea had come away with no points from the West Brom match, people would have seriously started to question Lampard’s coaching ability. The excuse of the transfer ban and having no new players has long passed, and the Blues have to consistently beat weaker opposition if they are going to seriously contend for the title.

The second, and more important, reason that these goals were important is Lampard knows he can still rely on his young Englishmen for production. Abraham has scored in each of his last two games, Mount has played consistently well while starting every game so far and the rest have put in great individual performances at times as well. Hudson-Odoi’s goal was crucial on Saturday, Fikayo Tomori was strong paired with Silva against Barnsley and Reece James absolutely stole the show with his rocket golazo against Brighton on match day one. These players are all still very young and these performances have been crucial to the team’s moderate success.

Of course, Chelsea’s supporters won’t be fully satisfied until the team is firing on all cylinders, with new and old players combining to form the super team that more than £250 million should be able to buy. That day hasn’t come yet, but there is still some time to integrate the team, which has been especially difficult this season because of injuries to Christian Pulisic, Hakim Ziyech and Ben Chilwell. Plus, the goalkeeping situation, which is still on the verge of complete disaster in my opinion, was semi-settled Thursday when Edouard Mendy arrived from Rennes.

Again, with all of these odds stacked against the Blues, they’ve still managed to stay afloat in this young EPL season.