Former Chelsea youth Gael Kakuta, Slobodan Rajkovic, Islam Feruz, Josh McEachran, Jeremie Boga. Just a few names of many who were tipped to make the progression from Chelsea’s very successful academy into the first team. Young talents who were some of the very best in Europe. Roman Abramovich’s investment following his arrival in 2003 was seemingly reaping short-term first team benefits and long-term academy benefits.
Fast forward to July 2021 and Chelsea has sold yet another promising prospect in Marc Guehi, to Crystal Palace for a reported 20 million pounds. Now, one might argue that this is a shrewd bit of business from the London club as Guehi has not even played a single minute of Premier League football. However, the Chelsea hierarchy needs it to be brought to their attention that these young talents will no longer wait to carve out a career at the club. They will simply leave and seek the minutes they need to become successful elsewhere.
In the last two years, we have seen Tariq Lampety move to Brighton and now Marc Guehi move to Crystal Palace. The common denominator between these two moves is the decision to turn down long-term deals at Chelsea in the pursuit of first-team football.
Gone are the days where Chelsea could send its premier talent on loan for multiple years. We saw this with Franco Di Santo, Jeffrey Bruma, Lewis Baker, etc. These top-level talents are now taking their futures into their own hands and recognising it is not a must for them to be a success at Chelsea, that they can be successful elsewhere.
Highly rated Tino Livramento, Myles Peart-Harris, and Lewis Bate have now joined Guehi (now at Crystal Palace) in not signing new deals going into the final year of their contracts. It leaves Chelsea in a very awkward situation that they should have seen coming.
Players like Patrick Van Aanholt, Ryan Bertrand, Nathan Ake all built respectable careers for themselves having left Chelsea. Most recently we have seen Tariq Lamptey and Fikayo Tomori impress for Brighton and AC Milan respectively.
Callum Hudson Odoi one of Chelsea’s biggest prospects may not have been caught in the loan cycle, but he just last year questioned his game time and was reported as very close to moving to Bayern Munich. That was before reassurances, which made him sign a bumper new deal. Does he regret that? It is yet to be seen whether he will decide to leave the club following a lack of minutes under Frank Lampard and Thomas Tuchel.
With the transfer ban and a full season of Champions League and Premier League game time, Chelsea were able to see Reece James, Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham really thrive. Now Chelsea is back spending the big bucks, it begs the question of whether we will see the same influx of youth talent into the first team for a while.
Another top talent is Billy Gilmour who secured his first loan move away from Chelsea to Norwich this month. One thing that can be guaranteed is that after his season in the Premier League with Norwich, Chelsea will have another dilemma as with all that foreshadowed experience under his belt, it is highly unlikely that he will wait to be given quality minutes the year after his loan. He will simply leave, as he will most definitely have a number of suitors.
The ball is in Chelsea’s court, how do they get the right balance of fueling the first team with youth talent. Which talent do they keep, and which talent do they let go? These are decisions the football club must make. However, one thing that can be guaranteed is that gone are the days that the Chelsea’s talent will just succumb to meaningless loans year in year out whilst remaining on the club’s books.