Chelsea: Five talking points from Tammy Abraham’s move

5. No more competition among the strikers

Last season, the reason why Tammy was not given too much game time was due to the fact that the Blues had two other world-class strikers. Werner was poised to be the striker who would strike fear into the hearts of the Premier League defenders, and Olivier Giroud was the World Cup winner who would make an impact from the bench. Thus, it was an awkward time for the English player, who was not given preference by either of the two managers last season. While Frank Lampard did start him in a few games and even tried two strikers upfront, Tuchel was not so sure about the youngster. The three strikers had to prove their worth in the training grounds, and fight for their place in the starting line-up, however, Tammy always ended up losing that fight. Now, with the departure of Abraham, as well as, Giroud, Chelsea are left with only Werner and Lukaku. While this may provide us with some sort of competition with the squad, it is more likely that both of them will be in the starting lineup with the German playing as a supporting striker. Thus, there will be a lack of competition however, there will be more harmony in the squad.

4. Frank Lampard’s team of youngsters have broken up

When Chelsea legend, Frank Lampard, took the managerial job in 2019, the club was going through a phase of a transfer ban. This meant that the English manager had to work with the team that he had, or bring forward some youngsters from the academy. He chose to do the latter and gave breakthrough seasons to four superstars, Mason Mount, Reece James, Abraham, Fikayo Tomori. These players were supposed to be the future of Chelsea, and Lampard had this romantic, although a bit idealistic idea, of bringing the academy boys into the main team. Football has always romanticized the thought of homegrown lads picking up major trophies however, this has not worked out all the time. While it did work out brilliantly for Barca back in the 2000-2010 era, it has since been more a buying and selling business. We all want to see our academy boys represent our clubs however, the fact of the matter is that more times than not, the players are do not fit in. Lampard’s utopian dream came to a crashing halt when Tomori was shipped off to AC Milan, and with Abraham off to Roma, we can safely say that the dream to make a team out of only academy players is now dead. Even the extremely talented Billy Gilmour has been loaned off this season, and only two players, Mount and James remain on the main team. However, with the recent addition of Trevoh Chalobah to the main team, it seems like Tuchel might be exploring the youth academy as well.