Chelsea’s loan army are the subject of much procrastination, as those media souls and Blues supporters alike try to fathom how the system is supposed to operate.
We’ve seen with Andreas Christensen, that there is a pathway from loanee to the starting XI. However, for most it’s a path covered with obstacles. Christensen’s route was aided by a ‘fuzzy-haired Brazilian’ clearing some of the route with his mouth.
Michy Batshuayi was not considered good enough, by Antonio Conte, for a Chelsea team struggling to score goals. He was shipped off to Germany in January following the arrival of Olivier Giroud.
Conte subsequently decided that Giroud was no better and consigned him to the substitutes bench in favour of Alvaro Morata and Eden Hazard. Chelsea still struggled to find the net. The Frenchman’s 20 minute cameo in the Southampton game swept through the ranks of a lacklustre Chelsea side like a tsunami.
One of our younger loanees, Ruben Loftus-Cheek has had a good season at Crystal Palace under the watchful eye of Roy Hodgson. His progression ought to be a season on loan getting plenty of football at a decent level, and back to Chelsea to continue his advancement.
The same goes for Batshuayi. He had more game time under Conte and scored some crucial goals, not least the one that secured Chelsea’s Premier League title last season. His move to Borussia Dortmund reaped instant rewards for the Bundesliga outfit until he unfortunately suffered ankle ligament damage at the weekend.
With the season ending, both players are having price tags put upon their heads as Chelsea reportedly look to profit from them time away. Chelsea signed the Belgian for £33m from Marseille in the summer of 2016. According to the Evening Standard it will take offers in excess of £50m to gain his signature.
Crystal Palace are also keen to snap up Chelsea’s young England midfielder. Roy Hodgson has spoken about Loftus-Cheek in glowing terms.
“For Ruben Loftus-Cheek to consider us seriously as an option, we need to be in the league for the kick off. Let’s keep our priorities right and work hard to stay in this league.”
“Then I’m pretty sure we would be saying to Ruben, is it worth having the conversation with Chelsea, could you consider? Then of course the conversation with Chelsea will come around and we will see from there.”
“There’s no doubt he is going to be hot property if he has four more games like the last couple. If people remember that very good spell he had when we were actually doing quite well, I imagine that he will be hot property. Not just for Crystal Palace but for other teams too.”
Source: The Croydon Advertiser
There’s no concrete valuation for Loftus-Cheek, according to stat aggregating site Transfermarkt, he’s valued at £7.2m. In a buyers market, those valuations tend to be on the low side.
Should Batshuayi make the World Cup and Loftus-Cheek go with the England squad, the chances are their valuations will only go up. That’s good news for Chelsea’s accountant heavy boardroom, but will they then go and waste similar sums on players that are not good enough.
That’s the crux of the whole loan story. There does not seem to be a structured plan to progress the loanees for the club’s advantage. Their pathway is too obscured. Clearly what is required is a mouthy Brazilian to tell those in power how they need to go about running a football club.