Rivals Football - Chelsea FC

Starting tonight for England.
All a bit surreal. Have I missed something?
Have we (the club) missed a trick?

Hate to say it but when other clubs have seen a rough diamond, they have polished it (play them in this case)
Ali, Owen, Rose, Rashford, Mbappe etc

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I think it's more a sign of how mediocre England are at the moment than anything.

Not saying they're not talents and I do hope they end up making it at the club but the reality is, neither of them would get in ahead of any our team at the moment. I think our loan system works, Courtois and Christensen prove to me that if you're good enough, you can go elsewhere and excel and then come back here and play.

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I’m not sure you can use Courtois as a measure of success for our loan system. Completely different set of circumstances.

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How so? Obviously Courtois didn't come through the youth system but it follows the same process, the club loan players out at around 19-21 to give them the experience they won't get at Chelsea.

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They bought a finished product a year ahead of needing the replacement (shock horror). He didn’t the experience of another year at AM to develop. Just meant he continued to get first team football until Cech left.

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That's not quite how it happened. We bought him in 2011 and he only got his chance with us in 2014/15. I don't think he was the finished product by any means when we bought him, ok he was brought in for his potential but so have many others over the years who've never fulfilled that. He was at Atletico for three years and proved himself to be worthy of competing with a great keeper like Cech with his performances at a good club and League before coming back to ours to play. If he hadn't have shown that promise there at the very top level on a consistent basis, he'd have gone the way of many others.

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Ok, point taken on dates... but that was definitely a case of a known quantity.

It’s no emdorsment of Chelsea’s loan policy... he’s no world beater, but was always going to become a goal keeper for a top European side.

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I'd never seen him play when we signed him. I don't think there was ever any guarantee of his future success as such, albeit plenty of hope and hype. There's been loads of players tipped for stardom at that age who don't fulfil their potential.

My original point was, when he joined, Courtois was not ready to be our keeper ahead of Cech, so the club sent him on loan to learn the game at a high level and perfect his trade elsewhere and he excelled. Unless someone is exceptional then they're not going to get the chance to make mistakes on our watch at that age; they can fine tune their game elsewhere and hopefully return when they're more rounded. If they don't show enough to suggest they can play regularly for us, they will at least have had the opportunity to play first team football regularly, to learn the game, to put themselves in the shop window and also make money for the club.

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Hmmmm... i’m still not having Courtois as a success story re loan policy.

Christensen, yes. Courtois, no.

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I also think you have to have something a current manager wants from you. Moses was a castaway under more than one manager but was key to Conte as manager. This doesn't mean previous managers made a mistake. Moses just never fit the profile of their style/system.

Personally, I have absolutely no problem with our loan system. I do look at our weak depth of 2 strikers but that doesn't mean I'd hold up the progress of Tammy by benching him for the random emergency start at SB. If it wasn't for the loans Tammy and Ruben would not get a look in for England imo. The loans have made this possible.

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Nail on the head - Abraham or RLC could be here on our bench getting run outs every now or then or they could be playing week in week out and excelling at lesser lights and the latter is win/win really. The players are getting game time, experience and exposure which they wouldn't be getting if they stayed. Then at the end of the season, the club are going to either get them back to play in the squad if they're good enough or they'll sell them on at good prices following that exposure, and the players should go on to have good careers if their attitudes are right.

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I think Abraham's the real deal, get him back for next season.

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Depends whether the new manager will fancy him or not [cr]

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I doubt they'd even take the inevitable new manager's feelings into account [sad]

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