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Despite the fact that we’re only four months in, the 2019/20 Premier League season has been an eventful one already. We’ve seen some huge surprises and plenty of epic games and goals, but one of the most exciting things to watch has definitely been Frank Lampard’s Chelsea revolution.
The club legend and record goalscorer took over the reins at Stamford Bridge in the summer when Maurizio Sarri moved to Juventus, and to say the atmosphere around the club has changed since then would be an understatement.
While it could be argued that his approach has come partly due to Chelsea’s ongoing transfer ban, Lampard has become the first Chelsea manager to truly make use of the club’s outstanding academy talent since Roman Abramovich arrived back in 2003, and the likes of Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori and Mason Mount have made an impact on the pitch in the most positive of ways.
The way that these young players have become key to Chelsea’s fortunes poses another question – what could the previous generation of academy players at Stamford Bridge have done had they been given the chance that Lampard’s current players have?
Perhaps more than any other club, Chelsea have seen some tremendous young talent fall by the wayside over the years due to their seeming distrust of using them in the first-team squad.
Here are 5 Chelsea youth products who probably wish they could’ve played under Frank Lampard.
#1 Nathaniel Chalobah
England’s highest capped development player, with almost 100 games to his name at all levels, midfielder Nathaniel Chalobah left Chelsea for Watford in the summer of 2017 after becoming frustrated at Stamford Bridge with the lack of first-team opportunities offered to him. Chalobah first joined Chelsea’s academy at the age of 10, and signed his first professional contract with the club in 2012 at the age of 17.
A versatile player capable of playing in a deep-lying holding role and also as an attacking central midfielder, Chalobah was so highly rated during his early days with the Blues that he was named as a substitute for an EFL Cup tie with Newcastle at the age of just 15.
It didn’t take long for the usual pattern to kick in for him though, and in the summer of 2012, he made his first season-long loan move, heading to Watford, who were then in the EFL Championship.
Chalobah helped Watford to a losing effort in the Playoff final, but despite making 38 appearances and performing well, it wasn’t enough for Chelsea. The club sent him on a long series of loans, with Nottingham Forest, Middlesbrough, Burnley, Reading and Napoli all playing host to him for periods.
Finally in the summer of 2016 it felt like he was ready to make his Chelsea breakthrough; then-boss Antonio Conte refused to send him out on another loan – but unfortunately for Chalobah he didn’t seem to fully trust him either. He made 1 start and 9 appearances from the bench in 2016/17, and when the Blues seemed ready to sign even more midfielders that summer, he made the decision to leave the club.
Since then, Chalobah’s career has been curtailed by injuries somewhat, but he’s still managed to pick up his first senior England cap and appears to have a bright future at Watford.
Given his clear talents, it’s hard not to wonder what he could’ve done at Chelsea had he been afforded the chances that Lampard has handed to his current crop of youngsters.
Also check out:Premier League Table Champions League table La liga table 2019-20
#2 Dominic Solanke
A Chelsea player from the age of just 7, striker Dominic Solanke was once so highly rated by the Blues that in 2014, then-manager Jose Mourinho – renowned for his lack of trust in younger talent – stated that he would blame himself if Solanke (along with fellow youth stars Izzy Brown and Lewis Baker) failed to become an England senior player.
Some five years later, Solanke has earned a lone cap for the Three Lions, but Mourinho should hardly feel vindicated, as the striker’s modest achievements thus far in his career have all come after he left Stamford Bridge in the summer of 2017. Solanke was fantastic as a youth player at Chelsea, scoring plenty of goals for their developmental teams and being named Academy Player of the Year in 2014/15.
A loan to Eredivisie side Vitesse followed, with Solanke becoming just one of 5 Chelsea players heading to the Dutch side in 2015/16. He scored 7 goals in 25 games during his time there and looked like he was ready for a shot at Chelsea’s first team – but 2016/17 proved to be a frustrating season for him and he made no appearances at all.
May 2017 saw him head to Liverpool in a somewhat ill-advised move, but despite winning the U-20 World Cup with England weeks later, chances for playing time were few and far between at Anfield. In January 2019 Solanke decided to move again, this time to Bournemouth – and while he has yet to find the net for the Cherries, he has at least established himself in their first team.
While the jury is largely still out on Solanke’s ability as a striker at the very top level, it’s clear that he still has plenty of raw ability – and it’s easy to imagine an alternate reality with him playing the Tammy Abraham role for Lampard at Stamford Bridge had he stuck around.
#3 Nathan Ake
Of all of the players on this list, it’s probably fair to state that central defender Nathan Ake has had the most fruitful career since leaving Chelsea. The Dutchman wasn’t technically produced by the Blues’ academy as he began his career in his native Netherlands with ADO Den Haag and then Feyenoord, but he still spent time with Chelsea’s youth side after moving there as a 16-year old in 2012.
Unfortunately, despite making his first senior appearance for the team as a 17-year-old in a 2012 Premier League match with Norwich, he quickly became a victim of Chelsea’s short-termism. Ake made 6 appearances for the side in 2012/13, but under new boss Jose Mourinho, his Chelsea career was restricted to just 2 Premier League appearances in the following two seasons.
The summer of 2015 saw him make a season-long loan move to Watford, and despite making 24 Championship appearances with the Hornets and winning their Young Player of the Season award, Chelsea then had another new manager – Antonio Conte – and so Ake was sent out on loan again, this time to Bournemouth.
The Dutchman made 10 appearances for the Cherries in 2016/17, scoring 3 goals – but despite being recalled by Chelsea in January, Conte still didn’t make use of him – he made just 5 more appearances for the Blues before moving on a permanent deal to Bournemouth in the summer of 2017 for a fee of £20m. And since then, Ake has gone on to become one of the Premier League’s most highly-rated young defenders.
Ake’s story with Chelsea may not yet be finished – the club did insert a buy-back clause into his contract with Bournemouth – but with Fikayo Tomori and Kurt Zouma forming a strong defensive partnership under Lampard, and Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen also at Stamford Bridge, it’d be surprising to see the Blues make a move to bring him back. Had he stayed at Chelsea it’s practically a certainty that he’d be part of Lampard’s first team today.
#4 Josh McEachran
Perhaps no other player represents Chelsea’s misuse of young talent prior to the Frank Lampard era quite as much as midfielder Josh McEachran. The 26-year-old was once considered a blue-chip prospect who would surely go on to a lengthy career both in the Premier League and with England, and in 2010 he became the first player to be born after the inauguration of the UEFA Champions League (25th November 1992) to play in the competition.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out for McEachran at all, and while he remains active in the game, nine years later his career hasn’t come close to reaching the peaks it was expected to. That didn’t seem possible a decade ago, when he was outstanding for Chelsea’s youth side and helped them to win their first FA Youth Cup in 50 years.
The same season – 2009/10 – saw him invited to train with the Blues’ first-team squad, and in 2010/11 he was trusted enough by manager Carlo Ancelotti to make 17 first-team appearances – 6 of them in the Champions League – largely as a deep-lying midfielder, where he earned comparisons to greats like Luka Modric and Samir Nasri.
So where did things go wrong? Essentially, a change of manager wrecked his Chelsea career. The summer of 2011 saw Ancelotti fired and replaced by Andre Villas-Boas, and the Portuguese boss froze McEachran out of his squad before sending him on loan to Swansea in January 2012. From there he settled into the usual Chelsea pattern of loans, moving to Middlesbrough, Watford, Wigan, and Vitesse over the subsequent seasons.
McEachran never played another game for Chelsea – and moved on a permanent deal to Brentford in the summer of 2015, completing four seasons there before a move to Birmingham this past summer.
Despite becoming a solid Championship player, it’s hard to believe that he never made it to the top of the game based on the ability he showed ten years ago – and it’s just a pity that he never had a boss like Lampard who likely would’ve shown full faith in him.
#5 Lewis Baker
Creative midfielder Lewis Baker actually remains on Chelsea’s books as of the time of writing, and thus he still technically has the opportunity to break into the first team at the Blues. But at the age of 24 and with the likes of Mason Mount and Ross Barkley ahead of him in the queue for a first team spot, it seems more likely that the future of his career lies elsewhere – and that’s honestly disappointing.
Baker joined Chelsea in 2005 at the age of 9, and then progressed through the club’s youth ranks before making his first-team debut in January 2014 in an FA Cup tie against Derby County. It was shortly after that when Jose Mourinho made the aforementioned quote that he would “blame himself” if Baker, along with Dominic Solanke and Izzy Brown, did not make the England senior team.
Baker did not make a single first-team appearance in the first half of 2014/15 despite being part of the senior squad. It thus came as no surprise when he was sent on his first loan midway through that season, moving to Sheffield Wednesday and then MK Dons, where he played alongside Dele Alli in midfield and helped the club to promotion to the Championship.
2015/16 saw him move to Dutch side Vitesse in order to gain experience in a top division, and he would stay with the Eredivisie club for two seasons, making a total of 73 appearances and scoring 20 goals. His form there was so good – he scored the club’s Goal of the Season in his first year – that it seemed inconceivable that he’d fail to go onto stardom with Chelsea.
Unfortunately, since then things haven’t gone Baker’s way at all. Despite rumours that Antonio Conte was looking to convert him into a full-back for the 2017/18 season, he was instead sent on loan to Middlesbrough, a move that turned into a disaster when manager Garry Monk – who clearly rated him highly – was sacked and replaced by Tony Pulis, who essentially froze him out of the team.
Another loan in 2018/19 – this time to Leeds United – didn’t go well either and while Baker performed well at QPR in the second half of that season, it wasn’t enough to convince Frank Lampard to keep him at Chelsea and he’s currently on loan at Bundesliga side Fortuna Dusseldorf, who have an option to sign him on a permanent basis should they wish to.
It’s hard to work out where it’s gone awry for Baker, who is a hugely talented player with a tremendous passing range, delivery and vision from midfield. The most likely explanation is that he simply wasn’t afforded enough first-team experience in England in his early career to get used to the style of play.
Hopefully his current move abroad will work out for him – but it must be hard for him to see the success that the likes of Mount and Callum Hudson-Odoi are having without wishing Lampard had arrived at Chelsea a couple of seasons earlier.
