Forget Bellingham – Chelsea need something completely differentForget Bellingham – Chelsea need something completely different
Forget Bellingham – Chelsea need something completely different | Getty Images
Chelsea have been linked with Jobe Bellingham - and if the story is real, they haven’t learned their lesson.
Yet again, Chelsea have been linked with a young player. This time, it’s Jobe Bellingham, but the identity of the player scarcely matters past a certain point – perhaps everyone involved in transfer activity at Chelsea is compelled by their bosses to turn in a report recommending at least one Under-21 player by lunchtime every day. Today, it’s Bellingham. Tomorrow, next week, next month, somebody else.
Chelsea want to buy young – that’s fair enough, up to a point. Young players are cheaper, right? Besides, you get to develop them in line with your coaching staff’s technical and tactical vision, perfecting their style of play over the course of years until they’re ready. It all makes perfect sense, unless you do it the way Chelsea do it. Then it doesn’t.
Why Chelsea need to stop signing kids and start finding solutions…
A little under three years ago, Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali arrived at Stamford Bridge and began to tear everything down in order to start again. In the process, they took one of England’s most successful clubs and made them rather less successful at enormous expense.
A cornerstone of their endlessly infuriating transfer policy is the determination to invest in youth. Hundreds of millions has been spent on youthful talent, whether it’s on players going straight into the first team, future prospects for reserves, or players destined for a year in Strasbourg.
It’s even been spent on players who haven’t arrived yet – up to £70m has reportedly been invested in Estevão Willian, Mike Penders, Kendry Páez and Aaron Anselmino, none of whom are actually at Chelsea yet and none of which will necessarily start right away. It’s a staggering investment in the future for a team whose present remains so uncertain.
Granted, Enzo Maresca has finally steadied the ship a little and there is every chance that Chelsea will finally qualify for the Champions League again this season, but even if they manage that it’s still hard to discern a squad which can seriously compete for trophies in the near future.
That’s because it’s a squad utterly lacking in experience, constructed with the absence of joined-up thinking. Yes, young players are cheaper than older one – but not if you buy them for the sort of prices that Chelsea do. And yes, having a young team grow up together can have benefits, but not if you keep changing the manager while the playing staff churns ceaselessly around them.
Chelsea have been winning lately, just about, against teams they should probably be beating rather more comfortably, and with Cole Palmer off the boil they look bereft of ideas in attack. Nor have they solved demonstrable issues – having signed the wrong goalkeeper in Robert Sánchez, for instance, they decided to buy long-term options in Penders and Filip Jörgensen rather than addressing the issue now. They cost nearly £40m between them. Perhaps buying an established goalkeeper now would have been rather smarter.
Sure, Penders and Jörgensen could end up being worth far more than £40m – but perhaps not if they can’t both develop with game time, and even then only if you sell them, which can’t be the end goal every time. The feeling is that Chelsea are acquiring young players like they’re bijou apartments in up-and-coming parts of town, to be sold down the line rather than to be lived in. Either that, or Chelsea are just repeatedly firing darts at the board and hoping one hits the triple twenty by sheer chance.
None of it is a sustainable way to build a team. There is plenty of talent in Chelsea’s enormous squad, and the recent emergence of Tyrique George suggests that they haven’t entirely forgotten how to develop their own, but there are so many youngsters that many of them are getting squeezed out of any chance of minutes. Several Under-21s signed under the current ownership have already left.
Meanwhile, Maresca does what he can and scrapes together 1-0 wins over Leicester City and gets a little closer to a Champions League qualification that would, in truth, be a remarkable achievement from a coaching standpoint. This is a squad that’s short of experience, maturity, a collective identity and depth despite having access to dozens of players.
…and Jobe Bellingham may not help much, either
Where were we? Oh yes, Jobe Bellingham, the Sunderland midfielder who’s impressed in his attempts to escape his brother’s shadow and now finds himself routinely linked with a move to the Premier League or even elsewhere on the continent.
The connection to Chelsea has been widely reported but seems to originate with The Sun, which may put its credence in immediate doubt for many supporters, but the veracity of the report isn’t really relevant – Bellingham simply doesn’t make sense for Chelsea, and that’s nothing to do with how good he is as a player.
Bellingham can play in a double pivot or as a ten, not that he’s likely to get many minutes there given Palmer’s central status within the team’s plans. It would be yet another investment in a central midfield which, between Enzo Fernández, Moisés Caicedo and Roméo Lavia, is one of the most expensive ever assembled. It’s also nowhere near the best, another hint that Chelsea may not be spending their cash all that smartly.
But however good Bellingham is, or will become, he isn’t what Chelsea need to improve that part of the field – for starters, his role would likely overlap almost exactly with that of Fernández, generally one of Chelsea’s better players, but what they also really need is experience, calm on the ball, a little control when things go awry and a player who knows when to slow things down and when to speed them up according to the match situation. They need the base of possession and the rigorous defensive protection that they don’t always have with Fernández and Caicedo when the chips are down.
Maybe, one day, that’s Bellingham - but buying him to sit on the bench begging for minutes alongside a dozen other youngsters isn’t usually the way to develop such traits. Perhaps he gets starts, of course, and once again Chelsea have splashed out on a player who needs development rather than a player the rest of the club can develop around. This is a project which needs tentpoles and ringleaders, not more novices who need to learn the ropes.
Somewhere along the line, Boehly and Eghbali have grasped the benefits of investing in youth but have then gone at it like a fixated magpie after shiny objects. Investing in youth is a sound policy when it’s focussed and structured investment, with proven and experienced players leading the way while youngsters develop their talents in a positive environment.
What Chelsea have created is something closer to survival of the fittest – youngsters are bought en masse and thrown in the deep end together. Some will survive, some will drown, or at least be sent to France for a year before they’re sold at cost to some other club. A whole new generation of Lucas Piazons beckons.
What Chelsea seem to be missing is that a smart side doesn’t buy this many young players – it buys half as many, focusses on delivering the best possible developmental outcome for each of them, and spends the money saved on a small core of high-end senior players who will not only be more effective but will help to nurture the talent around them. Whenever Chelsea buy someone over 23, it’s always a hare-brained move for a João Félix or Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall with evident downsides.
Perhaps, one day, they’ll learn. Until then, the first lesson here – don’t buy Jobe Bellingham. Buy a player who’s 26, knows the ropes, and has experience at the highest level. Buy someone you want to start and who complements the other players you have and Maresca’s methods. It might just work.
Related topics:Jobe BellinghamChelseaEnzo MarescaCole Palmer
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