There is no doubt at all that Andrey Santos is a top footballer and has a big future, but I’m wondering whether that will even be at Chelsea at all.
Some quotes from Santos this week had me thinking and wondering. He’s picked up on the blockages in front of him at Chelsea, and those blockages are not about to be unblocked any time soon.
Santos revealed it was HIS decision to go on loan last summer, and it was Chelsea who wanted to keep him.
“Chelsea wanted me to stay last season, it was my decision to go and play,” Santos told Fora do Jogo on YouTube.
“I did very well in the pre-season but I saw that there was Enzo [Fernandez] and [Moises] Caicedo, and I wanted to play and have minutes. So I decided together with my family to go out on loan.”
Can you imagine if he stayed by the way? What a waste of a season that would have been for him.
So why would this season be any different?
Enzo and Caicedo aren’t going anywhere any time soon, are they? And they aren’t going to be rested too often either, with both players costing the club £100m+ and any manager will basically HAVE to play them both way more often than not.
Enzo is 23, and Caicedo is 22 – both are on long contracts.
Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images
Then you have Romeo Lavia and Conor Gallagher. Lavia is just 20 and is also on a long deal at Chelsea. He spent much of last season out injured, but SPTC sources have heard from his camp that he will be ready for pre-season and is in top condition ahead of the new season and he is hopeful to be able to stay fully fit to be that important player that Enzo Maresca sees him as part of his new setup he is building tactically.
So where does Santos fit in? Does he just play cup games? Will that be enough? Can you honestly see Enzo, Caicedo, or Lavia being rested in Europe other than in the earlier and easier games? Even though it’s The Conference League, Chelsea want to win it, and the manager will need to do all he can to win it. Players will want to play in it.
Chelsea also want to, and desperately need to, qualify for the Champions League this season for financial reasons more than anything else.
The domestic cups could present more opportunities for minutes for the likes of Santos, IF he stays, but that’s not going to be enough for a 20-year-old (same age as Lavia, ironically) rising star is it?
It will end up being a wasted season of development, a lot like what has happened with Carney Chukwuemeka (granted he was also injured a lot). We’re now signing Omari Kellyman from Aston Villa for a ridiculous £19m, a player who plays in the same position and is best in the same spaces as Chukwuemeka, what is the thinking? What happens to Carns now?
We cannot simply just put these young players in our squad and give them odd minutes in the domestic cups. That will not suffice, and Santos’ quotes and decision last summer has literally just proven that. They want to play, they NEED to play. And this leads us to the wider issue of signing all of these top young talents.
How many of them will ever actually play for Chelsea or have a future here? Yes, it’s great if we then end up selling them on for a profit which is currently what we are trying to do with Omari Hutchinson, who SPTC sources have confirmed we are pushing for £30m to sell him this summer, but surely players like Santos need a pathway? But there is no pathway, it’s well and truly blocked.
Maybe selling Gallagher would present more of a pathway and genuine chances of much more minutes for Santos this season, but it’s not even clear at the moment if that will happen. And should that even happen anyway? I know many of you want to keep Gallagher and think it would be stupid to sell him.
But Santos’ comments have concerned me a bit and have made me look a bit more at the wider issue of signing up all these top young prospects. I know Chelsea want two top players in every position in the first team squad and there is certainly benefits to that – most top clubs do it. And yes, at any top club you are going to face plenty of competition for places. To be successful you need deep options.
If a player truly backs himself then they should just put trust in their own ability and stay in the squad, right? Fight for a place? If they’re good enough they’ll play? Michael Olise coming in would have presented question marks for the many young right wingers we have also recently signed too, but that’s another debate right there.
It may well be the case of if you’re good enough then you’ll play, but it’s a different story when said player has three players ahead of him that the club heavily invested over £250m in signing and they are going to be playing in at least 90% of the games, they simply have to. What chances do you have then of getting in ahead of them? Think about that.
It does make me wonder what Santos and his advisors will decide to do this season. Maybe Maresca offers him some game time? Maybe the club give him enough reassurances. But can they truly stick to their word there? I highly doubt that.
I know this goes for many players at Chelsea right now as well as Santos, and the way Chelsea are operating with signing so many youth players just seems unsustainable in a morale and squad sense, but perhaps sustainable in a financial and profitable sense.
I get we want to sign the top players before they get too expensive and maybe that can be smart – but everything needs balance and players need to see pathways. I’ve not even mentioned our own academy in this article, and again, that’s another big issue.
We can’t just simply say if they’re good enough then they’ll make it, it’s way more complex than that. Everything must be about balance, and everything about Chelsea’s operations right now lack that.
