When Chelsea sent defender Fikayo Tomori out on loan there were plenty of alarm bells ringing at Chelsea. He had had a good start to life as a senior Blue, and while he still wasn’t perfect, the raw potential was huge.
Milan then thought they had landed a coup when they triggered the clause in that loan to buy him for €28m just 6 months later. 12 months after that, they had a won a Serie A title with Tomori playing an important role.
He was a key signing for the Paolo Maldini setup which has just been shown the door, but the Gazzetta dello Sport special which rates all of the Maldini-era signings from 1 to 10 gives him just a 6.5.
They concede he was an important part of the title win last season, and that the €28m fee is cheap if he gets back to his best for years to come, but it seems the gloss has really come off this season. He made mistakes against us in the Champions League and in other games, and what would have been a 7 or an 8 a year ago has faded to a 6.5.
It is an interesting parallel universe where we kept him – are we better or worse as a team? Is Tomori better or worse as a player? He still has the tools to get to the very top, but there’s no denying some of the players who have taken his place at Chelsea look just as well equipped.
Every player is going to have ups and downs (often within a season, and certainly across many), the measure of top players is always about the level at which they can remain consistent. Nathan Ake is another former Chelsea center-back who has had some ups and downs, but has shown enough quality and consistency in his prime to make 26 Prem appearances in a squad that’s on its way to a likely treble. So, yeah, sometimes we give up on young talent a little too quickly (or can’t afford to ride out the ups and downs until they make good), but such is football!