Chelsea have just announced that youth team product Charlie Webster has signed a new one year contract.
The 20 year old was due to leave the club his summer when his current deal expires, but this new short term arrangement gives both him and Chelsea some breathing room to decide on his future. He’s been at Chelsea since under 10 level, and has featured for England all the way up to under 20 level.
Webster is currently on loan at Heerenveen in Holland, where he’s managed 10 league appearances this season. The box to box midfielder will be hoping to add to that total before the end of the campaign.
He’s already been named on a senior Chelsea bench, in a Covid-ravaged squad in December 2021 under Thomas Tuchel, but couldn’t progress any further than that. This new deal is a sign of belief from the club that he has some future, even if that’s just as an asset to be sold this summer.
A new crop of talents
Charlie is in the unfortunate age group who have watched the club spend £1bn or more on players in their exact age group as they look to create a whole new model. He and many of his youth team friends will have felt they were on the cusp of making a breakthrough, until suddenly money was showered on imports in a similar age bracket.
This probably explains the short deal in this case – it gives the club a chance to loan him out and see how he gets on without him losing value, while Webster gets to see what pathway they have for him without overcommitting.
Next season he will have to make a lot of appearances for whichever team he joins on loan, otherwise it’s hard to see him having a long term future at Stamford Bridge.
