This is an exciting time of year for Chelsea and their young players, as a select group of those who excelled in the academy in the previous season are sent out on loan to take the next step in their career.
According to an exclusive report from Nizaar Kinsella this afternoon, one of those sent out from Chelsea this summer will be Leo Castledine, the attacking midfielder who signed a new contract towards the end of last year, showing the club’s commitment to his potential.
Castledine has worked his way up through the youth ranks at Chelsea and with England, where he’s played with all the age group teams up to the U19s, for whom he made his debut back in November, picking up 5 caps and scoring 2 goals for them since.
Kinsella says that it’s going to be a mid-lower Championship loan, or perhaps a move to League One. As we’ve seen with many loans before, the most important thing is to make sure the player is actually playing. Both of those divisions have a lot of teams and a lot of matches, giving young players more chances to work their way into the first team picture.
A tough road ahead
One thing is for sure – it won’t be easy for Castledine to make it into our first team, given we’ve got a bunch of £100m players in their 20s and a dozen teenagers on the books too now. But both for Chelsea and his career, the important next step is playing regularly in senior football. Whether he stays at Stamford Bridge or is sold for “pure profit” in the long run, he needs to get used to the rigours of the men’s game, and the lower leagues are the perfect baptism of fire, as we saw with Omari Hutchinson last year.
