Chelsea’s new owners are making very deliberate attempts to copy the patterns and the strategy of the City Football Group, and that goes from the big picture and recruitment of coaches and staff all the way down to trying to snap up individual players.
Cole Palmer was persuaded to leave City for more playing time, and that turned into a massive success. Romeo Lavia is another former City player signed up in recent times. The next on the list is Oscar Bobb, who is already 21 and should be playing regularly somewhere, but is stuck deep on City’s depth chart.
Chelsea are hoping he’s looking at what happened with his old teammate Palmer and feeling like he could do something similar.
On his Substack, Simon Phillips has said that he’s still very much on the list even now, with the majority of our business looking to be done already. He writes that our earlier approach was rebuffed because Bobb still believed he is in line for more minutes this year – but that belief could change at any moment.
Bobb faces major decision about his future
Lots of pundits were harsh on Cole Palmer for leaving City rather than staying put for his breakout moment, but they had to admit that in the end his bravery paid off. He would have a couple more medals had he stayed, but by coming to Chelsea the whole world have seen his quality, and he’s broken into the England team too.
As CaughtOffside point out however, there’s another side to this too – while we’re hoping Bobb could look at players like Palmer and think he can replicate that, he might well also look at the host of other young players to have made the move in the last 2 years and think – I don’t want to end up like them.
