With so many of Chelsea’s younger footballers heading out on loan, chronicling their progress is not only important, but an ever-expanding task.
Every Sunday evening throughout the season we’ll do our best to bring you the latest news on how the boys are getting on in their time away from Stamford Bridge, as well as the occasional video highlight and view from the fans that are watching them.
To kick off this season, we’ll round up the last fortnight, as for now, the number away from Stamford Bridge is still low, at least compared to last season’s nineteen different deals.
With nobody currently in the Premier League, we’ll start in The Championship, where both Ryan Bertrand and Jack Cork are extremely familiar with surroundings. Cork will be even more at home after returning to Burnley for the year, having spent the second half of last season on loan at Turf Moor, but remained an unused substitute away to Ipswich on Saturday afternoon.
Bertrand made his move almost a fortnight ago, heading to Nottingham Forest until early January, and made his debut away to Burnley last weekend, before Cork arrived. Forest lost 1-0, with Ryan perhaps slightly out of position in the build-up to the only goal, but by and large he did well. He completed another 90 minutes today against Leeds in a 1-1 draw before the Sky television cameras, and picked up a yellow card.
Nobody currently plies their trade in League One, a veritable hotbed of representation last season, so we head to League Two, where a pair of youngsters are looking to kick their careers into the next level.
Daniel Philliskirk is spending a month at Oxford United but has so far been limited to twenty minutes from the bench on the opening day. He was conspicuous by his absence from the matchday squad for the midweek Carling Cup thrashing of Bristol Rovers, and was once again missing against Bury on Saturday. He grabbed a pair of goals during a midweek reserve outing, and will be hoping to make more of an impression before his deal ends.
For Rhys Taylor, however, action is coming thick and fast. He did well to open the season despite losing 1-0 to Hereford, and was superb in their midweek upset of Derby County in the Carling Cup. This weekend saw the Welsh stopper concede three in a 3-2 defeat at Cheltenham, but he was unfortunate not to receive much by way of help from his defenders for two goals, making impressive saves only to see the rebound tapped in unchallenged.
His performances have largely gone down well amongst Railwaymen supporters, and he seems to be a bright moment of their struggles early in the season. He’ll need to improve his communication and distribution, but in terms of shot-stopping, he’s impressing.
Up in Scotland, Ben Gordon’s Kilmarnock debut came away to Rangers, and by all accounts he did fairly well in a 2-1 defeat which was a much closer game than expected. It was his cross which created the penalty from which Killie scored, and has had some fans giving him their Man of the Match award. After a poor spell at Tranmere, it’s good to see a positive start for the young left-back, and long may it continue.
To finish off, we’ll try to keep up with the progress of Tomas Kalas as he plays in Czech football ahead of moving to Stamford Bridge next summer (in much the same way as we did last season in tracking Matej Delac). He wasn’t involved in this weekend’s match against Banik Ostrava, and last turned out for the club’s B team last week against Tescoma Blin’s B side in an unfortunate 4-0 reverse.
You can keep up to date on all loan statistics by checking out the player profile pages over on TheChels.info.
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