Should We Be Concerned for Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s Chelsea Future?

It was at a similar stage last season to where we find ourselves now when the wheels well and truly fell off for Chelsea.

Heading into the October international break, the trends that would define Chelsea’s campaign were revealing themselves. Jose Mourinho’s side had lost three of their opening seven league games, winning just two. Facing Southampton at home before the players disappeared with their countries, it would become four defeats in eight games.

The reigning champions were rocking, and Mourinho appeared powerless to stop it. He cut a lonely figure on the sidelines, bereft that his team had put themselves in a position where they were beginning to fall away so early, so dramatically in the campaign.

The Chelsea board even had to issue a statement of support for the under-fire boss.

Jose Mourinho, 2015: “Chelsea won’t be signing Pogba, because we have someone just as good in Ruben Loftus Cheek.”

— Dan (@CarefreeDan) August 3, 2016

It was painful. Big stars were failing, seemingly wilting under the pressure of expectation that comes with being Premier League champions. They couldn’t cope with the frenzied attacks being thrown at them on a weekly basis, and their soft underbelly was being revealed. They looked mediocre.

Well off the pace and with the transfer window closed—a transfer window where Chelsea had failed to sign any of their first-choice targets—the manager only had one option to revitalise his squad. With money proving powerless, he had to turn to his up-and-coming players.

Ruben Loftus-Cheek became the conversation.

“What is the best thing? Is it to keep more experienced players to cope better with the pressure of the moment?” Mourinho asked on the back of the Southampton loss.

“[…] Maybe the situation is so negative for us that, maybe now a young player doesn’t feel the pressure. Maybe now the young player feels less pressure than when the team is top of the league fighting for a victory to be champions.”

So adamant did Mourinho seem about where his team selection was headed, the headlines were more positive than they could have been after yet another defeat. “Is Chelsea’s Crisis the Best Thing to Happen to Their Academy?” we asked on Bleacher Report.

There was a genuine belief that Loftus-Cheek’s time had arrived. Where others were failing, he was going to succeed. The youngster would come into Chelsea’s midfield and add some energy and bite—two crucial qualities that had been vacant.

It was Loftus-Cheek’s moment.

We got the opposite. Loftus-Cheek lasted a mere 45 minutes in Chelsea’s next outing—a 2-0 victory over Aston Villa—and we didn’t see him again until November 29, when he came on as an 89th-minute substitute against Tottenham Hotspur.

After all the promise of his words, all the talk of change, just one half of football is what Loftus-Cheek was given to show Mourinho that he could be part of the answer. He would spend six weeks on the bench after that Villa game, with the Spurs cameo being his last appearance under the Portuguese, who was sacked shortly before Christmas.

Fast-forward to 2016/17, nothing has changed for Loftus-Cheek. The situation under Antonio Conte as we head into the international break isn’t as drastic for Chelsea …

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