Whose 'brainchild' is Chelsea's famed loan system? How does it function?

Chelsea are notoriously known for their loan system where they loan out the players who have the potential to be good players but are not good enough to make the jump to the first team yet. It has seen the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku, Mason Mount, Declan Rice, Mohamed Salah, go through the system and become world-class players. However, it is not exactly received well across the world as a lot of players end up being loaned out to a lot of different clubs and there is no stability for their growth. Chelsea's former loan technical coach Eddie Newton who was essentially the mastermind of the system revealed where the idea stemmed from, who's 'brainchild' the Chelsea loan system, was in the first place. Speaking to Goal.com, Newton said:

"It was up and running but it wasn’t a developed system. It was (ex-Chelsea technical director) Michael Emenalo’s brainchild basically. He brought me into his office and said, ‘Look, Rafa (Benitez) is a bit worried about having you because you were with the last manager (Roberto Di Matteo)’. So I wasn’t going to be with him in the first team, but he had another job for me to develop and run the loan programme. He said we had too many young players who were too good for the Under-23s, but not good enough for the first team. We needed to send them away on loan, but we needed to do it better than before. We didn’t know enough about these guys away on loan. He gave me a blueprint and then I built it. We kept meeting every so often, and he said he would get me what I needed to make it work."

He also revealed that after they built the world-class programme, they got many requests from clubs to help them build something like that. He said that taking players off the wage bill and selling them once they did well on loan helped the club make profits and assisted in the development of the players, all thanks to the Chelsea loan system.

Salah and De Bruyne didn't stay because of a personality clash with Mourinho

Mohamed Salah was initially loaned out to Fiorentina after spending six months with the first team under then-manager Jose Mourinho and was subsequently sold to AS Roma, and since then, the Egyptian winger has become one of the best goalscorers in the world. Again under the management of Mourinho, Kevin De Bruyne was loaned to Werder Bremen, then sold to Wolfsburg and then moved to Manchester City, where he has established himself as one of the best playmakers in the world and has won two POTY awards, three Premier League titles, five EFL Cups, to name a few along the way. Newton was asked exactly about those players if watching what happened to them frustrated him. He replied:

"For me, I think Salah and De Bruyne wasn’t about talent. It was a personality clash (with Jose Mourinho). I just didn’t think it was working at the time. I think they were more than good enough, but it was the manager who didn’t see eye-to-eye with them, so it wasn’t going to work."

He also mentioned that Lukaku was not ready at the time to step up and lead the Chelsea front line the way Didier Drogba did as he was always going to be compared to the Ivory Coast striker. He also said that the loan move for Lukaku to West Brom and then Everton helped him grow into a great player. The move to Manchester United and then Inter Milan turned him into the world-class player he is today and will lead the Chelsea line well.

Image: AP