When will English football start trusting young English footballers?
ONE of the things that makes Frank Lampard’s Chelsea reign so appealing is just how ordinary he has made it feel.
His management is founded squarely on common sense. Gone is all the drama and confusion that so often accompanied Antonio Conte and Maurizio Sarri before him. Lampard’s Chelsea reboot has been clean, clear and decisive.
Surprising, then, to read something buried within Lampard’s expansive interview with Jamie Redknapp in these pages on Saturday that nevertheless jumped off the page.
Asked whether Chelsea’s recent transfer ban had affected his decisions over the club’s academy graduates last summer, Lampard said: ‘Would Mason Mount have gone on loan again this year? Possibly. Probably. Fikayo Tomori definitely would have done.’
Instead, Mount has started 22 of Chelsea’s Premier League games while Tomori has started 14. Both have been fundamental to a progressive Chelsea season and both have — as a result — played for England. They have been part of what has made Chelsea so watchable over the past six months. In short, they have been good enough.
So to hear Lampard suggest neither would have been at the club had he been given the option of signing players jarred a little.
The debate about pathways for young English talent is an old one. My view has always been that homegrown youngsters are not necessarily deserving of special treatment. If they are good enough, they will find a way to get through. If they are not, they won’t.
But maybe the argument needs to be more nuanced.
Maybe we have spent so long presuming that our domestic talent can be bettered by abler, more technically gifted players from overseas that we have come to see it as our default setting.
If so, that needs to change and from that point of view, players such as Mount and Tomori may prove to be trailblazers. They may need to be.
I recall an interview I did with another former Chelsea midfielder, Scott Parker, two seasons ago when the current Fulham manager was coaching young players at Tottenham.
He told me the technical level of players now being produced by our academies is on a different scale to the time two decades or so ago when players such as himself, Lampard and Steven Gerrard were coming through the system.
‘ They are miles ahead of where we were,’ he said. ‘They are technically superb.’
Parker’s message that day was clear: the academies are working. And it is something that would appear to be borne out when we look at the quality that Gareth Southgate now has at his disposal at international level.
England’s European Championship hopes may yet be undone at centre half or because Southgate does not have a world- class goalkeeper, but he will not be short of players who can get their head up and use the ball. So when will English football change its mindset?
When will managers and sporting directors start to intrinsically trust the players in whom so much time and money has been invested?
The conundrum is obvious and as such it will always be harder for our own young players. The Premier League provides such a wealthy, glamorous platform for footballers these days that a club like Chelsea will always have a stream of agents and parents keen to bring talent to their door from across Europe and beyond. What it needs, if trends are to change, is a leap of faith.
At Chelsea, they have had to take one and it is hard to argue they are not already the better for it. Lampard has brought some clarity to life at Stamford Bridge.
It would be a shame if it all got a bit muddled again when the transfer window opens this summer.
Ian.Ladyman@dailymail.co.uk