SALT AND PEP UP
Coleman: Drop-zone scrap is just what Blues kid needs..
CHELSEA starlet Jake Clarke-Salter has been told a relegation battle with Sunderland will be the making of him.
Black Cats boss Chris Coleman reckons helping to dig the club out of trouble will be a big step towards Clarke-Salter, 20, becoming a Stamford Bridge regular.
The on-loan midfielder, who won the Under-20 World Cup last summer, is a “confident, vocal” addition to the bottom-of-the-Championship side, who go to Cardiff today.
Coleman said: “I say to all players who might come here: it will make you better. The experiences that you’ll get.
“You can play a hundred U23 games and not get the experience he will get here.
“It is good that he doesn’t want to be at Chelsea, if he is not playing. He could stay at a great club, surrounded by great players. But, instead, he wants to mix it here. The next six months will be fantastic for him. It will make him better.”
Coleman has warned Sunderland “stand on the edge of a cliff, and the fall is huge”. And he is weeding out “pretenders” in his squad, who don’t want to be around, or shirk in training.
He said: “I can’t go to war with players – but I’ve told them. The worst ones are the ones that pretend they are in, but they are not really.
“I’ve got more respect for people who just say, ‘No, I don’t want it. I want to be away somewhere else’.
“If I’ve had a problem with any of them, that’s something I’ve shared with them. Clubs are not daft. Sometimes players think that managers don’t talk about players who behave badly, or who you can’t depend on.
“This season is about getting away from a horrible edge of the cliff. The fall is huge. We’ve got to get away from that.
“Then I’ll look at how we can nudge it and build it, so we’re at the other end, competing.
“The first job is going to be huge but it’s also do-able. It’s not impossible. There’s only two points between us and the team that’s fourth-bottom.
“Maybe I’m a romantic, but I do have images of this place being really good again and me being there, being a part of it.
“If we’re taking 1,000 fans to Cardiff, what if we were at the other end of the league? We took 5,000 fans to Middlesbrough last week.
“That’s all there. What’s not there is the most important thing, making sure we’ve got a successful team in place.”