The two-time FA Youth Cup winning coach, Joe Edwards, insists Chelsea retain high hopes for striker Dominic Solanke’s future at the club despite discussions over a new contract having hit an impasse.
Solanke, 18, has spent this season on loan at Vitesse Arnhem, scoring seven times in 24 appearances, and has a little over 12 months to run on his deal at Stamford Bridge.
His stepfather is handling negotiations over prolonging his stay at the club, but has started talks seeking wages of around £50,000-a-week – effectively a seven-fold rise on his first £7,000-a-week professional contract signed in September 2014 – and guarantees of first-team football.
The prolific forward, who scored over 40 goals at junior level last term, has made a solitary senior appearance for Chelsea, in a Champions League fixture against Maribor under José Mourinho, but remains highly regarded within the youth set-up at Stamford Bridge.
Edwards, who steered the U18s to a fifth FA Youth Cup in seven years by beating Manchester City on Wednesday, is to start a 12-month secondment with the club’s recruitment department next season, dealing primarily with players out on loan, and could yet find himself monitoring another of Solanke’s temporary spells away from Chelsea.
“The relevant people working as part of Dom’s development programme will sit down and discuss what is best for him once he has finished up at Vitesse Arnhem,” said Edwards, who has seen the striker develop at the club from the Under-8 age group.
“But he’s definitely one of the boys we’ve got high hopes for and, hopefully, whether it’s this coming season or further down the line, he’ll be one [who makes his mark at Chelsea]. I think there are several who can. And we saw with Marcus Rashford at Manchester United that you won’t see properly what they can do until you put him in.”
Chelsea’s established strategy is to loan players – there have been over 30 on temporary deals away from the club this season – once they have graduated from the Under-18 and Under-19 set-ups to gain regular experience in senior football.
Of the side that won last season’s FA Youth Cup, Izzy Brown, Solanke and Charly Musonda have progressed into first-teams on loan this year, while Jake Clarke-Salter has enjoyed a cameo in the Premier League. The young centre-half and Jay Dasilva have now joined Sir Bobby Charlton, Tony Hawksworth, Wilf McGuiness, Eddie Colman and Duncan Edwards as three-time FA Youth Cup winners.
Discussions will take place at the end of the season over the next stage of their development, though the likes of Dasilva and Clarke-Salter may be joined by the impressive Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham in securing loans for next year. The 26-goal striker Abraham was already the subject of one bid from an unnamed club who were in a Champions League qualification place back in January.
“They have achieved a lot,” said Edwards, who will also work with the England youth teams as part of his Uefa Pro Licence next year. “This is the Under-18 Youth Cup, but a lot of the players have played Under-21 and Under-19 football for a couple of seasons now. I’d say there are a few in this group who are ready to step in and have a go at senior football, and that’s what this period at the end of the season is about now.
“We’ll sit down as a group of staff and it’s case-by-case for each player to see what they are ready for. If it’s a loan it’s what level? What league they are going to go to? So we’ll sit down and that’s part of the new role I’m looking forward to. I’ll be involved with the loan players. So that relationship with some of the youth players, hopefully I’ll be able to maintain it on their journey with them.”
There is an eagerness at Chelsea to bring through the “next John Terry” into the first-team – the outgoing captain having effectively been the last youth-team product to make a prolonged impact in the senior side. Yet the hierarchy, led by the technical director Michael Emenalo and the head of youth development, Neil Bath, have been at pains to stress the need for patience to youth players, as well as their parents and agents, as they seek to progress.
Wages have escalated, while some players have opted to move on seeking clearer pathways into first-teams elsewhere. Domingos Qina joined West Ham last week, while doubts surround the future of Ola Aina, who is out of contract in June.
“Every player is case-by-case and there will be different reasons for each player as to why they didn’t nail down a senior place,” added Edwards. “There’s pressure at every club in the Premier League. It’s not just us where it is difficult: it’s becoming more and more difficult probably with the resources all the clubs have now.
“And yet at every stadium in the country I go to, when a young player’s name is read out over the Tannoy, it often gets the biggest cheer. We’ve seen that now with Ruben Loftus-Cheek and others. But there will be plenty of dialogue with the new first-team coach [Antonio Conte] when he comes in, and there have been at least four or five academy players on the first-team training pitches every day.
“There’ll be at least a dozen on the pre-season tour [to Austria and the United States], and every opportunity those boys get in front of the first-team manager, they have to make an impact. That’s all we can ask for.”
