Buying British

As is customary this time of year there has been much transfer speculation surrounding Chelsea, not just who they are about to sign but who could be leaving now and in the summer. With all the talk of Lampard and Cole leaving in the summer and Sturridge already gone it leaves us very light on homegrown talent.

This does affect both our premiership squad and our Champions League squad. Currently we have submit for the Premier League a squad of 25 players, 8 of which has to be "homegown" (To qualify as home grown, a player will have had to be registered for at least three seasons at an English or Welsh club between the ages of 16 and 21.) With Daniel Sturridge leaving that leaves our homegrown contingent as:

1. Ross Turnbull
2. John Terry
3. Gary Cahill
4. Ashley Cole
5. Ryan Bertrand
6. Frank Lampard
7.
8.

Add to that the fact that Frank Lampard is almost definitely going to leave in the summer and quite possibly Ashley Cole too then it is clear that we are going to have to invest in some homegrown talent or find ourselves having to work with a smaller squad, having to leave 4 places in the squad blank.

Of course you could look to our own homegrown talent to take those spots but the only likely candidates are Josh McEachran and Nathaniel Chalobah and both of those are players who could do with another season at least away from the club before being brought into the first team squad. 

We need to be looking for a new homegrown core to the squad and going forward we can look to be using our own talent but at the moment that is not an option. We have been linked already with Micah Richards and Leighton Baines neither of which would significantly improve our squad and of course there is Walcott, but with Demba Ba on board a move for Walcott seems unlikely.

The club will have to be looking at this and trying to address the issue and it will be interesting to see what they do as we are already suffering from having a fairly small squad of players.