Apologies if this has been done before but im fairly new.

I see that Lucas Piazon is reportedly on his way to Reims on Loan after spending the past 2 seasons at Fulham. Why do the club persist with this policy of loaning players season after season? Presumably it costs the club, as his wages have to be paid and he is still a Chelsea player.

No Disrespect to Piazon, but at 24 is he ever going to be a first team regular at Chelsea having made just 3 appearances in the years that he has been at the club? Of course he's not the only player being used like this, How is it beneficial to our Club?

I expect our habit of changing management every two years plays a large part here. There’s no consistency at the management level so you have to wonder who is actually responsible for managing the loan army. Players like Piazon might be more likely to stick around just in case the new manager (or the one after that) likes him, and if he does want to leave then it may be in his interest to wait until his contract runs downs so he can leave for free or a reduced fee, which increases his options.

It makes no difference to my life though so it’s not something I’m going to loose sleep over.

 

41 minutes ago, bluedave said:

I expect our habit of changing management every two years plays a large part here. There’s no consistency at the management level so you have to wonder who is actually responsible for managing the loan army. Players like Piazon might be more likely to stick around just in case the new manager (or the one after that) likes him, and if he does want to leave then it may be in his interest to wait until his contract runs downs so he can leave for free or a reduced fee, which increases his options.

It makes no difference to my life though so it’s not something I’m going to loose sleep over.

 

Agreed BlueDave, but as is the case with most Loans the parent club pay a proportion of the players wages, I just don't see the point with players that have little chance of coming to Fruition at Chelsea. We're not just talking about a few players here, there are many like Piazon. I don't mean to sound callous but it just seems a waste of resources to me.

I honestly thought we'd sold him to Fulham about two years ago. 

4 hours ago, Osgoodwasgood said:

Why do the club persist with this policy of loaning players season after season??

Because there are few assets in the world more valuable than young footballers right now.

This is a business and the players are assets. It's that simple, subsidize the cost of owning the asset with loan fees while it appreciates in value for you to sell.

Picture yourself having a house that you eventually want to sell. It costs you It's worth £100,000 and costs you £1000 on your mortgage and you can only get £800 per month in rent, so you're losing £2400 per year.

But... it appreciates 10% per year in property value. So while you are losing £2400 per year in cost, your asset appreciates £33,100 during that time, so when you sell in 3 years, you've actually made a profit on the house you sold of £26,000. In some cases the rent is higher than the cost of the mortgage you have on the house, so you're making a profit year over year as well. The trick is cashing in before the house becomes old and run down and is a depreciating asset.

Now consider that footballers' values have gone up exponentially over the course of even the last three years. 

Chelsea is a big club that can afford to buy up lots of houses, subsidize their cost with loans, and then sell on at a huge profit. 

@Skinnedy although i agree with the majority of your post i don't really think it applies to Piazon. Is he really going to be worth any more at the end of this season than he was at the end of the last season? Add that to the fact he's 24, so not really an exciting youth product anymore and he'll have 1 year less on his contract. 

Loaning these players is a good idea but when they start getting past 23ish and its obvious they won't ever be good enough for us we should be trying to shift them on. 

Sure he might be worth more through inflation next summer but every player we want to buy will cost more too, so it'll even out there.

Piazon, Omeruo, Kalas etc. need to be cut loose. Not really fair on them as players either keep bouncing about the leagues.

10 minutes ago, RIP Mourinho said:

although i agree with the majority of your post i don't really think it applies to Piazon.

Yup, I get it, and I was speaking more relatively about "why do we keep doing it with these players" than about one player in particular. Depending on his wages, Piazon may fall into the category of making a little bit of money on his loan fee. I read from Matt Law that Chelsea typically wants a player under 2 or 3 years on a contract to extend before going out on loan, so this may be the case where they are subsidizing the loss they plan on taking on him because they can't sell him, but they can stop paying his wages. In a sense, it's like cutting a guy with a non-guaranteed contract.

I agree with you on the inflation, that's why Chelsea has so many of these guys. That's the only way to make money on an asset like that. Going back to my house example, the only way to make any money on real estate is to change locations, or own more than one. So if my house in London goes up 10%, everything else around me is going up 10%, but I'm insuring myself against inflation by my own appreciating asset. So I'm locking in a price to negate the inflation. Of Course, if the market eventually does correct itself and these players stop going for such astronomical fees... well... housing bubble...

The other part of this risk that I was speaking of, is it only takes one of these players to really hit to pay for all of them. Chelsea paid £7.5M for Piazon. They might lose some money on him, but they made about £25M on Ake. It's definitely a numbers game. And I'd rather be in Chelsea's position hoarding assets. 

2 hours ago, Skinnedy said:

Because there are few assets in the world more valuable than young footballers right now.

This is a business and the players are assets. It's that simple, subsidize the cost of owning the asset with loan fees while it appreciates in value for you to sell.

Picture yourself having a house that you eventually want to sell. It costs you It's worth £100,000 and costs you £1000 on your mortgage and you can only get £800 per month in rent, so you're losing £2400 per year.

But... it appreciates 10% per year in property value. So while you are losing £2400 per year in cost, your asset appreciates £33,100 during that time, so when you sell in 3 years, you've actually made a profit on the house you sold of £26,000. In some cases the rent is higher than the cost of the mortgage you have on the house, so you're making a profit year over year as well. The trick is cashing in before the house becomes old and run down and is a depreciating asset.

Now consider that footballers' values have gone up exponentially over the course of even the last three years. 

Chelsea is a big club that can afford to buy up lots of houses, subsidize their cost with loans, and then sell on at a huge profit. 

Very well said.

Only flaw is that its so much effort, we're better off getting a player like Willian for example (for about 35m I believe?) and we were looking to sell for at least 50-60m. Thats 25m profit right there, and it's the same amont of profit you get from about 10 loanees

I think it's a poor reflection on modern football but I don't particular blame the club, they don't force the players to accept these terms. They are free to leave if they really wanted to escape the loan farm. 

As touched on above, my main problem with it though is that if you're going to do go ahead with this business model then you should be as efficient/effective as possible instead of settling for tiny profits. We should be targeting pretty much sure things like we did with KDB, Lukaku, Tibo, etc in the hopes of getting huge profits afterwards instead of wasting money on the likes of Piazon, etc. 

I think the loan army solution is starting to lose it's effectiveness.

Some of the academy boys have refused contracts and left for paltry sums before we could really earn good money from them like panzo and solanke. There is also talk of Bulka and CHO considering leaving aswell. 

Then you've got the ones that have been in the system for years like van ginkel, Kalas, Piazon, Omeruo, pasalic, etc, and teams seem reluctant to buy these players out right knowing that can either take the player on loan risk free, or wait and get them very cheap when there contract runs down. 

I think we've missed the boat with a few of these players. I know we would like to think the 5 players would bring us £40m+ to spend on the first team but realistically we will be lucky to get back what we have paid for them. 

 

5 hours ago, Skinnedy said:

Because there are few assets in the world more valuable than young footballers right now.

This is a business and the players are assets. It's that simple, subsidize the cost of owning the asset with loan fees while it appreciates in value for you to sell.

Picture yourself having a house that you eventually want to sell. It costs you It's worth £100,000 and costs you £1000 on your mortgage and you can only get £800 per month in rent, so you're losing £2400 per year.

But... it appreciates 10% per year in property value. So while you are losing £2400 per year in cost, your asset appreciates £33,100 during that time, so when you sell in 3 years, you've actually made a profit on the house you sold of £26,000. In some cases the rent is higher than the cost of the mortgage you have on the house, so you're making a profit year over year as well. The trick is cashing in before the house becomes old and run down and is a depreciating asset.

Now consider that footballers' values have gone up exponentially over the course of even the last three years. 

Chelsea is a big club that can afford to buy up lots of houses, subsidize their cost with loans, and then sell on at a huge profit. 

I appreciate all that Skinnedy, but I seldom see us sell any of these continually loaned players, let alone for a profit.

 

19 minutes ago, Osgoodwasgood said:

I appreciate all that Skinnedy, but I seldom see us sell any of these continually loaned players, let alone for a profit.

 

We do make a profit in the long run but it's just that, a long and cumbersome process.

Don't quote me here on the accuracy of the numbers but using Piazon as an example, we paid £5m for him with bonuses taking it up to a potential £10m. No idea what those bonuses are but I think it's safe to say he has not triggered them seeing as he's barely played for us so we will stick with the £5m figure.

When you take the into account the loan fees each club would have paid for taking him on loan each year, it does add up. I highly doubt Viteese paid a loan fee given our connections so we can ignore them and focus on the 4 other loans Piazon has had. We could have got anywhere from £1m to £3m in loan fees from them, which is already half way to paying off his transfer fee. When he's sold we could probably still get £5m for him, he's a decent championship player afterall, at the very least he's not leaving for less than £1m in this market you would imagine so we would have still made a profit overall. 

I can see why it's done, it's a safe reliable method but it's a business model that could do with some huge improvements. 

I think we’re starting to move away from the loan army.

I get the impression it’s not as successful as it used to be. I can’t think of any players we’ve bought since Nathan and Kenedy to supplement our young players, the loan players are now mostly academy players.

I think Piazon is just a legacy of the loan army, same with Kalas. I reckon we was banking on Fulham making their loans permanent but instead they invested far more heavily than anyone anticipated.

I dare say that once the contracts of the likes of Matt Mizaga and Michael Hector have run down you’ll see the size of the annual loan exodus reduce.

2 hours ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Matt? Miz?aga?? ?and M?ichael ?Hect?o?r? have? run?? do?wn?? you’ll see the size of the annual? loa?n exodus red?uc??e

Miazga's contract was extended two years before he went back out on loan. Go figure. He's definitely one I can see never playing for the first team again. 

12 hours ago, ForeverCarefree said:

I think we’re starting to move away from the loan army.

I get the impression it’s not as successful as it used to be. I can’t think of any players we’ve bought since Nathan and Kenedy to supplement our young players, the loan players are now mostly academy players.

I think Piazon is just a legacy of the loan army, same with Kalas. I reckon we was banking on Fulham making their loans permanent but instead they invested far more heavily than anyone anticipated.

I dare say that once the contracts of the likes of Matt Mizaga and Michael Hector have run down you’ll see the size of the annual loan exodus reduce.

Wasn't it Emenalo that was pushing this hard and actually scouting the players to be recruited? Not surprising that we have started to drift away in that case. 

Bloody hell, I can actually make a 'players I completely forgot still play for Chelsea XI':

 

Eduardo

Todd Kane (I thought we'd sold him to Oxford or something)

Kalas (assumed he'd gone to Fulham)

Omeruo (completely forgot he existed until I saw him at the World Cup)

Miazga 

Baba Rahman (thought we'd sold him to Schalke)

Pasalic

van Ginkel (was sure we'd sold him to someone in the Netherlands)

Piazon (thought we sold him to Fulham two years ago)

Izzy Brown (assumed that he'd end up back at West Brom on a free transfer)

Islam "I swear I'm not Leon Knight" Feruz (thought he was in prison or playing for a Scottish third division side)

 

Todd Kane in particular is never going to leave, you'll have to literally drag him out the club kicking and screaming. Admire his loyalty but he should have accepted reality quite some time ago. 

Won't be surprised if he's still here at 30 going out on loans. 

13 minutes ago, Remodez said:

Todd Kane in particular is never going to leave, you'll have to literally drag him out the club kicking and screaming. Admire his loyalty but he should have accepted reality quite some time ago. 

Won't be surprised if he's still here at 30 going out on loans. 

Todd baffled me always, he is obviously good enough to join a decent club on a permanent deal. He will be looking back on his career to see himself play for 20 clubs all on loan.

Players like Todd and Piazon are the ones we need to get rid off asap.. So many more like them too

Edited August 24, 20187 yr by JJP

21 minutes ago, TrueBlueBIH said:

Todd baffled me always, he is obviously good enough to join a decent club on a permanent deal. He will be looking back on his career to see himself play for 20 clubs all on loan.

I'm pretty sure Blackburn made an offer for him about 4 years ago after a very good loan spell but he signed a new deal with us instead. 

I remember seeing an interview with him and he was talking about how much he loves the club, a real proper fan living the dream of being a Chelsea player. It made me sad.

He's, technically, our longest serving player. I hope he gets rewarded for his loyalty at some stage, even if it's like 10 mins in a dead rubber game. Just giving him 1 app will mean the world to him. 

Blackman

Eduardo 

Kalas

Omeruo 

Kane

Miazga

Hector

Baba

Angban

Quintero 

Pantic 

Pasalic 

Van ginkel 

Feruz

Brown

They should have all gone years ago.

Baker

Colkett

Tomori

Aina

Palmer

Scott

Da Silva

Kenedy 

Batshuayi 

Bakayoko

Sammut 

Maddox

Rodriguez

Tomori

Ugbo

Musonda

A decision should be made about these at the end of the season. Keep/Sell/Sell with a buy back.

That still leaves James, Chalobah, and Sterling who are all on their 1st loans. Plus we will no doubt have another wave of players like Redan, Gilmore, Castillo etc, that will no doubt go on loan next season. 

So many players in limbo, and that's without even going into the 1st team with likes of drinkwater, Cahill, RLC, Abraham, whose futures are very unclear. 

I would like to see us trim the playing staff down considerably and focus on quantity more than quality. 

 

On 24/08/2018 at 10:14, Remodez said:

Wasn't it Emenalo that was pushing this hard and actually scouting the players to be recruited? Not surprising that we have started to drift away in that case. 

That was my understanding of it. I think the loan army to supplement club income was Emenalo’s pet project and he very much oversaw it.

No coincidence that it’s slowed down a lot since he offered his resignation under Mourinho, especially when you consider Jose cast aside KDB and Lukaku who were early success of the system (though we quickly stopped investing as much in players as we did initially).

Now he’s left and there’s talk they’re going to change the role and responsibilities of the DOF position I think we’re going to stop buying youngsters for the most part unless they have genuine potential of breaking into the first team  like Ampadu. 

Isn't some of the point of the loan army to meet FFP?  At some point, they can go after someone big and have 6-7 extra players to sell to balance it?

Heard rumours he's out the club, is it true? Ive been hearing a lot of people are getting released/sold already from our worrying loan system, so it can only be a good thing at the moment

1 hour ago, ENygma said:

Heard rumours he's out the club, is it true? Ive been hearing a lot of people are getting released/sold already from our worrying loan system, so it can only be a good thing at the moment

Whoever edits the CFC wikipedia pages certainly seems to think so ... Todd Kane and Angban too ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Chelsea_F.C._season