Saw this on the independent: I was fortunate enough to go to the Carling Cup games at Arsenal and Chelsea this week. (Having been to see Manchester City last Wednesday and Sunday, this made four matches in eight days, which would leave a sickly and shaming taste were I not an open-eyed addict). The expectation would be that one would see the future of football at the Emirates, whereas at Stamford Bridge Drogba, Lampard and Terry – the Mourinho core – would roll over the opposition by rote Of course, this is a cliché, and, for my purposes a straw man. But the best youngster I saw this week, by at least two categories of footballer, was Chelsea’s Oriol Romeu. Signed from Barcelona for £4.35m this summer, the hope that he should become Chelsea’s Cesc Fabregas is not undetectable. For now, though, he is a different player. He was deployed just in front of Chelsea’s back four on Wednesday. He took the ball from the goalkeeper at every possible opportunity, always comfortable in the space he made for himself, always confident of his ability to manage the complex interactions between himself, his space, the ball and his opponents. In the attacking phase he started most of Chelsea’s attacks, spraying the ball out to his full-backs and wide players with ambition and precision beyond that of his team-mates. (The previous night Francis Coquelin distributed the ball very smartly for Arsenal, but was not on the same level as Romeu). Defensively Romeu was also exceptional, making crucial tackles from Matthew Briggs and Pajtim Kasami. His one mistake was, when moved to centre-back, a trip on Orlando Sa that ought to have been given as a penalty http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/09/22/romeu-shows-off-his-expensive-education/
