The only place to be

So all these managers who were smart enough in the past to play him aren't smart enough to realise what a good passer he is and integrate that? I enjoy stats, but I understand they require context. You actually have to watch the games at the same time and realise that a player can have 84% pass completion and still put in a poor shift against a team like Southampton. That's the difference between watching a game on the stats sheet and actually bothering to watch the match itself. Not all passes are equal either, so looking to make 5-10 yard passes to full-backs will obviously be lower risk than the 30 yard raking passes that other players might make. There's also a point you never acknowledge - do those passes put other players in better positions. Ball circulation is key to dragging the opposition out of position but the best players in that position also move their own players into more productive areas and that's an area Mikel needs to work on. Again, this requires watching the matches but look at what happens when Mikel completes a pass - sometimes you'll see him halt the forward movement of the team, or give the ball to a player where they were and not where they will be. You'll also see the occasional hospital pass too, yet they all count as completed passes. Like I've said before, you're in 'backstreet mode' on Mikel. You're not objective in the slightest about him, similar to those who criticise Mikel constantly aren't. He'll be an important player in our squad next season but we need better players around him because he's always needed that. Too often he's seemed like a passenger and until he elevates his game he'll struggle to win over a fair amount of the Chelsea faithful.

I don't think he needs to work on his tempo to be honest. He's never going to be a Ramires, haring around the pitch and that's a good thing. He's got a languid style reminiscent of a Vieira, and he allows the ball to most of the work. He shows plenty of hustle getting back as well, something that Mikel has rarely shown. In fact isn't that one of the points - we're saying he needs to up his tempo when John Obi Mikel has made almost 300 appearances playing somewhere close to horizontal?? As for strength, the one thing the Championship has over most other leagues is physicality and he's looked more than comfortable in one of the more combative areas of the pitch. That's a fair point unfortunately. So why would the managers at a club looking to avoid relegation or fight for a European spot be more inclined to play him? That's a pretty good suggestion. I personally don't think we'll look to buy another defensive midfielder and still with Mikel, Romeu, Rami and Luiz whilst buying a playmaker like Modric or Benat. In that situation he'd be competing with Mikel, Romeu and Ramires for a spot in pre-season and I'd fancy his chances. Yes he's young, yes he's relatively inexperienced but he's good and I'll take being good over being experienced every day of the week.

Is he a photograph? What does 'develop' actually mean? Does he need to develop wings, because that's unlikely. It's these meaningless generalities that I really wanted to move away from in this discussion. I want to know specifically what areas of his game he needs to develop. As I pointed out, this kid has looked exceptional at every level he's played at. Again, this is a case of people talking about what an 18 year old should be rather than what Nathanial Chalobah actually is. This isn't a thread about Todd Kane. This isn't a thread about Billy Clifford. This isn't a thread about Sam Walker. This is a thread about Nathanial Chalobah - let's try taking about him. Very few. That's why he'd be the exception, and the reason supporters of this club want the youth to do well is because football isn't just about winning trophies. It's about turning up at youth games and seeing a kid do something amazing, and then watching him grow to become a key player in the squad. It's about forming those emotional attachments with players on the pitch - winning the CL was special but seeing Lamps, JT, Drogba, Ashley and Cech up there with Robbie made it even more special. I have no doubt we will sign players, but I think that if this man is given a chance to compete for a spot then he'll have a good chance of making the squad. No mention of how good Chalobah is, what type of skills he has, what he needs to improve upon.... How many times this season have you watched him play? Miles ahead in what regard? Oscar is a completely different type of player on a completely different development schedule. Let's actually have a discussion about Chalobah at some point. You should really start a thread explaining why Chalobah isn't ready. Our youth policy is to buy young players AND develop our own. Ah Cleverley - a player who wasn't as good as Chalobah when he was 18, isn't as good as he is now and will never be as good as him (to paraphrase Bret Hart). Look, I get what you're saying. I understand how young players usually develop. What we're discussing is making an exception for some players. What I wanted to ask is whether Chalobah is an exceptional talent, and if he is shouldn't we be making exceptions for him?

I'll be honest. I want Modric to join us for half what we offered Spurs in the past, just to rub their fans' faces in it. Having said that, outbidding them for Moutinho would also be fun but Modric is proven in this league. Either option would be better than what we currently have though. Ooh, 2-0. Decent cross by Essien, shit defending by Eboue though.

All fair points. There's no getting away from the fact that he is 18 and you don't see many 18 year olds in such prominent positions because most simply aren't ready. Equally you shouldn't see a 19 year old starting in defence in a Champions League quarter-final against Didier Drogba but Varane is an exceptional talent. I think the middle ground could be him spending at least part of the pre-season with us for the new manager to assess. That might actually work in his favour as everyone will have a relatively clean slate.

That ball from Alonso to Ozil was fabulous and is just what we've been missing all season. Alonso -> Ozil -> Ronaldo Modric -> Mata -> Hazard

I disagree (obviously). I think he ticks all the boxes although you're welcome to point out which areas you think he's lacking in. No I think you might be right about Josh. Technically brilliant but has to be able to use those talents effectively in match situations. I think finding a team which can utilise his skill-set is going to be nigh-on impossible though which might mean he's better off coming back here. He needs to be around quality players - he's like a Formula 1 gear box. Unless you're going to put him alongside high-calibre parts he's simply not going to work that well. I agree with the second part but what I was alluding to is that age and current level of competition don't have to be the defining factors in whether a player is part of next season's squad. It's no secret that I'm a fan of Chalobah, but I'll be honest and say that I think he has all the tools he needs right now. He also has tools that 90% of pros will NEVER develop.

I don't know who to support tonight - I feel like one of the kids in Kramer vs Kramer.

Chelsea - Steve Clarke Inter - Guiseppe Baresi Real Madrid - Aitor Karanka Chelsea (?) - Materazzi 3 defenders, one defensive midfielder/defender (and brother of possibly the greatest defender of all time). Could be reporters putting 2+2 together. He is a defender and Jose does get on with him but I don't know enough about him to express an opinion either way. Maybe JT could've been an option, or we'd finally snare Maldini like we've been told we would for about 15 years now.

He's a very good player. There are plenty of debates about our squad for next season. I believe De Bruyne is ready as well. Age really doesn't have much to do with it in my opinion though. Josh is 19 and in the Championship and I have severe doubts about him. Essien is 30 and in the Champions League and I don't think I'd have him back next season. What this is actually a thread about is an exceptionally talented player, who plays in a position of need for us and has the added benefit of already being owned by us.

Great point. United (the 'masters at developing youth players') waited and waited and he left. He's certainly proved them wrong and I'll be honest - I'm delighted he's left them because they need a player like him in that midfield. True, but the Championship is a long old slog and he's 32 games and he isn't tailing off. If anything, he's getting better and it's not like he's a right-back or a winger getting a few minutes here and there - he's a key player for the third-placed team in one of the most important positions on the pitch. On paper, he should probably spend another year out on loan but on paper we shouldn't have one the Champions League last year. On paper, Pogba shouldn't be in the France squad ahead of the far more experienced Capoue. At every level Chalobah has looked exceptional - maybe it's time to make an exception for him. If he's given a go I don't think anyone will be disappointed.

Now the short answer to this is 'I don't know'. None of us do - this is very much a case of the proof of the pudding being in the eating, so this is essentially a question based on a recipe. Does he have the right ingredients? Now I know I've been banging on about this in between pushing for Lukaku to be voted FIFA Player of the Year (it's all fixed I tell's ya!) but I've never been so excited about a young player at our club. I thought JT was too slow when he first broke through and I always had a couple of doubts about Josh's physical presence, although I tried to suppress those (now they've been replaced with concerns about his mental preparedness). Sammy Dalla Bonna always looked a bit wet (literally - no player was so constantly soaked with sweat since Erland Johnson) and Jon Harley....well I always liked him. Never should've sold him. But Chalobah seems to have it all. Now let's start by saying which Chalobah I like - in true FUT-style I'm buying the CDM 4231 card and placing straight into my squad (BTW, Cech not being in-form after that save takes the piss). I like CDMs who are converted from defence because it gives them a better base from which to start and it gives them a better understanding of attackers' movements in my opinion. There are exceptions, but my belief is that when players are under pressure they rely on their instincts. But we don't need someone who can simply stop the other team, but someone who can start our attacks and this is where he's excelled. At the top level of sport, the best players have one thing in common - time. Dan Carter has one more second than other players around him in which he's able to make one more step or get that pass off which flummoxes opposition players. Brian Lara and Pete Rose could work out where the ball was coming a few metres before anyone else of their generation. Michael Jordan waited until the last-nanosecond to find that perfect avenue to shoot from. Chalobah always has time. And more importantly he uses that time effectively taking every moment to work out not just where a player is, but where he's going to be and where he should be. That last point is key because it highlights another of his characteristics - he makes people around him better. It's why he's always been marked out as a future captain because he sets a tone that everyone else should aspire to. My main criticism of Mikel is that, whilst he can be great, he needs great players around him. He might not make the team worse, but he'll very, very rarely make it better. You need those types of players in your squad, but you can't rely on them. He also does the Mikel staple of simply moving the ball around, forcing the other team to make constant re-adjustments and letting them create holes to be exploited. Mentally, he's got everything you could ask for. He doesn't bitch and moan on the pitch and he doesn't make the newspaper off it. He doesn't say stupid stuff on Twitter (although it's early days) and at every point in his career, he's stepped up. Through the youth team, through multiple positions, into the Championship and now under-21 duty, he's not just held his own but he's impressed. I see no reason for that not to continue. Which brings me to my main point, which isn't a summing up or conclusion but a question - why isn't he ready? It's hard to answer that without resorting to generalities, but I was watching a piece on ESPN about College football and whether players should have to do time in the system before going to the NFL. For 99% of players the jump would be too great and they'd be murdered, but there's always exceptions (in this case they were talking about Adrian Peterson and Clowney). Football (our football, proper football) is no different. Yes Cleverley (for instance) spent a few years on loan and now he's part of the United first-team, but there's a difference. Chalobah is better than Cleverley. This may be my 'jumping the shark' but I'll stick by it. In fact I'll go a tiny bit further. Chalobah is right now better than Cleverley was at the same age, better than Cleverley is right now and better than Cleverley can ever hope to be. That's not to say that Cleverley is a bad player, he just doesn't have what Chalobah has. He's a rare combination of physical strength, technical proficiency, mental toughness and that 'X' factor. The other question is whether he's better than what we have right now? Again, impossible to say without giving him a go but I've seen nothing to suggest he would be much worse. Yes he'll misplace passes, yes he'll miss assignments but would that be much different from what we've had for the past year? Isn't the reward worth the risk? I'm sure we could loan him out next year so he could gain XP points and be 100% certain to find his feet in our team, but however long we decide to leave him to ferment (or grow, I'm not quite sure how the maturation process of a man-child is known) that first game in blue is still going to be his first game in blue. The pressures associated with that are always going to remain the same and players will crumble or prosper regardless of their previous experiences. Ultimately it comes down to quality and mental toughness. I think this kid has that already. Why wait?

Yep. He needs players who are capable of seeing what it is he sees and acting on it - the problem is you don't get many of them in the Championship. A team needs to commit to having him in their team and building around him, which is why he struggled at Swansea. He needs to prove himself before he gets a shot here, but here might be the only place where he can prove himself.

I keep thinking this kid needs more time on loan, but I have no idea where. He needs to be surrounded by top-class players who can take advantage of his passing but I'm not sure he can carry his weight in the team or if he even has the mental toughness to make it. Maybe it's time we bring him back into the first-team squad and give him a go.

So we'll be playing a match in the largest media market in the USA.

According to a mate he bossed it, so nothing new there. This lad seems to be growing in stature as the season wears on which is pretty amazing considering the ferocious level of competition in the Championship.

I've thrown in Modric's name as the playmaker we could get, but I'm wondering if that's the route we need to go down. Maybe we could go more physical players there like Mikel and Ramires. Maybe Chalobah. He's strong and defensively-minded, but he's fantastic on the ball and can keep the game ticking over. A partnership with Mikel might take some of the pressure off of Mikel and allow them both to take turns in moving forward and linking the play up, in a throw back to the Petit/Vieira or Ince/Keane partnerships. Then you've also got Ramires, Romeu and maybe even Ake who could do similar things. You've also got the option of moving De Bruyne or even Oscar back into that midfield two if teams are defending deeper against us.

Tough vote. Leif and The Skipper both contribute regularly and have good insights, whilst Ja1 has kept that youth team forum going on his own at some points. All three are worthy winners.

Henrique sorta, kinda has a point in that stability in the coach's position might not be necessary - where he's completely wrong in my opinion is that stability in itself is overrated. It's entirely necessary in my view. We bring kids into the academy before they're 10, we sign them before they're 18 and if they make the first team they could be here for about 20 years. That's an oversimplification but there needs to be stability for that period, an overarching view of where the club wants to be heading so that plans can be made accordingly. Even over a shorter period of time that's evident. Over the last four transfer windows we've signed almost 20 players, so an average of five players per window. If you're making that type of commitment, both financial and practical, then you need to have an idea of what type of football you're wanting to play and what your needs are. If we look at the examples thrown out you can see how that applies. Ferguson makes a particular type of signing, and it's not changed a huge amount over the last 20 years which means the people in the academy and the scouting department know exactly what they're looking for. Similarly at Arsenal you've seen a particular type of player define Wenger's first seven years in charge but there you can see a different ideology take over, one that has put economic needs ahead of ambition and it's turned into a mess. I've long said that Arsenal and Wenger have become too entwined with one another so they're in a position where they will struggle to excise him from the club. That is obviously beyond stability into co-dependence, Sid and Nancy-style. With Barca and Bayern what you're seeing is a philosophy that transcends coaches. Here the coach is an important cog in the machine, not the engine. Whilst they may bring their own idiosyncrasies to the role but they won't re-define it. The same goes for Real Madrid, which is why I think Jose was the wrong choice for them - that role is more like a strait-jacket. We seem to be between these two ways of running a club - we're still defined by the Mourinho period and our success in May was built on that, as well as a bit of luck. Carlo never made the team his own in my opinion and we've been drifting aimlessly in many respects since 2007. But no discussion on this can be had without reference to one man - Michael Emenalo. At the moment, he seems to hold more sway over the direction of this club than any other. He is the stable presence. And do you know what? In many ways we've got a more focused approach in recruitment and development than we've had for many years. You can see exactly what the club is trying to do from the players they've brought in. You can see the beginnings of a new type of development path for young players from the academy and elsewhere. You can see a unified vision of what football this club wants to be playing. Any coach we bring in will be a short-term appointment in all likelihood (that's 3-5 years) but the club can't have a short-term view. There needs to be an ethos of what this club should be that goes beyond that. The kids that we'll want to introduce into the first team in 5 years time are 14-16 now. They need to be learning what their roles in that team might be NOW, which is why stability is a must. It just doesn't have to be sitting in the dugout.

Who said he's rubbish? I thought people just thought he was an average player who we could improve upon by signing someone like Shaw. I don't think anyone has said anything harsher than that to be honest. He's 23, he's made over 200 first-team appearances as well as 2 England caps and a few Olympic appearances. But now he's finally getting a chance to show what he can do.

He made 84% of his passes against Southampton yet had a terrible game. This over-reliance on an empty statistic to support the notion he's a great player shows a complete lack of understanding of the game of football. Not all passes are equal. I've made that same point. He looks good if he's surrounded by good players but he doesn't elevate the performances of players around him. The reason I like Chalobah so much is because he's the complete opposite. He's a leader. He makes the player next to him better. But I understand people think he isn't ready for the first-team. They can't type exactly why he isn't ready, he just isn't.

Wait...if Rafa is the fat spanish waiter, are you this guy?

I do. I want him to fulfil his potential. Yes, I think mentality is important. Technically and physically Mikel and Chalobah have it all. What will set them apart is their mentality. But if you want to discuss the specifics of Chalobah's game, I'm more than happy to. He should be Superman now? Is it easier to debate Mikel when you make up lies about what other people have said? I say he should make long balls and forward passes? You are a liar sir. Those aren't opposing points. That having a medal doesn't confirm one's exceptional quality, nor does it exempt them from criticism. I support these players week in, week out. If you want to question that then we're really not going to get on. Again, I don't think I've ever thrown Capoue's name into the ring as a replacement. Is this yet another lie or are you unable to read what people have written? That's fine by me. You've shown yourself to be a poor debater and a liar.

Why would you? It's not like matches have any bearing on your opinion of him.

Nobody here hates him. It's a ridiculously stupid thing to say because Chelsea supporters don't hate their players. Learn that. I've said Chalobah is better and i base that not just on his technical skills, but his intangibles (that means his mentality and personality, okay?). Yes, we know what he's supposed to do. Actually no-one has said that. No-one wants him to play like Ronaldinho, no-one expects him to. Okay? So did Kalou. So has Wes Brown. (De Rossi won the World Cup by the way, so he can't be that bad). We do support our players. I don't think Capoue is a better player, and let's not forget that he lost his French national squad spot to Pogba, a player who was just 19 at the start of the season. PS. is this thread sponsored by whoscored.com?