5 former Chelsea academy players who probably wish they could've played under Frank Lampard

#4 Josh McEachran

Josh McEachran looked like a Chelsea star in the making, but a decade on from his debut he now plays in the EFL Championship

Perhaps no other player represents Chelsea’s misuse of young talent prior to the Frank Lampard era quite as much as midfielder Josh McEachran. The 26-year-old was once considered a blue-chip prospect who would surely go on to a lengthy career both in the Premier League and with England, and in 2010 he became the first player to be born after the inauguration of the UEFA Champions League (25th November 1992) to play in the competition.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out for McEachran at all, and while he remains active in the game, nine years later his career hasn’t come close to reaching the peaks it was expected to. That didn’t seem possible a decade ago, when he was outstanding for Chelsea’s youth side and helped them to win their first FA Youth Cup in 50 years.

The same season – 2009/10 – saw him invited to train with the Blues’ first-team squad, and in 2010/11 he was trusted enough by manager Carlo Ancelotti to make 17 first-team appearances – 6 of them in the Champions League – largely as a deep-lying midfielder, where he earned comparisons to greats like Luka Modric and Samir Nasri.

So where did things go wrong? Essentially, a change of manager wrecked his Chelsea career. The summer of 2011 saw Ancelotti fired and replaced by Andre Villas-Boas, and the Portuguese boss froze McEachran out of his squad before sending him on loan to Swansea in January 2012. From there he settled into the usual Chelsea pattern of loans, moving to Middlesbrough, Watford, Wigan, and Vitesse over the subsequent seasons.

McEachran never played another game for Chelsea – and moved on a permanent deal to Brentford in the summer of 2015, completing four seasons there before a move to Birmingham this past summer.

Despite becoming a solid Championship player, it’s hard to believe that he never made it to the top of the game based on the ability he showed ten years ago – and it’s just a pity that he never had a boss like Lampard who likely would’ve shown full faith in him.