Five and a bit years ago, Chelsea youth products Patrick Bamford, Lewis Baker and Izzy Brown all featured for the first team in a preseason friendly against Wycombe Wanderers under Jose Mourinho.
Now, some time later, and all three are featuring… for Leeds…. Leeds’ U23 team.
It seems like quite the step down, and there’s no doubt that none of the 3 has reached the levels that were expected of them; but there are mitigating circumstances.
Brown and Bamford have just come back from injuries, and while Baker has been in and around the first team without ever nailing down a starting spot.
https://twitter.com/CillDaraTimes/status/1072497820593209344
https://twitter.com/CarefreeYouth/status/1072504948116611072
The good news is that all of them scored – with Bamford getting a hattrick.
We hope that these kinds of eye-catching performances will persuade Marcelo Bielsa to give all of them more chances in the future.
While they haven’t lived up to that potential from 2014, there’s still plenty of time for them to succeed.
