Chelsea’s forgotten Cobham gem leads to Thomas Tuchel transfer question after Serie A praise

The inspiration for this piece came from me scrolling through Twitter on Sunday whilst watching the Norwich vs. Burnley game – which was clearly keeping my attention well.

I stumbled across a tweet from Venezia's English account which remarked during the Serie A side's game with Udinese how versatile Ethan Ampadu has proved to be for the club battling against a quick relegation back to Serie B.

"Lost count of how many times Ampadu has played multiple roles in the same match. Pretty remarkable." The account said. The Welshman, who was loaned out by Chelsea last summer has somewhat fallen off the radar.

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It feels an awfully long time ago that Ampadu felt like an exciting Cobham breakthrough under Antonio Conte in the 2017/18 season. Given his quick trajectory to senior minutes at Stamford Bridge and then an international call-up, the sky appeared the limit.

When we got glimpses of him sporadically as a central midfielder and a centre-back, the level of maturity shown offered hope Ampadu would provide an internal solution to improve the club's defensive options in the long term.

It probably signals how his career has gone since those early shoots of optimism he has fallen so far away from the conversation at Chelsea. As Thomas Tuchel faces the prospect of losing three senior defenders this summer, it is the name of Levil Colwill, another loan talent in The Championship with Huddersfield, that's brought up to be promoted rather than Ampadu.

Still only 21, Venezia is Ampadu's third loan away from Stamford Bridge. And given where his current club sit in the table, it could be successive relegations for Ampadu after his spell with