Chelsea tracking Spanish, English prospects

Chelsea Technical Director Michael Emenalo and his global crack team of scouts, spies, surveyor drones, and sharks with lasers attached to their heads never sleep.  At least that's my assumption.  There's no offseason when it comes to player scouting!  In our evil attempts to destroy football, there's no rest for the wicked.

Though as far as Silly Season itself is concerned, these two rumors are hardly ones to make any major waves.  Here they are anyway.

First up is 16-year-old Niall Ennis, an England U17 international from Wolverhampton Wanderers' academy.  Apparently he's already training with Wolves' first team, and according to ESPN's sources, both Chelsea and Manchester City are looking to poach him.  Terrible timing, really, with all the criticisms of our all-star academy (and City's) and the not-so-clear benefits that EPPP provides for the development of English youth.  Still, the script about to be written here has been written many times before, for example, with Izzy Brown a couple season ago.  I've never heard of Niall Ennis before, but if he's truly that highly rated, it's only a matter of time before he ends up at one of the world class academies (though Wolves do count as a Category 1 academy, in fairness).  Here he is, scoring a hat-trick for Wolves U18.

Slightly more older, slightly more mature, and certainly much more ready for actual first team action is 19-year-old Dani Ceballos who burst onto the scene with Real Betis last season.  The Spain U21 and U19 international -- he was named in the Team of the Tournament as Spain won Euro U19 championship this summer -- is apparently high on the list of several Premier League teams, including Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal ("the new Cesc Fabregas"), as well continental powers like Real Madrid and Juventus and Roma.  Ceballos' contract is currently set to expire next summer, so as Real Betis work feverishly on an extension, perhaps all this interest is being created just to provide the player with some leverage.  That said, the kid's plenty talented, by all accounts, and we will no doubt hear of him in the near future.