Hull City to ‘raid’ Chelsea youth ranks once Leonid Slutsky takes over as manager — report

Leonid Slutsky has been out of work since leaving the Russian national team in June and CSKA Moscow in December of last year, but thanks to his friend Roman Abramovich and Chelsea Football Club, he’s about to land himself the job of Hull City manager.

The Tigers, having just gone back down to the Championship from the Premier League thanks in part to some financial issues at the club — they barely had enough players to field a team to begin the season! — will be hoping to utilize Slutsky’s Chelsea connections to help bring in some players on loan. That’s according to the London Evening Standard, though it’s also a fairly easy and obvious connection to make (and one that happens any time anyone even remotely associated with Chelsea gets appointed manager somewhere).

The Standard don’t mention any specific names, but @chelseayouth’s final report of the season can provide us with some valuable insight as to who all might be good candidates for a loan to the English second tier.

Names such as Ali, Clarke-Salter, Colkett, Dabo, Dasilva, Muheim could be attractive to a team fighting for the top end of the division, while young talents like Aina, T.Chalobah, Mount, Quintero, Scott, and Ugbo are all ready to test the loan waters. And that’s barely scratching the surface of what’s sure to be another massive loan army.

Slutsky and Hull will certainly have plenty to choose from.

On a related note, here’s a wonderful chart, also from the incomparable @chelseayouth, showing the slowly increasing ages of the current loan army. Those on the right are surely approaching their ultimate exit from the club and the system, but those in the middle will all once again make their usual appearances in the weekly round-ups.