Almost daring to slip under the radar on the eve of one of the most anticipated days in the Premier League calendar (transfer deadline day if I needed to spell it out), Lucas Piazon has joined Reading on loan until the end of the season.
In the same breath, it’s both a strange move and an understandable one.
The move makes complete sense for the player to get experience playing in England. Yes the Championship is very different to the Premier League yet it does contain many a top flight club and player from years gone by. I dare say he’ll learn a few things that he didn’t pick up from his previous loans in Germany (Eintracht Frankfurt), Holland (Vitesse Arnhem) and Spain (Malaga).
The part that strikes me as odd is that not many Chelsea players go out on loan to the Championship and make it into the Chelsea first team these days. It seems a bit of an underwhelming move. And looking at the raw stats behind his most recent loan move, he hardly set the world alight with 2 goals in 22 games. Of course we won’t give up on him just yet, but the point he has to prove is only getting bigger.
Patrick Bamford is the only notable success story to graduate from a Championship loan (winning the Championship player of the year no less) and the next step is evidently a Premier League loan. Who knows whether all this moving around will be good for the players but I suppose we’ll find out the result of this experiment in a few years.
Either way, the player and his new club seem to be happy enough about the move. Besides, it gives us Chelsea fans another reason to keep an eye on the Championship again this season.
