Liverpool have agreed to sign striker Dominic Solanke from Chelsea on a free transfer.
To find out more about the potential new Red, we spoke to Ryan Darby from Read Chelsea.
So, Dominic Solanke is joining Liverpool, what were your initial thoughts when you heard the news?
The Solanke case has been one rumbling on for some time now and I wasn’t surprised to see him go. I was a little surprised to see Liverpool clinch the deal. I thought Celtic were perhaps the favourites. Given the bad luck Liverpool have had with Danny Ings since he joined through a tribunal, I wondered if they would take the risk on him.
A few years ago, he was spoken about as one of the hottest young prospects in Europe, was he worth that hype?
He dominated the youth scene at Chelsea over the years. He always looked a one or two years above the rest of his teammates that he was playing alongside. Solanke is a natural finisher, a phrase that gets thrown around a lot these days, but he’s so comfortable in front of goal. It’s sad to see that he hasn’t kicked on from those days but you only need to go back a few years to see how deadly he was at youth level.
Talent wise, how does he compare to other players who came through the ranks at Chelsea?
Throughout their time in the youth teams, Solanke was considered head and shoulders above Tammy Abraham, who has gone out and scored 23 league goals in the Championship during his first season of senior football. He has undoubtedly regressed in his development of the last year. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it’s clear to see that he should have gone out on loan this season, if that happened, we may not have been having this conversation.
We’ve seen the likes of Romelu Lukaku, Kevis De Bruyne, Ryan Bertrand and others leave due to a lack of opportunity at Chelsea, Is this simply another case of Chelsea not really promoting youngsters into the first team?
Over the years it has depended on who was in charge. The ever changing position of Chelsea’s manager doesn’t help things. Everybody knows the Chelsea job is a short-term one. If a coach comes in and does well, he’ll stay here for two or three years, does he see the need to promote these players? Or go and sign someone he knows will do a job for £30-40 million?
Especially in Solanke’s case, with Antonio Conte now. The Italian has been chasing down the Premier League title since October. He stuck with Diego Costa even when he wasn’t scoring. To drop Costa and hand Solanke game time would be a risk. We haven’t had the cup competitions this season to play in him, if we had, things may have turned out differently.
Liverpool like to play at a fast pace with a lot of counter pressing, would Solanke suit that style of play?
It’s hard to say, given the lack of football he has played over the last 12 months. He went to Vitesse last season and did relatively well out there. The best thing for him would be to see the move to Liverpool as a fresh start, listen and learn from Klopp and re-build his career, but he’s going to have to work hard either way if he wants any chance of breaking into the first-team at Anfield.
We mentioned a few names of players who left Chelsea to go on to great things, but there’s also a lot of examples of players who’ve ended up in lower leagues. If you had to predict Solanke’s future, which of those paths would you say is the most likely?
I don’t think it will be as straight forward for Solanke, compared to the likes of Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne, but the talent is there, I just think he needs a manager to harness that and bring the best out of his abilities, then it’ll come down to whether or not he will put the work in. If he’s prepared to earn it and Liverpool are prepared to play the long game with him, the Reds could have a great striker on their hands.
