Injury update on lost £19m boy gives concrete date for his return at last | OneFootball

When listing Chelsea’s Premier League signings from the summer, one name keeps being left out – Omari Kellyman.

That shouldn’t be too surprising arrived as a relative unknown from Aston Villa’s academy. But given we paid an eye-watering £19m for him, we should probably be expecting a little more, and be paying a little more attention to his injury issues, which have kept him out for more than 2 months now.

A hamstring injury looks close to clearing up at last: Simon Johnson of the Athletic reports that he’s going to return to training by the end of November, hoping to be fit to play for the U21 team again in December. There can’t be many teams who pay £19m for a player to feature in their U21 team… but Chelsea seem to be one of them.

His Blues career so far amount to 104 minutes played in PL2… not a great return for our money. This injury has been a nightmare for a youngster looking to settle in to a new team and start making his name.

Omari Kellyman features in the warmup for Chelsea.

Kellyman without an obvious route to first team action with Blues

Even had he been fit this whole time, we have our doubts about where Kellyman might have been able to fit in to the squad this season. Cesare Casadei, Carney Chukwuemeka, Joao Felix and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall are all similar players who have only been able to scrape together a few minutes each – and they would hall have been ahead of a fit Kellyman in the pecking order.

Getting him up to speed through December and then loaning him out in January is surely the right call – £19m is too much to pay for someone to just play Development Squad football. We’re happy to remain open minded about his talent – but so far those who called the transfer an FFP swindle look totally justified.