Chelsea pair among forgotten Premier League players still somehow yet to debut | OneFootball

It is weird for Chelsea and Aston Villa both to have a couple of players yet to make their debuts despite being signed two years ago. Forest obviously have one.

Manchester City have a £12.5m player – his former club’s record sale – who rejected Arsenal and Villa for them because of Pep Guardiola, who still hasn’t played either.

Omari Kellyman (Chelsea)

“I signed for Chelsea, and I want to play for Chelsea – that is the end goal,” said Kellyman in a recent interview detailing injury issues which took him to “a point where I didn’t feel I was a player anymore”.

A cynic might suggest that mild dehumanising process began with an absurd switch from Aston Villa in a summer of general PSR-taking.

Chelsea will never abandon the pretence that they had monitored and tracked Kellyman intently before signing him for £19m in 2024. It makes them look doubly foolish for giving Villa a free run at the teenager, who they snared for £600,000 around two years prior before flipping a ludicrous profit on someone with 148 first-team minutes to his name.

But it is a hilariously transparent facade which ought to be maintained for the sheer gall of it all.

Villa signing Ian Maatsen for an inflated £37.5m at the same time, thus allowing both clubs to amortise the outlays over a number of years while recording pure profit on academy graduates in one lump sum, represented a loophole big enough for Stamford Bridge to be squeezed into.

It is heartening to see Kellyman get a career derailed by that move and his subsequent physical problems back on track (he’s on loan at Cardiff). But that Chelsea debut “end goal” feels no closer.

Mike Penders (Chelsea)

Chelsea have already inherited some choice hand-me-ups from their younger, forcefully adopted French sister: a manager, a centre-half in Mamadou Sarr and even one of their great many pre-arranged transfers.

The Strasbourg finishing school has been used judiciously with all manner of players and to varying degrees of success, counting Andrey Santos, Djordje Petrovic and Caleb Wiley among its alumni.

And the perennial deliberation over Chelsea’s goalkeeper situation has kept Penders in that equation. The Belgian youth international shot-stopper was allowed to stay at Genk for an extra year’s worth of seasoning, then spent the Club World Cup on the bench before a campaign chasing European qualification in Ligue Un.

Penders is scheduled to return from his loan at Strasbourg in the summer and it should surprise no-one if he is either immediately made their guaranteed starter, consigned straight to the bomb squad or allocated literally any other fate in between.

Samuel Iling-Junior (Aston Villa)

Unai Emery did reserve a seat on his bench for Iling-Junior in the single most depressing, forlorn fixture in modern Premier League history. But a fortnight later he was being sent on his third separate loan away from Villa Park.

That has promptly been followed by a fourth in under two years, with Iling-Junior recalled early from spells in successive seasons to be shipped straight off again.

“In both pre-seasons I’ve had with him I’ve learned a big chunk,” Iling-Junior said of his brief experience with Emery. But the former Juventus man has understandably struggled to push his Villa credentials in a handful of months at each of Bologna, Middlesbrough, West Brom and Pisa.

Lewis Dobbin (Aston Villa)

Aston Villa do love shopping at Everton but the eight-figure investment in a young player barely on the Goodison fringes felt rather egregious even without factoring in Tim Iroegbunam’s move in the opposite direction.

At least Iroegbunam has played for Everton; the entirety of Dobbin’s time under contract at Villa Park has been spent on loan in the Championship, with his current spell at Preston by far the most productive.

Sverre Nypan (Manchester City)

With Bodo/Glimt all the rage and Erling Haaland perhaps simply in need of some more relatable faces at the Etihad, Manchester City fought off intense interest to secure the signature of Nypan last summer.

The teenager was never intended to make an impact for the first team this season, but the hope would have been that a loan with Middlesbrough provided a platform for his development in the English game.

That was cut short in February, the Norwegian having started just three of 30 Championship games in a season of managerial upheaval on Teesside.

‘He will now return to Manchester where his development will be overseen by Pep Guardiola and the City first-team staff,’ read a statement on the Premier League club’s website. ‘The midfielder will wear the No.41 shirt at City,’ it added rather optimistically.

David Carmo (Nottingham Forest)

Nottingham Forest have literally signed 75 players since being promoted back to the Premier League four years ago, so a fair few have inevitably fallen through the cracks.

Some were sold without having even made a first-team appearance, but there is hope yet for Carmo when he comes back from almost definitely being relegated on loan at Real Oviedo.

The centre-half obviously joined from Olympiacos and was obviously loaned straight back a couple of years ago, so might be in for a shock when he walks into the manager’s office for a chat over his future in the summer and is confronted only by an office swivel chair.