“In my opinion we have a great generation of young players"

Much has been made of Ruben Loftus-Cheek's full debut last Sunday against Liverpool but Branislav Ivanovic has revealed that there are "five or six" players who could make that step up into the first team.

All eyes will be on Jose Mourinho and the remaining two teams he selects to face West Brom on Monday night and Sunderland at home in our last game of the season on 24th May.

As we have seen Ruben Lofus-Cheek made his full debut and lasted around 60-65 minutes and played well. I believe that we could see the likes of Izzy Brown and Dominic Solanke the same.

So to Branislav Ivanovic and he has been speaking this week about our youngsters after another amazing, successful season. He feels that with hard work and the right attitude, these guys could make it here and finally follow in John Terry's footsteps. He said:

“In my opinion we have a great generation of young players. They improve during training with us and they can be competitive in the team. They can make our squad bigger and, in the future, we can really think about [using] them. It’s not just Ruben. We have a minimum of five or six players who can be in our squad and it is great for the manager to give them a chance to play.

Solanke, Izzy Brown, Christensen, Ake … these guys are already with us and they have showed they can play in training. In the next couple of games they will get a chance. It’s a great motivation for them. They’re still young, they need to fight. But this is the period, the next one or two years, where they need to prove they are really good.”

It's always great to hear one of the first team come out and speak so highly of these players and it must be a massive boost to all of them. To step up into the first team and train with the likes of Ivanovic, Fabregas, Costa and Hazard every day can only be of great benefit for their development and it's pleasing to see that is happening.

Ivanovic is right, only with hard work, fight and dedication, will they have a chance to really make it at a club like Chelsea and for one or two of them it could be make or break.

One thing is for sure, with Jose Mourinho at Chelsea's helm, keen to bring through the youngsters as per the different remit he has this time around, they will have every chance to succeed.

Let's hope we see as many of them as possible as first team regulars a couple of years down the line!