In a dimly lit underground training pitch just outside London, a young man in a red shirt addresses a group of young men wearing blue shirts.
Red: You will have your chance. You must be patient.
Blue #1: But what do we have to do? We have all impressed in training!
Blue #2: We have gone wherever they tell us to go on loan and done really well over there.
Blue #3: I’ve been sent to Vitesse four times!!!
Red: Yes… I’ve heard there isn’t a single good pizza place within 20 kilometres of the training facilities in Vitesse. But believe me, we are all talented. The talent will get us signed. It worked for me!
Matt Miazga: You have no idea… I’m from New Jersey! I can’t function without good pizza.
Blue #24: Look Romelu, you don’t even get it. You got lucky. You were loaned within the Premier league, and were able to get out of Chelsea early because a pompous manager wanted to prove that he knew better. You had nothing to do with it!
Lukaku: Look Ruben, you’re at Palace, and you must do whatever you can to make friends with them as well as to play well. Maybe you can get out.
Loic Remy: You can’t say that! It makes no sense. Costa is sitting in his dad’s living room getting fat and shitting on Conte and they still won’t recall any of us strikers. There is no rhyme or reason to when or why we get playing time on the team.
Lukaku: You think i don’t know this? I was loaned to Everton while they ran out the corpses of Samuel Eto’o and Fernando Torres in the Champions League.
Kurt Zouma: Get focused boys. I want to play for Chelsea. What the hell can I do?
Nathan Ake: You don’t understand. They hate us. We will never get playing time. Get out.
Zouma: Everybody is saying “you don’t understand” but clearly we all do! This is Chelsea Youth Anonymous (and Loic). We are all either on loan or used to be on loan for Chelsea even though all rational thought would suggest that we get a run in the first team. Maybe I will offer to babysit the manager’s daughter…
Ake: No really, there is no chance for us. They sold Romelu. THEY SOLD FREAKING DE BRUYNE!! He might be the best player on the pre-season Premier League favorites.
De Bruyne: Well thank you Nathan. Yeah, get out while you can. You English boys would have it a lot easier if you were comfortable going onto the continent like I did. Germany has good pizza Matt.
Lukaku: Look boys, there were 38 of us loaned out last year and the same this year. Chelsea are clearly blind to our talent. It doesn’t matter if you are loaned to Vitesse, Stoke, or bloody Barcelona. We will get playing time when we least expect it, and it will probably be in the goddamn Carabao cup. The only thing we can do is support each other, remind each other that we are talented, and pray that we get on the pitch. We’ll meet again in two weeks, but for now let’s say the words.
All in unison: We have talent. We have blue in our past and present but not in our future. We have each other. We are Chelsea Youth Anonymous.
Remy: And Loic!
With a collective groan a few dozen men don black jackets and leave to various places across England, Great Britain, and the continent, knowing full well that they will never truly be Blues.