Premier League safety beckons for Chelsea’s on loan XI

Chelsea weren’t absent of any activity on Transfer Deadline Day, with two defenders making their way to Stamford Bridge.

For one of them at least, it was a case of straight back out again as Michael Hector signed for the Blues before returning to former club Reading on loan until the end of the season.

His temporary switch back to the Madejski took the number of players registered for the English champions that are out on loan to a whopping 33.

To put that into perspective both Liverpool and Manchester City have three players plying their trade elsewhere at the time of writing.

Like it or not, Jose Mourinho is doing a fine job of stockpiling talent, and has enough players away from west London to form a couple more squads.

Donning our managerial caps we put together what we think is the strongest XI of players currently out on loan from west London, and this is what we got.

One thing we can say is that with the current line up we would expect plenty of goals at both ends, with a strong attack backed up by a rather inexperienced back four.

Goalkeeper Matej Delac currently keeps order between the sticks at Bosnian champions FK Sarajevo and while he kept 11 clean sheets in 14 appearances last season, how he would cope in the Premier League is questionable.

A back-three of new signing Hector, along with Tomas Kalas and Kenneth Omeruo provides the solid foundation of a high-Championship/low-Premiership defence.

The latter became somewhat of a cult hero at Middlesbrough last season, something that Kalas could yet emulate, while Hector himself looks to have a bright future ahead of him.

Moving into the midfield is where it would get interesting. The trio of Nathaniel Chalobah, Marco van Ginkel and Mario Pasalic edge the likes of Nathan Ake and Lucas Piazon out of the central roles.

Ahead of them could sit Mohamed Salah, who while never really cutting it at Stamford Bridge is a quality player in his own right.

A front three of West Ham new boy Victor Moses, Juan Cuadrado and Patrick Bamford would certainly bring in a fair few goals.

In fact if you take the number of strikes by each player in the last campaign they featured more than 20 times and you have a total of 49 goals between our loanee XI, more goals than 12 Premier League sides last campaign.

Defence would be the worry, but with plenty of flair, pace and strength up top we feel Chelsea could enter their own ‘Unwanted XI’ in the top-flight and still secure a place above the relegation zone.

What do you think? Have your say in the comments box below.

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