- 18 Dec 2024
Lampard: Tomori has a long-term future at Chelsea
Stefan Bienkowski
- Updated: 19 May 2021 15:43 BST
- 2 min read
Chelsea manager Frank Lampard has confirmed that Fikayo Tomori has a long-term future at the club, despite expecting the player to leave on a loan deal this month.
The 23-year-old central defender has some history with Lampard, having moved on loan to Derby County and played an integral role in the club’s push for promotion in 2018/19.
Tomori then returned to Chelsea alongside Lampard in the summer of 2019 and made 22 appearances for the club’s first team that season.
However, the following summer window saw Chelsea bring in defensive reinforcements in Malang Sarr and Thiago Silva. As a result, Tomori has been limited to just 234 minutes of game time this season.
As such, the young defender is expected to move out on loan in the coming weeks. Yet Lampard was quick to point out that Tomori still has a long-term role at Chelsea and wasn’t simply being pushed out the door at Stamford Bridge.
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“He absolutely has a long-term future at this club,” Lampard told a news conference on Thursday.
“We’ll see if and when he goes on loan but from the moment I got close to Fikayo, when I took him to Derby and he was Player of the Year and one of the best players in the Championship that year in my opinion.
“He came back and played 20 plus games for us at a very young age last year and got in the England squad.
“There’s an absolute long plan for Fikayo in my head about his career here and if it is to go and play games [elsewhere], it’ll be to enhance his personal development, hopefully help whatever team he goes to, because that comes hand in hand and he’ll come back to us a better player.”
So far the young defender has been linked with loan moves to AC Milan and Premier League side Leeds United, but it remains to be seen whether either of these proposed moves will be finalised before the end of the January window.
