Mathis Amougou is a young 19 year old midfielder signed from Saint-Étienne for an estimated fee of around £12 Million. He was part of the French Under 17 team that came runners up in the FIFA U17 World Cup of 2023. 

He hasn’t played a lot of professional football as of now, and when he has he hasn’t been incredible. This is all an understandable aspect of his development especially given Saint-Étienne have been nothing short of awful for the majority of the season.

It is a definite fact however that he has gradually been looking more competent as he clocks up minutes and this is probably something that Chelsea’s board and scouting department are leaning on. 

Why I believe we signed him

He’s a top talent. He’s actually someone I’ve been on the lookout for for a while now and someone I always felt would get a move to the Premier League eventually.

I for one am glad he’ll be a Chelsea player and no one else’s. It’s also a good move to appease Strasbourg as we’re probably going to take Andrey Santos (their best player) from them next season.

Next season, he’ll most likely be sent on loan to get minutes and gain valuable experience in a league that stylistically speaking is the best for developing young players for the Premier League in conjunction with the Championship. 

So in all of those senses, the signing makes complete sense especially from a squad building perspective.

If the idea is to have five midfielders next season (which makes sense especially as we’ll play 3-3-4 more often than you think), then Amougou is a perfect project player to have develop on a loan while Lesley and Andrey come and reinforce the current squad. 

Now, I completely understand the sentiment that we are yet again signing a completely inexperienced youthful player that doesn’t raise the floor of the team.

Trust me, I am the one most infuriated by this common occurrence. However, in this instance it kind of… makes sense..?

I could have understood the idea of loaning a midfielder like Douglas Luiz from now on the end of the season as midfield cover, sure.

But the alternative is to buy a young talent, let him get some minutes and acclimatise to Chelsea and then send him on loan to help out Strasbourg as we bring in midfield support we already own.

To me, the latter makes a lot more sense. Yes, say Caicedo/Enzo get injured, we will have to play someone with less than 1000 minutes of professional football under his belt but I’m not sure we really have another choice.

There simply wasn’t an experienced cheap option out there that provides the profile we need, and I also don’t feel as though loaning someone offers the same long term benefits signing Amougou would provide. 

Overall, if Amougou is to get minutes in Conference League games or at the end of Premier League games I do feel that he is a pretty wise signing from the directors. 

My thoughts on the player

I really like Amougou. I also understand why a lot of people are weary to jump onto that train given his extreme rawness and his characteristics as a player. 

Amougou has played less than 1000 minutes, is only 177 cm tall and has a long way to go development wise. But at the same time… he’s a top talent, reads the game extremely well, is tidy on the ball and great in tight situations.

For his height he plays and acts like he’s stronger. He also tackles and wins the ball back like he’s stronger and taller than he actually is and this is definitely a good thing.

He won’t have as much success winning duels as he has had before in the Premier League but with the acclimatisation promised by the Chelsea board he should be able to adapt sooner than later. 

He doesn’t necessarily cover tons of ground and engage in tons of duels but again, there’s a very small sample size statistically (hence no data section in this article) and he’s in a very poor team. 

But his profile is pretty non-duel intensive in the sense that he’s more of a 8 and would rather have the ball to feet (in my opinion).

Whip on a few clips of him and you’ll see he is already good with the ball at his feet and has the ability to dictate play.

In my opinion, he’s pretty close to Lavia as a player with maybe less physicality and also not someone that will sit as deep as Lavia. 

What I am slightly hopeful of is that given Amougou’s weaknesses in the air and obvious lack of defensive/duel mindedness in his style of play, I can’t see the club getting rid of Ugochukwu. And this leads me to…

Chelsea’s squad composition in the midfield for the future

We currently have a lot of midfielders at the club.

Caicedo, Enzo Fernandez, Dewsbury-Hall, Lavia, Dyer, Rak-Sakyi, Amougou, Santos and Ugochukwu. 

This isn’t including Casadei, obviously, who we sold in the January window for a reasonable fee of around £12.5m (with a sell-on clause too). 

Now for me, I always want a midfield that consists of all possible profiles. Ambitious, I know, but for a team that spent a billion I’d think this is a reasonable ask. 

Ideally you want:

• Tempo-setter (great with the ball, great at passing)
• Build-up resistant players (good carriers, good in tight areas and help progress the ball up and out from deep through a press).
• Defensively minded player (can win tackles, headers and provides needed physicality in the midfield to sweep up loose second balls)
• Midfielder that does attacking things (crashes the box, creative and can maybe go box to box) 

That’s a very simplified group of ‘profiles’ per se that you’d want in your team missing specific nuances and names of the profiles in order to keep simplicity. 

At Chelsea we have these players doing these things:

• Enzo Fernandez, Tempo-setter
• Moises Caicedo, Build-up resistant, somewhat defensively minded, ideally box to box without attacking effectiveness
• Romeo Lavia, Build-up resistant, defensively minded
• Dewsbury-Hall, Midfielder that does attacking things
• Lesley Ugochukwu, Defensively minded
• Andrey Santos, Bits of all of them
• Mathis Amougou, Build-up resistant player, possibly defensively minded

I won’t include Kiano Dyer on the list and Rak-Sakyi as they’re still very young and I don’t think grouping them into any category would be pretty unfair as what they do in youth football may turn out quite different to what they’d do in professional football. 

Besides the point, if you haven’t noticed, the four midfielders we have at the club currently lack certain ‘things’. But I won’t go into too much detail here as that can be a discussion for another day. 

The point is I think we should end up with our squad consisting of:

• Caicedo
• Lavia
• Enzo Fernandez
• Santos
• Ugochukwu
• Amougou

That covers all bases you’d want in your squad. The only issue, of course, would be allocation of minutes between all of them but if we were to get European football, the extra eight games would definitely allow for the players to share minutes a lot better as opposed to running with the first three names for the majority of the season. 

If we are actually obtaining Essugo in the summer window, that opens up a whole new prospect I will talk about when that time comes.

But as of now, I think this should be the plan. Next season operate with the first five with Amougou on loan and maybe in the future, integrate him if possible.