Brentford travel to Leeds at lunchtime on Saturday, live on Sky Sports Football.
Friday 5 October 2018 10:09, UK
Considering he is only 25-years-old, it seems as though Josh McEachran has been around for an awfully long time.
On Tuesday night, however, on his 167th senior appearance in English football, McEachran finally achieved a significant milestone for the first time. He became a goalscorer.
"It took me a few years, but I finally got there and [it was] not a bad goal to be fair," the Brentford midfielder told the Evening Standard after his free-kick against Birmingham at Griffin Park, which earned a 1-1 draw.
"I was happy with myself to get that, of course it has been a target of mine for a long time but I'm not a Frank Lampard-type player, I sit in front of the back four and dictate play from there.
"I'm not usually on free-kicks in and around the box but hopefully I will be now, I'll mention it in training and will be taking a lot more of them now."
McEachran knows the kind of player he is, and there was a time when the gifts at his disposal seemingly had him destined for a career right at the top.
Carlo Ancelotti handed him his debut in the Champions League in September 2010 and, at 17, he had no doubt at the time he would make the grade at Stamford Bridge.
"I was 16, at Chelsea, and my agent at the time said: 'Real Madrid want you'. It's unbelievable, isn't it? At that age," McEachran recalled in an interview with the Telegraph last year.
"I had the chance to go to Real Madrid or Man United. Real Madrid had the contract waiting for me and they wanted all my family to fly over but I said: 'No, I want to stay at Chelsea'. I was a Chelsea fan."
It's no surprise he was so certain he would make it. Despite the fact that no youth-team player had broken through at Stamford Bridge since John Terry, McEachran made 17 appearances for Chelsea that season and seemed destined for more in the future. And boss Ancelotti was the self-appointed No 1 member of his fan club.
"He can play in the first team right now, without problem," said the Italian after handing him his debut. "He is very young but he showed fantastic ability and quality. So it is possible. If we need him he is ready to play the Premier League and the Champions League. I am not afraid to put a young player in important games because he has fantastic quality."
Ancelotti, however, was sacked at the end of the 2010/11 season and from there, things started to go downhill for McEachran.
Andre Villas-Boas was not quite as enamoured with the youngster and, despite Ancelotti previously insisting he would not go out on loan, McEachran soon found himself out on the road. Five separate loan spells followed at Swansea, Middlesbrough, Watford, Wigan and Vitesse, with perhaps only the season at Boro in 2012/13 in the Championship really anything close to a success.
Villas-Boas left but Roberto Di Matteo, Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho soon followed in the Chelsea dugout, and eventually McEachran was sold by Mourinho to Brentford in the summer of 2015. He was not the first nor the last youngster at Stamford Bridge to suffer from a lack of opportunities.
"Chelsea is probably one of the hardest if not the hardest club in the world for a young player," McEachran told The Times. "Everyone thought I was going to be the first one to come through since Terry, but it didn't happen.
"There's been a few more since me like [Ruben] Loftus-Cheek, [Nathaniel] Chalobah and Callum Hudson-Odoi, who had a really good pre-season, but now isn't really involved."
Even his first few seasons at Brentford weren't a huge success. A lack of form and injury problems limited his time on the pitch but now, especially since the departure of Ryan Woods, McEachran is a key cog in the midfield wheel, starting all but one of their league games so far.
An EFL upbringing is no longer an obstacle in making it into the England squad. Seventeen members of the World Cup party featured in the lower leagues at some stage and that is the path that McEachran also hopes to follow.
"Seeing some of the lads playing in the World Cup - I was playing with some of them through from the U16s to the U21s," he said. "So there's no reason I can't go on to play for England."
There is still some way to go for McEachran, and he may never well reach his early potential. But at least now he's back on track.
