Izzy Brown: A Chelsea Academy Star with a Big Shot at Making the Grade

Chelsea youngster Izzy Brown doesn't duck the question.

"This move needs to make me a man," he says with a grin. "The Championship is a man's game. I've got a big scar down my leg from today's game, but it's normal. You just have to man up and deal with it and face the challenge the Championship brings."

One of the most promising of Chelsea's many up-and-coming stars, the midfielder is currently on loan with Rotherham United. This isn't a move to pamper him and massage his ego; there's much more to it than that. As Brown says, he's attempting to bridge the gap from youth-team star to first-team regular.

It's a difficult challenge and one that's growing ever more difficult for young players all across Europe. The level of competition is intensifying, and bigger transfer budgets are allowing clubs to sign ready-made talent to ensure they maintain success.

Away from his parent club, Brown understands the task he faces. His instant reaction to our question speaks of a young man who is ditching the first part of that adjective. It's showing in his performances, and as Bleacher Report learned during a meeting with him at Craven Cottage after Rotherham's mid-December trip to west London to face Fulham, we're seeing it firsthand.

We've come here not just to speak with the player but to play the role of scout. We want to see how Brown's adapting to the senior game and whether he is breaking free from the shackles of development football.

It's not just about performances on the pitch, either. As we speak to Brown, sitting pitchside in the historic Johnny Haynes Stand, he knows all too well that he is having to perform to a certain degree. We're probing for signs of his development, how he handles the other side of being a professional footballer.

He doesn't disappoint; Brown's engaged and considers his answers when the moment calls for it. He has strong opinions on how he wants to play but also understands how he must adapt to achieve that goal.

But is he becoming a man?

Maturity

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It's one thing to be a talented player. It's quite another to make that talent work by understanding how to apply yourself. The Premier League has its share of players who have failed to realise their potential as professionals by simply not applying themselves enough.

As a young player coming through, relying solely on ability can work to a point, but it only gets you so far. The best, most successful players are those who demonstrate a maturity to study their game and spot where the improvements are needed.

Leaving work at work doesn't cut it; success is followed by a desire to hone your craft. Brown's loan spells with Vitesse Arnhem and now Rotherham are showing he's capable of that. Indeed, he's already putting those principles into practice.

"When I first left home, I was only 14 as I moved to Birmingham to play for West Brom," he says to Bleacher Report, explaining how joining Vitesse last season, still only 18, didn't carry the same fears it may for others of the same age.

"I left my friends and my family back then, so being away from home and in another country didn't really bother me too much."

It was a different challenge that he had to overcome: not playing matches.

"I was out of the Vitesse side for a couple of months, and that's when it really hits you," he adds. "You're by yourself in another country and you're not playing. It's when you're playing that you're most happy, and obviously that was happening to me. It was a hard experience. It was something that I found hard to take as I'm not used to not playing.

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"When that happened, I didn't know what to do. I lost my way a little bit and didn't work as hard in training. The manager sat me down and told me I needed to work harder and apply myself every day. That's what I did, and I eventually got back in the team."

Fast-forward to the present, Brown's Vitesse experience has helped him in the Championship with Rotherham. On the back of Alan Stubbs being sacked as manager earlier in the campaign, Brown was benched as caretaker boss Paul Warne looked for ways to kick-start the team's season.

"Alan Stubbs played me every game. I signed here on the Thursday and was playing on the Saturday. He said to me, 'You're going to come here and you're going to play.' I was so happy as I needed to get a full season and play games.

"When he got sacked and the new manager came in, he dropped me straight away. I just thought, 'OK,' because in Holland I hadn't played every game. I knew what I had to do to get back into the team."

Brown didn't drop his head, either. He took a different approach to the one from a year earlier when he struggled in Holland. He was more positive about the situation.

"It didn't knock my confidence as I was playing well before I got dropped. I had got three assists and two goals in the games before Paul took over, but he did drop me. I went to speak with him on the Thursday, as that's what you have to do; when you're unhappy and don't understand things, you have to speak with people and get the reason for why you're not playing. He said he wanted experience and experienced players."

It's a frame of mind we associate with senior professionals. Brown wasn't sulking. Instead, he was pragmatic about the situation. He wanted answers and got them in the same way Warne did. After their chat, with a renewed application, Brown forced his way back into the Rotherham side and has been a vital component ever since.

Making a difference

These are difficult times for Rotherham. Having been promoted last term, the momentum has been lost. They currently sit bottom of the Championship, 10 points adrift from Queens Park Rangers, who sit just outside the drop zone in 21st place.

Brown makes no bones about the situation he's in. If it's a man he wants to become, he's been thrown in at the deep end. It's very much sink or swim, but we're seeing more of the latter from him.

Even the most experienced professionals would find it difficult to turn things around for Rotherham, yet Brown is hinting at playing a big part in any sort of revival that may come this season.

Against Fulham, he picked up the assist for his team's opening strike—they would still lose the game 2-1.  A few days earlier, Brown had delivered a precious three points in the 1-0 win over QPR, scoring the only goal.

It was a very Izzy Brown goal, too. Those familiar with his style of play would have recognised the run from deep, the one-two with a team-mate before he burst into space to send the goalkeeper the other way.

It wasn't a goal for the Championship; it wasn't a goal for a team rooted to the foot of the table. It came complete with quality.

"It's great that came against QPR, as it's a local derby for Chelsea. Growing up a Chelsea supporter, it's always nice to score against a London team, even if it is for Rotherham," Brown laughs, unafraid of nailing his colours to the mast.

He agrees with our observation of that goal, too, remembering how it was reminiscent of those he scored as a junior player in blue.

"At Chelsea, there are so many good players, and we're always on the same wavelength. Growing up—from 16, 17, 18—they're the sorts of goals I scored," he says.

"I'd come inside, play it to Dom [Solanke] and he'd get it back to me to shoot. I saw the chance to do that against QPR, and luckily, [Danny] Wardy played a great ball back to me. I gave the goalkeeper the eyes and put it in the other corner. I was very happy with that."

His team-mates were, too, as it was just the second win of the season at the time for Rotherham. This is why Brown deciding the game matters so much: It shows that with more senior names around him, he's becoming the man he says he hopes to. These may not be massive strides that he's making, but strides forward they remain.

Learning his trade

It was after just 36 minutes that Brown would be taken off for Rotherham against Fulham. It was probably to the relief of the opposition back line that a slight hamstring tear had seen his game finish prematurely, as Brown had been controlling things up to that point.

The game was 1-1 after Stefan Johansen had just equalised, and with Brown leaving the field, Rotherham rarely caused problems. With the 19-year-old unavailable, they lacked the cutting edge he had provided.

Brown was exploiting the frailties of Fulham's defensive capabilities—and it was all by design.

"I was playing in the No. 10 position and I had a lot of space," Brown explains. "I was watching clips before where I could see the Fulham midfielders get attracted to the ball, so I knew there would be a lot of gaps in behind them. I started picking them up during the game, and obviously on the counter-attacks I was always free.

"I should have scored in the opening minutes of the game, but I decided to pass instead when I should've been more selfish. That's the thing I need to work on—making decisions at the right times. I'm still young and I've got to adapt to men's football. If it were any other player in the Championship, they would have shot. I should have done that."

Brown was kicking himself for not taking that aforementioned opportunity, although it was his assessment of how and where he could damage Fulham that was most pertinent. Having studied them, he applied that knowledge in a game situation to good effect. That shows intelligence, which is the application of knowledge.

"I just had to play off [Chelsea team-mate Tomas Kalas, who's on loan with Fulham] and spin off the full-back, who was always out of position. I started bending my runs to his side as that's where the space was," Brown adds.

"No. 10 was never my position for Chelsea. I never played there as I was normally on the left and would cut in and shoot. When I play as a 10, it's good as you get a lot of the ball and you can really impact the game. That what I like to do, create an end product—goals and assists."

What the future holds...

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Regardless of Brown's Fulham display being one game in isolation, it has opened up possibilities for where his future lies—be that at Chelsea or elsewhere. He seems to suit that No. 10 role in the senior game, more so than the wider position he has played elsewhere.

He doesn't have the blistering pace required in the modern game to really expose full-backs. What he does have instead, however, is something more valuable—craft. We saw that against Fulham, with his positioning creating pockets of space in central areas. And that's where teams are most vulnerable.

Playing wide can create openings, but it's in the middle where goals are scored. Brown hinted at that himself, and it's something we saw as he sat in behind Fulham's central pairing to leave him one-on-one when Rotherham broke.

With his quick feet and vision, the 19-year-old has the ability to unlock any defence. If he were playing with a striker who had more presence than Danny Ward, we could expect he would be more influential than what we have seen to date.

Without naming specific players, we can think of one Chelsea striker who would certainly feed off that creativity and the chances it would present to get beyond the last man.

Brown has the height to make his presence known, too. He isn't physically imposing in the way some others who stand beyond 6' are, yet he knows how to make his presence known.

What has impressed most about his spell with Rotherham is how Brown has worked to reinvent himself. He isn't the same player we saw as a youth-team star at Chelsea. In order to get games at Rotherham, he is adapting to the situation he finds himself in, such as playing at No. 10.

Having no previous experience in that role, he has adapted to make himself valuable. Playing in those areas is essentially a numbers game, and the stats back up the performances we have seen from Brown. He has three goals and five assists to his name in 19 matches this term. In a team that has scored 25 goals this term, Brown being involved in a third of them is exceptional.

His job now is to improve on that and propel Rotherham up the table. Still, if the Millers are to go down this term, Brown's career will undoubtedly be going in the opposite direction.

Garry Hayes is Bleacher Report's lead Chelsea correspondent. Follow him on Twitter @garryhayes