Close to the sun with Patrick Bamford

Perched placidly on the edge of a sofa, speaking to a camera about the end of his Leeds United career, Patrick Bamford sounded anything but placid.

"Right now, with the way it has come to an end and the way things have been handled recently, it's all a little bit too raw to reflect on immediately," he said. "But I think in the years to come and further down the line, I'll look back at this period of my life with nothing but joy, pride and be super happy with what I've achieved."

It's a shame and a little strange that he's ending on such a disgruntled note. He speaks in the video about his blessings, his wife and kids, his home, his friends, his teammates, his memories of Leeds United, his England cap. "I was able to achieve my dream I've had since a young boy, playing for England," he says. Why should 'the way things have been handled recently' be foremost in his mind, overshadowing all the good things that he's achieved? "Further down the line, I'll look back at this period of my life with nothing but joy, pride and be super happy," he says. Why not now?

I blame Chelsea. Patrick Bamford can be satisfied with all he's achieved so far but there could have been more and I blame Chelsea. Young Patrick was a high achiever, good at school, good at sport, good at football. He made his Nottingham Forest debut in the Championship. He became a £1.5m player at eighteen when Chelsea took him to the Premier League. He was already top of everything but had plenty of world left at his feet.

And, for Chelsea in the Premier League, he played precisely not at all. As was their wont at the time, and is still their modus operandi now, Bamford was loaned and loaned and loaned, to Milton Keynes, Derby, Middlesbrough, Crystal Palace, Norwich, Burnley, finally joining Middlesbrough permanently in 2017. Now he was 23. Where had the time gone?

Outside observers and Patrick himself credit Marcelo Bielsa for getting a grip of him, another two years later, and turning him into an England international. And that is how it happened. But it didn't need to be Bielsa. Other coaches were available, and players like Jamie Vardy could become a Premier League goalscoring legend and play at the World Cup without El Loco's help. While Bamford was a Chelsea player they were managed by André Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo, Rafael Benítez, José Mourinho, Guus Hiddink and Antonio Conte, any one of whom was capable of teaching a young striker to strike. Instead Chelsea let Bamford be coached by Karl Robinson, Steve McClaren, Aitor Karanka, Alan Pardew, Alex Neil and Sean Dyche. At least two of those managers seemed to actively hate him, and most of them were expecting a Premier League level striker ready to help their teams, not a rookie sent roaming from pillar to post in search of a football education.

Leeds United is an awkward club for a finishing school, and Bamford was a perfectly awkward fit with a club that, like him, could not reconcile what it should be with what it was. A player with one Premier League goal who felt ready to be an England international was joining a second division club that demands to be known as the winner of the 1975 European Cup final. Leeds United in 2018 was still trying to assert itself as the big, famous club it always had been, but the weight of our self-regard didn't account for how hard the rest of football had been laughing at Leeds for fifteen years. The big crowds, the ferocious atmosphere, the famous kit, the history and the scale all commanded Premier League levels of attention, but only having the Championship as a platform meant the world always had bigger things to look at, like the goings on at Premier League Watford, Cardiff or Huddersfield Town.