Nathaniel Chalobah's decision to quit Chelsea could accelerate his personal development, says Gareth Southgate

England manager Gareth Southgate is hopeful Nathaniel Chalobah's decision to leave Chelsea for regular game time will pay off.

Chalobah completed a permanent move to Watford for a fee in the region of £5million after making just 15 appearance for the Blues last term.

As a former England Under-21 manager, Southgate knows how difficult it is for young players to force their way into the first team at club level.

He urged them to rise to the challenge and is confident that, over time, the senior England side will feel the benefits. Southgate said: “We’ve really improved the games programme and experiences for the young players and also due to a lot of the work going on in the clubs, we are starting to see a better, more rounded type of player coming through. It’s not just about what we’re doing just as England, but also the work that’s going on in clubs. To have a successful national team, those things have to be aligned.

"Moving forward (it will have an impact) on the senior squad. How quickly that will happen depends on those players getting an opportunity at their clubs and being able to stake a claim at a higher level. Obviously to impact the senior team, those boys will need to be playing Premier League football and doing well.

“That’s the challenge for them, they can’t just say ‘we’re World Cup winners now, everything’s going to fall into place’. We wouldn’t hesitate to involve them in that (the senior team), and as we’ve shown already, we’re quite prepared to put young players in.”

The lack of first-team football is why Chalobah, England’s most capped player at youth level with 97 appearances, left Chelsea for Watford this month. The England Under-21 midfielder spent six spells on loan while at the club, including one at Watford. “I think that with Nathaniel, it’s always going to be harder to break into the top six than further down the League because the level of player needed is high and the opportunity to get in the best from around the world is there,” said Southgate. “I think if Nathaniel had stayed at Chelsea this year he might have got more matches and progressed. But he’s taken the decision to look elsewhere and maybe get a guarantee of more games and, hopefully, for his personal development that’ll prove to be the right decision.”

Nathan Ake, the 22-year-old Holland defender, and Dominic Solanke, player of the tournament at the Under-20 World Cup, are other young players to have left the Blues this summer. Chelsea have won the FA Youth Cup for the past four years but John Terry is the last Academy graduate to establish himself in the first team. England’s age-group teams have benefited from Chelsea’s youth talent and Southgate said: “The success of our junior teams this year, there’s a big debt to what Neil Bath (head of youth development) has done at Chelsea.”

Gareth Southgate was speaking at an FA Lidl Skills coaching day. The programme aims to give children and families better access to football.