It was announced yesterday (Wednesday) that agreement has been reached for Patrick van Aanholt to spend the rest of the season at Leicester City, where he can add to first-team experience already racked up at two Championship clubs last season and, having made his debut back in March, in eight appearances with Chelsea.
The 20-year-old has started three times in the senior side this season, up there with Gael Kakuta's four starts and three for Josh McEachran and Jefrrey Bruma. Of the four players it is he who is underway when it comes to scoring goals for Chelsea, having found the net in the Carling Cup against Newcastle when he shot past his Dutch Under 21 team-mate Tim Krul.
It is Patrick's potential pushing forward down the flank that has caught the eye during his involvement this season which also includes three substitute appearances in the Champions League.
He is fortunate to be on good terms with the prime exponent of the art of the attacking left-back, Ashley Cole, who recognises some of the younger version of himself when watching Patrick play, which Cole has done ever since the youth team's run to the FA Youth Cup Final in 2008.
Time moves on and this season it was Patrick among the spectators at Stamford Bridge last week for a Youth Cup win over Arsenal.Eleven days earlier he was impressing on the same pitch in the senior FA Cup until a small hamstring tear brought his game to an end 20 minutes early.
'I hope the supporters are enjoying watching me play. When I am running down the line warming up, some of them are clapping me which is good,' Patrick says as he considers his season so far. When the point is made to him, he agrees he has yet to properly show what he can do defensively compared with his raiding runs and shooting, which saw him smack the post in the home match against MSK Zilina.
'I have also played Newcastle and Ipswich at home and I haven't had a right winger up against me yet who is really quick or who has been a real test. I've tested their right-backs and their right wingers more and that has been good.
'Having Ashley around has been amazing. Every time I see him play and see him train I am learning from him and that is good because he is one of the best in the world and can tell you exactly what to do.
'He can remember being my age and he's trying to help me and give me some information. He says when he was my age he was the same as me, very good going forward and that as soon as you get older you will get used to defending, and that is what I am trying to do, I am learning it now.
'We get on very well me and Ashley, he is my good friend and some days we just chill out or talk on the phone.'
The learning process started in earnest for Patrick when he joined his first football club at the age of just three.
'My dad told me that ever since I was born I was going to be a footballer because he was always buying me toys but the only thing I played with was the football.
'At three years old he put me in a local team and then when I was 10 I went to a Division One club, Den Bosch. I then went to PSV Eindhoven and played there two years, making my debut in a friendly game. After that season I joined Chelsea, and that was four years ago.
'Of course it was a difficult decision to leave my family to come to a different country but a knock on the door from a club like Chelsea doesn't come often and I think I made the right decision and came to the right place.'
There is football elsewhere in his family. Patrick's cousin, Leroy Fer, is vice-captain at Feyernoord and he has a younger cousin in the Under 18 side at Ajax.
He came to Chelsea the same summer as compatriot Jeffrey Bruma which helped with the adjustment but Bruma is 14 months his junior. Patrick turned 18 soon after his arrival and was a year above a youngster leaving school in England and starting full-time with the Academy. However any advantage that might give was negated when he played mostly in the reserves that first year, dropping into the youth team for the run to the Youth Cup final where he partnered Bruma in central defence.
In the first leg at the Bridge he came up against a Manchester City striker by the name of Daniel Sturridge who got the better of them to open the scoring.
'Of course I remember him [Sturridge] from that game. I was just getting to know what type of player he was but he was doing well. We drew the first leg and were unlucky to lose in the second leg but Daniel was injured for that game.
'When I first came I thought the Youth Cup was just like in Holland but here it is more exciting and it was a good experience, but my centre-back days are behind me now.
'When I first came they told me I'm not tall enough to play centre-half and when I was playing in the reserves I was playing left-back all the time. When I was centre-back I couldn't move forward like I am doing now and that is the quality of my game now.'
Too old to feature in the Youth Cup by his second season (2008/09), he enjoyed a strong year in the reserve team and was the pick of the regulars in that side, on one occasion as a left winger.
By 2009/10 it was time for first-team football. Firstly he was sent to Coventry for half a season where he made 20 appearances in the Championship. There was no immediate plan for another loan but then promotion-chasing Newcastle needed someone to take the place of injured left-back Jose Enrique.
The Magpies wanted Patrick to remain beyond his initial one month (seven games) but with injuries to Cole and Yury Zhirkov during the second half of last season, the Chelsea squad needed his presence. He made his debut as substitute away to Portsmouth in March.
'The loans were different,' Patrick notes. 'Coventry were mid-table and Newcastle were at the top of the Championship. Coventry used to win, draw then lose but Newcastle was winning, winning, winning all the time. It is good to play in a winning team but it is also good to experience a team that is losing but trying to move up.
'My debut for Chelsea was different again because I didn't come here to play for Coventry and Newcastle, I did that to get experience. Making my Chelsea debut was the ambition when I came four years ago.'
His ambition now has moved on to establishing himself in Carlo Ancelotti's side but recovered from his hamstring problem, first comes the quest for more first-team know-how.
With Zhirkov soon to return from injury and 21-year-old left-back Ryan Bertrand home after a three-year tour of loan duty in the Championship, the path is clear for Patrick to seek that at Leicester. Sven Goran Eriksson's side lost left-back Greg Cunningham, himself on loan from Man City, to a broken leg at the beginning of the month.
'I was speaking with Chelsea about going out on loan again and now I am looking forward to getting some more experience, then coming back and playing,' Patrick says.
His international development with the Dutch Under 21 side is set to continue in the next few weeks as well and as the remaining months of the season are played out, Chelseafc.com will follow the progress of Patrick over land and sea and at Leicester.
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