Pre-amble: for those not familiar with my earlier articles for Youthhawk I am an avid Chelsea fan and this is a piece that primarily deals with Chelsea from a fan’s perspective rather than a neutral one.

For a youth coach Schalke’s U19 manager Norbert Elgert is a big deal in German football. A man with a colourful background (a chimney sweep whose later career as a professional footballer was hindered by a kidney ailment) he’s gone on as a long-serving youth coach at his home-town club to positively influence the careers of Julian Draxler, Mesut Ozil, Manuel Neuer, Joel Matip, Max Meyer, and Leroy Sane.

An impressive figure, raised into the Westphalian nobility of toil and sweat, he is a natural leader with intelligence, integrity, charisma and strength all cast in Germany’s industrial working class tradition. When he speaks – in whatever language as he’s conversable in several – it’s wise to listen.

It’s a shame for Chelsea then that it seems to have been ignored that no youth team opposition manager has ever been more effusive in their praise of the Chelsea youth system than the one whose opinion has the most weight to it. In the first two seasons of the UEFA Youth League Chelsea played Schalke five times and it was their fourth meeting in the first group match of the 2014-15 campaign that moved Elgert to eulogise what he claimed was one of the biggest achievements he’d seen in youth football.

Over those five contests Schalke proved themselves to be one of the toughest opponents Chelsea have faced in European youth football and, under Elgert, undoubtedly the best tactically versed, something Chelsea U19 manager Adi Viveash alluded to before the September 2014 match. It was quite special on that occasion to see Schalke’s bespoke high pressing game – which had caused Chelsea so many difficulties the season before – spectacularly dismantled by Chelsea’s technical ability and knowledge in possession.

Despite an unusual line-up that featured Dom Solanke on the right wing, Izzy Brown as a striker and Ola Aina as a centre-back, it remains to my mind the best I’ve ever seen a youth team play and that was because Schalke pushed Chelsea to the limits of their ability as no other team would that season. For seventy minutes they asked questions of Chelsea as they pressed high and with players of the quality of Leroy Sane – who would score a fine goal at the Bernabeu in the senior Champions League later that season – looked to break quickly on the counter. Despite having played well they were deservedly 4-1 down by the sixty seventh minute. The result however was immaterial to the bravura quality of the football that was being strung round them.

While Chelsea are now rightly held up as an example of excellent internal development of young English talent, that side owed much to the scouting department who found the likes of Jeremie Boga, Charly Musonda, Andreas Christensen, Jay Dasilva and Charlie Colkett. It was they who held this, quite incomparable, youth team together and a year and a half on passages of play are still indelibly clear in my mind.

Most revolve around how elegantly Chelsea brought the ball out from the back under pressure through the skill and distribution of Dasilva, Christensen, and Colkett before Musonda and Boga advanced that play and linked up with Dasilva coming forward. Beyond these individuals it was a wonderfully balanced team where they all covered for their team-mates weaknesses and enhanced their strengths.

Nowhere was this emphasised more than the defensive midfield positions where Loftus-Cheek and Colkett’s skill-set’s were diametrically opposed. One pacey, the other not, one powerful, the other not, one tall, the other not, one a fluent dribbler, the other comfortable in possession and masterful at shielding the ball but unprepared to commit players, one whose game was all based on short passing, the other who had every pass in the book, one whose tactical knowledge was limited, the other extensive; both able to dictate the game in their unique ways. On their own both have major weaknesses, together they’re an immense unit who know each other’s games intimately from playing together for several years.

It all added up to a performance that Elgert was visibly in awe of after the match: “I see no player – and I like my players – but I see no player in my first eleven who has normally a chance to play the first eleven of Chelsea (said while pointing at the Cobham academy pitch behind him). Chelsea, after this achievement today I can say is, for me, the great favourite for the title.” Considering Leroy Sane has now played forty four times for Schalke since then and debuted for Germany this is a significant quote. It’s also important because Sane is objectively a better player than Kenedy who in the Chelsea squad hierarchy is ahead of the youngsters who in the opinion of Elgert are better talents than Sane. At this point it should be clear that something is wrong at Chelsea in their valuation of their own player’s aptitudes.

It intensely annoys me, as I sense it does Adi Viveash, that this side is not given the respect it deserves both internally at Chelsea, and as a result in the wider game (the great irony of this is that Elgert often complains that his players are conversely over-hyped in Germany as a result of Schalke’s prior success in youth development). The fact that Ola Aina, who despite his excellence wasn’t even in the side’s top five most talented players, is reportedly being sought after by Arsenal, Liverpool, Napoli and Dortmund should be a good indicator of how much talent was in that side.

That, apart from Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s token forays in the first team squad, all that talent should be held in reserve while Chelsea endured their worst season for twenty years is palpably ridiculous and doubtless part of the reason why many Chelsea youth players are now considering their futures at the club. If Dele Alli’s development can accelerate ahead of Loftus-Cheek’s while Tottenham’s position in the table has consistently been between 6th– 2nd while Chelsea’s has been around 16th – 10th what chance do youngsters have when Chelsea return to the upper regions of the table?

Michael Emenalo has recently sought to redress the image of Chelsea’s youth policy and while I have no great enmity for Emenalo I would quite like to hear his response to this series of questions: Why, when Andreas Christensen was nearing readiness for the first team, did Chelsea buy Kurt Zouma? Why, when Jay Dasilva was waiting in the wings, was Baba Rahman bought? Why, when Jake Clarke-Salter and Fikayo Tomori were excelling, was Matt Miazga bought (not to mention anything of Djilobodji or Hector). Why, when Chelsea had all of Bertrand Traore, Jeremie Boga and Charly Musonda, was Kenedy bought? Why were Pato and Falcao signed on loan when Chelsea had Dom Solanke and Tammy Abraham? Who sanctioned all of this and why, and how does this square with Emenalo’s claim to the parents of Chelsea’s youth players that they should trust him that Chelsea are looking out for their children’s best interests?

The buying of superstars is one thing but the gifting of youth players pathways to those less talented but slightly more experienced and to whom the club owes far less than to their own internal produce, shows that youth players are little more to the club than the lowest graded investments in a spread-betting system were investments are not simply rated on the rewards that can be reaped from them but the overall risk/reward ratio on which Chelsea have perpetually favoured the smallest risk which returns the smallest, but most certain, reward. (It’s also important for parent’s to remember that in spread-betting systems waste is inbuilt in the calculations as it’s assumed that the riskiest gambles – which in the Chelsea system are youth players – will not pay off and there is no need to go to any great length to enhance their chance of paying off as they are covered by the lower risk gambles.) Chelsea have used this approach since the days of Mike Forde (who was in the habit of referring to players as assets) but this business approach should not be applied to the development of human beings who do not behave and perform in their predictable ways of inert assets (as well as being morally questionable).

In the press Emenalo attacked the idea that Tottenham are a more attractive option than Chelsea for youth players by stating that Spur’s successes with youth had been overstated. He in turn understated it by claiming that only Harry Kane was one of their own as Tom Carroll was merely a squad player, and Dele Alli and Eric Dier signings. He conveniently disregarded the likes of Danny Rose, Nabil Bentaleb and Ryan Mason and omitted the most crucial factor which is that all these internally produced Spurs players belong to the 90-94 generation (which wasn’t all that impressive compared to many of those now in their academy).

The question then must be how does their progression compare to the players of Chelsea’s 90-94 generation. No impartial observer would ever argue that at the ages of 16-18 Tottenham’s group of youngsters were superior to the likes of Gael Kakuta, Josh McEachran and Nat Chalobah who were all the stand-out players in their international age-groups. The question for Emenalo is how are they doing for Chelsea nowadays compared to someone like Kane who was always behind Chalobah?

Kane is an interesting example in this debate because he was put through the same system of loans that Chelsea’s players were and wasn’t particularly successful with his last stint before returning to Tottenham spent largely on the bench at Leicester (then in the Championship) where he scored twice in thirteen games. Once given a chance by Sherwood for Spurs he scored three in three. (This is not how assets are supposed to behave).

Conversely Chalobah had a brilliant loan at Watford in the Championship when he was 17-18 and when ready for Premier League football was pushed back to the Championship where a concatenation of events lead to a wasted year. Still, as with Kane, Chelsea could have saved it by then playing him in the Premiership but at that point they practically abandoned him and he’s never looked like making it at Chelsea since (or looked anywhere as near a good a player as he was at eighteen with the freshness of indomitable youth now lost forever).

Something else Emenalo didn’t mention is that Spurs used to be as bad as Chelsea at giving opportunities to young players until in a moment of desperation, where all else had failed, they ended up with Tim Sherwood as their manager who gave chances to Nabil Bentaleb and later Harry Kane. The appointment of Pochettino was a perfect synthesis as he was looking for an upwardly mobile club with an excellent academy (it’s no coincidence that all the clubs he’s managed are famed for their academy’s) and Daniel Levy was finally looking for a manager who would get the best out of their young players after they’d wasted the Bale money. Spurs have only become the club of youth in the last two years and in that period they’ve already reaped major dividends from it.

The biggest difference between Chelsea and Tottenham is that the latter are now a club who prioritise youth in one particular way and it comes from the most significant thing Pochettino has said about youth promotion, and that is that he will not sign players who block the pathway for youngsters. However good those potential signings maybe he’ll always believe in the talent and value of Tottenham’s youngsters.

Emenalo’s critique of Tottenham lightly rode over the fact that Chelsea’s problems integrating youth do not result from the same policies around talent acquisition and giving players chances that Spurs apply, but the opposite ones (something that can also be seen in the integration of Josh Onomah this season while his Chelsea peers who beat his Tottenham side in the FA Youth Cup watched on from U21 football and foreign loans).

Emenalo would not be alone in arguing the value of Chelsea’s acquisition of young talent, and it’s true that Zouma and Kenedy are good players who could well go on to win the Premiership title, but they are hired hands, rather than sons of the club who were raised in the family, and that tradition should be paramount at every football club that calls itself a club, rather than a corporation, because without that established base the hired hands themselves cannot then be inducted into the family (something Emenalo clearly accepts).

Perhaps more importantly the club’s youth players have all been educated in the same style of football. Compatibility of style is something Pochettino has talked about this season as he refuses, unlike most other Premier League clubs, to sign players for the sake of it, insisting their attributes all fit into one coherent system. This has been the root for much of their success and the failing of many other expensively assembled teams that have given no thought as to whether the pieces they buy actually fit together so long as they have more and better looking pieces than anyone else.

Chelsea’s academy sides are interchangeable in style with only the individual players and their particular aptitudes moving up and down while all the teams play in the same format. At only one level in the whole club does this change and that is the men’s senior side (with the women and girls teams also following the same model as every other Chelsea side). Here the question is not whether the youth players could cope in the senior team but whether Ivanovic and Azpilicueta could survive in the academy model?

The answer is no as neither possesses the basic technical or tactical skill-set required in possession where the full-back is the most important player in the side. If the full-backs in the academy teams are not two of the fastest and most comfortable players on the ball then the structure of the team breaks down as the ball can’t be moved subtly from defence into midfield. Once there you don’t effectively have four deep lying midfielders and once the ball’s in the attacking third you don’t have two high quality auxiliary wingers.

This is just one example of how the first team is dislocated from the rest of the club and it’s down to the board to set this into line rather than pandering to the cult of different managers personality’s. Moving from the Chelsea youth sides to the senior one should be no more challenging than jumping directly from the U15s to U18s as several fifteen year olds at Chelsea have successfully done due to their exceptional talent.

More than the lack of promotion of youth this schizophrenic identity is the biggest problem Chelsea face. It goes some-way to explaining why Jose Mourinho had so little time for the academy by the end of his Chelsea tenure as their football, which Elgert so admired, is the antithesis of Mourinho’s and was why he continually promoted the most physical players and not the most talented. The main argument for integrating youth players is that the only way this identity problem can be solved – and it runs back to Mourinho’s first stint, and Chelsea attempted to solve it, unsuccessfully, with the signings of Hazard, Oscar, and Mata – is by bringing through the players who are already playing the system they want.

To be fair to Emenalo it’s very clear Chelsea do want the next John Terry to appear, they just don’t want it enough that they’re prepared to sacrifice something for it. It’s the most basic law of physics that if something is to go forward an equal force has to go back, and it’s much easier for a club like Chelsea if that sacrifice is money spent on transfers to achieve success rather than to even risk slowly drip-feeding youngsters into the team as Man City have done with Kelechi Iheanacho this year. (It is particularly annoying that Tottenham and City, who were both handsomely conquered by Chelsea in last years FA Youth Cup, have managed to get a player from each of those sides to 15+ appearances over this season in which they’ve competed for Champions League places while for a mid-table Chelsea side, the nearest is Jake Clarke-Salter with one substitute appearance (against Aston Villa where the whole youth team could’ve played and still have thrashed them)).

Most self-deluding is the talk about Chelsea being patient with youth (as they were with Kakuta, Chalobah, and McEachran) when the truth is that it’s their impatience for success that is directly harming their prospect of long-term success and maintaining the schizophrenic status-quo. Slowly developing the youngsters in the first team would be a demonstration of patience. Keeping them away from the first team for fear of what might happen is not a demonstration of patience as they claim (and parents are right to be impatient for their sons to be challenged. It’s easy to see Marcus Rashford has developed far more from first team Premier League football than anyone ever has out on loan or playing in the U21 league).

Here it becomes hard to understand how using either of Charlie Colkett or Kasey Palmer from the bench in an end of season mid-table match for the last twenty minutes, instead of Falcao, is difficult. Most Chelsea fans would find it difficult to justify Falcao being on the bench never mind made making another completely ineffectual appearance. And yet that exact scenario was enacted against Swansea as Chelsea flopped to a 1-0 defeat. Both for the future and the present it was a decision that did nothing but show how truly stacked the odds are against succeeding as a youth player at Chelsea.

Commitment from the club and player is the way only youth development can work and commitment means discontinuing other lines of action that are not productive towards that goal, which would mean no more blocking of pathways with the likes of Miazga and always looking for opportunities to introduce players into the team; and most importantly opportunities to give them responsibility, not shielding them from it for fear they might fail.

The use of Loftus-Cheek as a no10 – a position he is completely unsuited for in his conception of the game – due to the fear of giving him responsibility in the position he is suited for is a case in point. How is he supposed to develop if they do not give him responsibility? That is how people grow in any walk of life, something that should be apparent to anybody who can remember moving from adolescence to adulthood.

The saddest thing about Emenalo’s predicament is that he sees the way football is going and he explicitly acknowledged the improvement in the academy system which in ten years will see a club like Man City featuring a largely home-grown side. This can be confidently asserted both because Iheanacho has carved a small pathway at City, but more pointedly because City’s younger academy sides are so jaw-droppingly good that any manager who is not even particularly interested in youth promotion will not be able to get away with not promoting them as the City board would appear to see the youth players as central to the club’s future.

Here is the saddest thing because Chelsea had a five year head start on City and they’ve got about two years left before that advantage is completely lost and City and Tottenham will be left with foundations for the future that are firmer than Chelsea’s. If Chelsea do promote youth now they will establish a precedent and make themselves the no.1 club in the south that parents want their players to go to, leading Chelsea’s academy to become ever stronger. If that doesn’t happen the opposite effect will occur, and the academy will become stigmatised.

Yet there is still the slightest chance of the advantage Chelsea hold being made good on and it all comes down to Antonio Conte and what he makes of the youngsters in pre-season. He is likely to be the last manager before that advantage is fully eroded and all the obstacles which have been outlined above can be counteracted by a manager who believes in youth. Upon arriving in Liverpool Jurgen Klopp lauded the quality of the talent available to him and promised them opportunities. It’s possible that had Jose Mourinho been handed the same talent he would have equally happy, not because he saw them as positives to developed upon, but because he would’ve seen them as not being good enough that he had to worry about making it appear he was integrating them into the first team, without actually integrating them. It’s all down to the manager’s perspective.

Now if Conte needs some motivation for playing the youngsters it would be good for him to keep in mind that the thing that unites Kelechi Iheanacho, Marcus Rashford, Alex Iwobi, and Joe Gomez is that they’ve all lost to Chelsea in the FA Youth Cup, it’s about time they lost to those same Chelsea players in the Premier League.