Chelsea will revive their pursuit of Everton’s John Stones this summer despite a recent slump in the England centre-half’s form but insist they retain confidence in a hugely successful youth team to provide “the next John Terry” in the near future.

They visit Manchester City in the first leg of the FA Youth Cup final on Friday, in the holders’ seventh appearance at this stage of the under-18s competition in the past nine years. Chelsea’s under-19s retained the Uefa Youth League this week, beating Paris Saint-Germain with an 18-man matchday squad who are all eligible to play for England, and the technical director, Michael Emenalo, has pinpointed players such as Jake Clarke-Salter and Fikayo Tomori as outstanding talents for the future.

Although the intention is for younger players to be offered a platform to succeed when Antonio Conte takes up the reins as the first-team head coach at Stamford Bridge after Euro 2016, the overhaul of senior playing staff will prompt another move for Stones. The 21-year-old was close to joining Chelsea from Barnsley in January 2013, when he opted instead to move to Everton for £3m, and was the subject of three failed bids last summer.

The third was worth around £37m and, although Stones has struggled this term, a number of suitors retain faith in him. Manchester City will test Everton’s resolve but Chelsea have made clear their interest and will join clubs including Manchester United and Barcelona in pursuit of the player. He is one of a number of defensive targets under consideration by Emenalo and the recruitment department, guided by talks with Conte, as the club seek an overhaul of the squad this summer to ensure their exile from the Champions League is limited to a solitary season.

Yet for all the additions anticipated, Chelsea’s underlying desire to promote from within – with a strategy of loaning out players who have graduated through the youth teams – will remain intact in the belief the current crop of under-18s is the strongest to have emerged through the academy in recent years. “There is a co-ordinated effort from everybody to want to make this happen,” said Emenalo when asked about the desire to promote homegrown players into the first team. “The owner wants it, the first-team coach wants it, the academy manager wants it, I want it, the board want it.

“Everybody wants this to happen, and not just because it is nice to have this backbone that fans can relate to and support. But with the investment we are making, where we think the game is going and the competition we have, you can’t just buy your way out of trouble all the time. We compare the guys in our academy sides to those we see across Europe and other clubs in England and we think we have very, very good young players who should be able to come through.

“It’s a massive job to try to keep them patient, but from next season there will be signs because [Bertrand] Traoré came back from Vitesse Arnhem to be in the first team, Ruben Loftus-Cheek is here and will stay here, and they can look at somebody like Todd Kane, who has been outstanding [at NEC Nijmegen] in Holland and should come back and really compete for a place in the squad at right-back. There are signs this will happen and it will feed back to these players who are in the academy, and they will have hope.

“Andreas Christensen [on loan at Borussia Mönchengladbach until 2017] will be a superb player. On the English front, as I know from talking to the England Under-19s coach Aidy Bothroyd, Clarke-Salter and Tomori [who is a Canada Under-20s defender but still eligible for England] are going to be outstanding players. If they continue the way they are going now, they will make it because they have great talent.” Another youngster, the striker Tammy Abraham, was the subject of a loan offer from an unnamed Champions League club in January but preferred to remain at Stamford Bridge.

Terry, who is expected to depart in the summer under freedom of contract, is the last Chelsea youth-team graduate to enjoy regular involvement in the senior setup, and that record has counted against an academy which has claimed the FA Youth Cup four times in the past six years. Although Josh McEachran, Ryan Bertrand and Nathan Aké have been promoted by Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Di Matteo and Rafael Benítez respectively, parents and agents now cite the lack of an apparent pathway for youngsters into the senior set-up when entering negotiations with the club, pointing to Tottenham Hotspur as a rival where homegrown players are perceived to thrive more regularly.

“That’s what they hear,” said Emenalo. “I try to tell them the reality with Tottenham, that just the one key player [has come through in Harry] Kane. Dele Alli they bought, Tom Carroll is a fringe player and Eric Dier they bought. So with all the hoopla about Tottenham, it’s just the one player. We try to remind them it’s not just a Chelsea problem. We want them to be patient because [the parents] want it quicker than the boys want it or the boys are ready to take it.

“We love the idea of having players who love Chelsea, and that is important. Everybody is talking about JT, and people need to understand the level of respect we have for him and, say, Frank Lampard. Those guys showed what the club is all about, and made the Drogbas, the Makeleles and Ballacks fall in love with the club. So we need the next John Terrys, Ashley Coles and Frank Lampards coming through because they bring wonderful spirit to the organisation.”