I would like to thank Sébastien Chapuis, Grant de Smidt, Tim Palmer, Priya Ramesh, @chelseayouth and Sam Tighe for their invaluable insight and time with regards to this article (and generally!).

Sébastien Chapuis is an English football television pundit on Canal+ and SFR Sport in France since 2013. He is currently studying to obtain his UEFA A Licence. Seb is the U19s Coach of Poitiers FC and has worked with young players throughout his coaching journey. You can find his full interview here. Seb once also wrote the definitive account of what went wrong for Mourinho and Chelsea in 2015-16 for WAGNH.

Grant de Smidt currently holds a CAF B Licence (Confederation of African Football) and is studying to obtain his UEFA B Licence. He has been a performance analyst at Prozone (STATS) and holds a Level 3 Certification from them. You can find his full interview here.

Tim Palmer is a football coach, writer, analyst and sports scientist. He has previously worked with the Socceroos in an analysis role at Prozone Sports, completed the FFA B Licence and is currently coaching at various youth levels in Australia. You can find his full interview here and you can find Tim’s previous work for WAGNH and SB Nation here.

Sam Tighe is sports journalist who specialises in video and tactical analysis, and a youth football aficionado. You can find his full interview here.

Priya Ramesh is a freelance writer on Dutch football. You can find her full interview here. Priya also contributed to our 2015-16 Season Preview.

@chelseayouth probably needs little introduction at this point.

~~ // A disclaimer: if I had £1 for every negative/sarcastic/apathetic comment I read about academy players or academy football, I could afford to buy Chelsea and play the youngsters every week. If you believe that in fourteen years we have not had a single academy player good enough to play 10 games a season, this article is not for you. Honestly, I get your viewpoint(s), but I am trying to save you some time. //~~

After an unprecedented level of success for England at youth level this summer, Bournemouth’s Aaron Ramsdale said, “we've got so much confidence. Half the team (England U19s) win every season with Chelsea, that massively makes a difference”. Looking at the excellent @CarefreeYouth’s tweet below, almost 25 per cent of England’s players came from Chelsea (or came through at Chelsea) this summer. They were key contributors at every level and as Ramsdale points out, their mentality is something that impacted the entire group. Trevoh Chalobah aptly summed things up on his Instagram, “we are born winners”.

Seeing Chelsea’s U18s completely dismantle Manchester City in the FA Youth Cup Final was eye-opening. They made a City side filled with immense talent look completely ordinary. This was a group of Chelsea players capable of beating their opponents in any fashion: physically dominant, technically brilliant and mentally robust, they are a joy to watch. Chelsea’s academy has been utterly exceptional for the best part of a decade. I would, however, wager that Neil Bath swaps every single academy trophy for just one of this golden crop becoming an established first team player.

Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the Manchester City chairman, recently spoke at length about the end goal of the City academy by condensing the process into a single question: “[…] how are we going to get these young men to be part of our first team?”. I would hope that his question is also something debated amongst the Football Board™ at Chelsea. Tim Palmer points out that while the answer to this question is complicated, it all starts with establishing “what is the club's vision and philosophy to youth development”. This concept underpins absolutely everything in this topic area. Tim states that “there isn't even a one-size-fits-all for individual player development or any particular coaching approach.” Still, our inability to produce a single first team player, post-JT, given the talent passing through the academy is alarming.

In Chelsea’s case, it is probably difficult to have an overarching philosophy that aligns with a set of coaching principles due to the ephemeral nature of the manager. Should the development philosophy, therefore, come from board level and be adhered to by the “head coach”? Chelsea’s vision appears to be a simple one: develop youngsters for profit and reinvest that money into more experienced players for the first team squad. There are people who are fine with that strategy and Chelsea’s recent trophy haul suggests, prima facie, it works. In which case, “we go again”. For many, though, the reduction of supporting Chelsea into an accounting exam is slowly diluting the connection with the club. If there is no emotional attachment to the players, why bother? Maybe I am an idealist, but the prospect of losing players who have been at the club since the age of 8 because we are afraid of playing them is sad.

It is at this point I will defer to Bill Belichick, Head Coach of the New England Patriots. Belichick is arguably the greatest coach of any sport ever. Listening to his assessment of the Patriots as they won Super Bowl after Super Bowl is fascinating. Crucially he contends that the result or outcome does not necessitate that the approach is correct – “playing the best doesn’t mean that you are the best”. Antonio Conte has already suggested much of his squad played well above their level last season. We won the title because “every player gave 120% or 130% in every game”. Chelsea have been phenomenally successful, but the question to ask is whether we could (and perhaps should) have been even more successful? Would a less chaotic approach have delivered more silverware? Would it encourage a manager to develop talent knowing that they would reap the benefit?

I feel strongly about having an academy presence within the first team squad: a view that was cemented after spending time with Lewis Baker earlier this year. He is not alone in feeling a deep connection with the club – a club he (and others) have been at for most of their life. These kids grow up at Chelsea and it becomes part of their identity, helping to shape them as players. Jérémie Boga, for example, has been at Chelsea since 2008. From my experience they want to make it at Chelsea: they understand the need to beat Tottenham, even at youth level. Certainly, I am not suggesting that this affection for the club is purely limited to home-grown talent. We are fortunate to enjoy fantastic relationships with many previous players. However, that is not something I see coursing through the current squad.

Michael Emenalo once stated that “there is a coordinated effort from everybody to want to make this happen. 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”. Then why are we purposefully creating a dichotomy? We are concurrently spending an inordinate amount of money on the academy each season, while offering the players who emerge no opportunities within the first team. In a world where Chelsea are happy to buy Romelu Lukaku for £17m and then send him on loan (with no guarantees he will return a Chelsea player despite his goal scoring record), what chance does a home-grown kid have?

“I think it's very easy these days to chastise young talent. Even if they're not you know, washing boots or mopping the dressing room, they still go through a lot at a very young age. Peter McVitie and I were talking about this last December. These kids have been through a lot in their 18 or 19 years. Their lifestyle has had to be almost entirely changed to revolve around football. These kids have had to leave home (at least in NL and the Scandinavian talents too) and live with foster families to play football at the big academies. I just think we need to cut them a bit of slack sometimes”

– Priya Ramesh

Think back to the Alexandre Pato debacle in January 2016. The Brazilian arrived at Chelsea overweight, with very little chance of getting match sharp let alone remaining a Chelsea player the following season. Why could we not have given his opportunities to an academy player? This is not about playing kids for the sake of it, but we spent half a season trying to get Pato fit at the expense of giving someone more deserving an opportunity elsewhere. We can talk about favours to agents and networking, but are we actually seeing anything positive off the back of that? Yes, we are great at selling players, but when it comes to bringing in world class players, where are they?

“But the manager picks the players!” I hear you cry and you are not wrong. The manager head coach is ultimately responsible for team selection and he can elect to either keep Nathan Aké in the side post-Spurs or drop him. No manager has had the guts to reward an academy player for a top performance, and until that changes we may continue to see a perpetual rising of false dawns. It is easy to hide behind the tone and conditions set by the club as a reason no manager wants to risk youth over experience. With the average Premier League managerial tenure sitting at around 475 days (1.3 years), the issue of instability is salient.

Why risk seeing what an Under 21 international can do, when you have a selection of full internationals at your fingertips? If a young player begins to earn trust and build a rapport with an existing manager, all that is thrown away when the coach is inevitably sacked or leaves. Football in the Premier League is becoming more and more about tomorrow and less about next week. Are managers even planning for the long-term anymore, knowing the reality? Why would Conte invest time in developing a young player when he is unlikely to see the benefit in 2-3 years’ time? In most cases we are simply buying more experienced players with slightly more ability than we have available. Ask yourself, is Antonio Rüdiger £30m better than Andreas Christensen?

Since Carlo Ancelotti’s last season (2010-11) Chelsea have had seven different managers take control of a first team match. All of those managers have different playing styles, philosophies and favoured personnel. It also follows that what they may potentially look for in a player differs greatly. Certain managers favour smaller technical players, while others will value physical traits. Unlike Barcelona, who try to appoint managers in line with a stylistic notion, Chelsea’s managerial appointments are diametrically opposed. How do you go from taking the direction of an André Villas-Boas project to returning to José Mourinho in a year? As an academy director, what kind of player are you trying to develop for the first team?

I often hear how academy players “aren’t ready” for first team football. When I asked Grant de Smidt about this he told me: “it depends hugely on playing style. A small player like Josh McEachran was ready at 17 because of the role he was asked to play; he rarely needed to be involved in duels and so forth. But under a different manager, other attributes are valued. For example, Guardiola might have liked Charlie Colkett but Mourinho preferred Loftus-Cheek for his size”. So, a highly touted prospect that has spent years dominating at youth level may not even be afforded a chance because he is not a 6’3” specimen. From an ability perspective, many people will recall McEachran’s debut against Newcastle – he ran the show as a kid and he was ready to feature more often. Yet, he was shoved out the door my Villas-Boas and his career trajectory has been woeful ever since. Had Ancelotti stayed, who knows where he might be right now.

The reality is that many of Chelsea’s kids are ready, but without opportunities they are never going to amount to anything more than training ground bodies. A player’s development curve also looks much different at Chelsea than elsewhere. So, simply stating “players leave and don’t achieve anything” overlooks the fact that they may have made it here. If John Terry came through the Chelsea academy system now, it is unlikely he would get anywhere near the first team. Why? He does not have the athletic traits desired of academy prospects and is not competing with 4-5 peak aged centre backs in the first team. I am not dismissing Terry’s ability, but he himself has said it would be a struggle to breakthrough now. Does he get the regular opportunities to show his otherworldly defensive traits because as a teenager he does not have pace? Terry grew into being a world class defender over time. He was not a world class prospect as a teenager. This is merely to illustrate a point that time and opportunities are the key in determining what we have. I do not want to miss out on another John Terry because a young player is not world class in his first few appearances.

A common theme about readiness when speaking to everyone for this article is the role that the manager plays. Carlo Ancelotti tried (or maybe was forced to by the lack of spending) to give more opportunities to youngsters. We have had 6 managers since Ancelotti: Villas-Boas, Di Matteo, Benítez, Mourinho, Hiddink and Conte. This instability has created a culture that requires the manager to win at all costs now, rather than look at a longer-term philosophy. Ancelotti was sacked for finishing second, while affording youngsters the most chances I can recall. After seeing that, is André Villas-Boas going to focus on cultivating youth or trying to win instantly? This was a manager appointed with trying to move on The Old Guard™ – do you think he cared one iota about the promising teenage midfielder he had in his midst? Even interim managers were brought in with similar tasks in mind. Guus Hiddink, during Chelsea’s most disappointing league campaign in recent memory, continued to play the same appalling players ahead of youngsters when absolutely nothing was at stake.

Returning to Coach Belichick for one moment, his thoughts on implementing a coaching philosophy are very applicable to Chelsea (and football in general): generally believing that it takes four years to fully install a scheme with the right personnel. I always try to look at examples from other sports and I think Belichick is a particularly poignant reference. If it takes 4 years to fully implement a system and have the required personnel, what is someone meant to achieve in less than 18 months? Does the “win-now” culture actually promote this eternal circle of short-term thinking? If no one in the Premier League is really producing players on a consistent basis, is this managerial instability a big part of that?

Below is a transcript from an interview Belichick conducted in 2016. Belichick is known for creating a concept called the “Patriot Way” and those three inimitable words “do your job”. In a sporting culture that is built to create peaks and troughs, Belichick has kept the Patriots around the top of the food chain for nearly two decades. If someone knows about creating a long-term winning culture, it is him. Here he talks about the difficulties teams face when changing coach as well as the time/challenges involved in actually installing a philosophy:

“You have to change the culture. I mean, normally one coach is different from the previous coach. You don’t see a lot of ‘Whoever the first coach is, the second coach is kind of the carbon copy of the first coach,’ or ‘the third coach is kind of a carbon copy of the second coach.’ I mean, you rarely see that. The coach that comes in usually has a different philosophy than the coach that left, so you have to try to implement that philosophy. That means you’re going to turn over a high percentage of the [squad] because the players that the other coach had don’t fit the new philosophy, so a lot of the players are going to have to change in part because of the philosophy and probably in part because of the [system]. I don’t think there is any shortcut to it. I know there are a lot of other people in the league that think there is, that after two weeks all of a sudden everything is going to change dramatically, but I’m not really part of that, I don’t buy into that” – Bill Belichick

Jim Cassell, a former Manchester City Academy Director, said “there is so much pressure at the top, managers want instant results. They don’t have time to work on players and grow them”. The approach taken by most Chelsea managers is aptly summed up in Chris Green’s Every Boy’s Dream: England’s Football Future on the Line “what do you do if you have a problem? Try a raw, young player or bring in an experienced international with maybe 30 caps under his belt that an agent can promise to deliver to your training ground within a week?” Where Chelsea managers have been sacked for finishing second and every trophy matters, is there room to integrate a talented kid?

Even if teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Bayern Munich do import a lot of their star names, they still afford more opportunities to academy graduates than Chelsea while (a) remaining as/more successful than Chelsea and (b) invariably having a better standard of player than Chelsea. If a manager at Real Madrid can give thousands of minutes to graduates (even the less spectacular ones), why is it so hard at Chelsea? Nacho is certainly not a world beater by any stretch of the imagination, yet he can still play 2,301 minutes of La Liga football for Real Madrid. Their culture of sacking managers is similar to ours and they put a similar price on success.

If you were to include teenagers Real Madrid bought for the first team Marco Asensio played 1,077 La Liga Minutes. By comparison Ruben Loftus-Cheek has played 1,200 minutes across all competitions in three seasons. In light of Neil Bath’s comments, Loftus-Cheek’s case is particularly sad. Bath said that “realistically, to break into a first team like ours you need to have played 150 to 200 games at senior level […] if a player goes out at 18 or 19 years old, that means they will be 22 years old before being able to really compete for a regular place in the team”.

Regardless of your opinion on Loftus-Cheek, the club made him their highest paid academy player and equally made a big deal about him being part of the first team squad. Why, then, if Bath’s comments are how Chelsea see the development cycle, has Loftus-Cheek played the equivalent of just 13 games in three seasons? When it was apparent he was not getting enough game time, why did the club not take the decision to loan him out after his first season? Again, this is not about your perception of Loftus-Cheek’s talents, but merely pointing out that the club talk a good game but we rarely see it in action. This is a club who deemed Ryan Bertrand not good enough, to then go and spend nearly £60m finding a replacement. I do not think that Marcos Alonso offers a lot more, if anything, compared with Bertrand. We have spent ~ £60m on left-backs to arrive at a position where we still ended up submitting a £61m bid for Alex Sandro. We could have, theoretically, kept Bertrand and spent that £60m on a top-class winger or midfielder. Or alternatively just spent the £60m on Sandro (or someone of his ability) to start. That should be the modus operandi – act like a big club.

“At Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern last season, Messi, Iniesta, Pique, Busquets, Sergi Roberto, Rafinha, Nacho, Carvajal, Lucas Vazquez, Morata, Koke, Gabi, Saúl, Torres, Lucas Hernandez, Alaba, Muller, Hummels and Lahm all played 1000+ league mins for their clubs and are all academy graduates. Many different ages and paths to get there but the unifying factor is that they were all ultimately given the chance. I don't buy that the Premier League is better or more competitive than their leagues, it's that top Premier League teams don't behave like elite clubs, they sign second and third-tier guys instead of elite guys they can then surround with academy players”.

– @chelseayouth

Without delving into the dark spots of the 2015-16 season, Cesc Fàbregas and Nemanja Matić regularly dropped truly mediocre performances; yet, Loftus-Cheek could not get consecutive starts. “But the manager sees him every day in training… / <insert other excuses>” – yes, but he also saw Fàbregas and Matić every match too and still played them. In fact, any senior player can afford to have multiple below par performances and still start regularly. An academy player can have a solid game and not be seen of again. It is the way of the Chelsea world. Chelsea had the perfect opportunity to play Loftus-Cheek through all his growing pains and stamina concerns on a weekly basis and they bottled it for a tenth-place finish. To what end?

People can argue about the relative strength of the Premier League compared to La Liga, but with the Premier League’s declining performances in Europe year-on-year, are we really pulling the “strength” card? Nathaniel Chalobah was not good enough to start a single game when N’Golo Kanté and Nemanja Matić looked tired? Lewis Baker is not good enough to play against Brighton or Huddersfield? Jérémie Boga is not good enough to play at least 1,000 minutes next season? 30 minutes (home/away) against the bottom 10 in the Premier League (600 minutes) + starts against the fourth seed in the Champions League group (180 minutes) + starts in all cup competitions (180 minutes minimum) = almost 1,000 minutes of football (conservatively). Is that so hard to manufacture for a top class youngster? The way some fans talk about academy players is as if we are dropping a Sunday League competition winner into the side and not a top calibre youth international.

Madrid have this excellent way of supplementing their star-studded squad with serious rotational minutes from their graduates. You can look at their relative ages versus Chelsea’s younger core, but equally we were not asking Chalobah to challenge Toni Kroos and Luca Modrić, but two players he is more than capable of deputising for. Chalobah was arguably Chelsea’s most ready academy prospect and he played just 159 minutes of Premier League football. This is not a Chelsea side considered to be a European powerhouse anymore (ranking 13th in UEFA’s coefficient table or 10th by the European Club Association). The Atlético Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain ties should provide some context as to where Chelsea stand. We want to get back to that top level, but it will take time and clever squad management.

To provide the correct perspective, since 2003-04 only four Chelsea Academy players have started three or more Premier League games for the club: John Terry, Robert Huth, Ryan Bertrand and Ruben Loftus-Cheek (huge thanks to @ChelseaChadder for the data). Loftus-Cheek only qualifies if you add in completely meaningless starts. We have to be asking ourselves if we can do better than that? If we can produce impactful squad players versus paying £30m+ for them, why don’t we? We can then invest top dollar into buying elite players and not worry about squad depth as much.

Football continues to hurtle in an increasingly corporate direction. A cash flow arms race, where liquid investable capital remains the end goal. In an era defined by the introduction of Financial Fair Play, the ability to make cash has increasingly pressurised clubs to generate new income streams (as well as maintaining a perpetual flow of existing cash). Is it a coincidence that three of the richest clubs in world football regularly make the semi-finals of the Champions League (Tom Markham’s model should be trusted ahead of pretty much everything)? Or that they can attract (and afford) the best players? In its simplest form football clubs seem to run under one unifying principle: “how much money can we invest in the squad after we’ve paid for everything?!” What separates these clubs from the rest is that they legitimately act like elite clubs. They buy top players and supplement their squad with graduates.

This relentless pursuit of resources, particularly in the Premier League cauldron, means the concept of academy player development has gone out the window for “big clubs”. If you subscribe to the notion that academies exist to produce players for the first team, the footballing world has long since stepped over that marker. You are either good enough now or the loan army awaits. As no Chelsea academy product has made any inroads into the first team since John Terry, we can potentially use another reference point to determine what “good enough” actually means. At Chelsea, only Thibaut Courtois has gone on loan and come back to establish himself as a first team player (I’m aware of the Lukaku/De Bruyne/Bertrand etc. points, but they aren’t here…). If Courtois is the benchmark, his level is a rather ambitious set of criteria to hit for any young player:

Be an integral part of a title winning side in a top European league;

Have significant Champions League experience (preferably final experience);

Be the first-choice player in your position for your respective national team;

Be top 3 in the world in your position.

If that is the baseline for a player to be given a serious chance at Chelsea, then we might as well close the academy doors tomorrow and just focus on buying as many finished articles as possible. There is not an 18-year-old born of this world (my Messi caveat being he is alien) who is instantly going to be at that level. We are talking a true 1%-er. Sébastian Chapuis defines “good enough” as “being physically capable to deal with the intensity of the duels, the rhythm of the game, being able to play even with good players closing you down and delivering”. Adding that “the most important thing is to be consistently good (and deliver) over a string of games”. Without opportunities, most top young players can neither develop this consistency nor adapt to the rhythm of first team football. Not everyone is a Kylian Mbappé or has such a clear pathway to first team football as he did at Monaco.

“If you're a talented, first-team-ready 18-year-old at a club like Chelsea (or Real Madrid etc.) you're in trouble. Good enough to play a role, but not good enough to start? This is a huge problem. Win-now clubs like Chelsea won't risk you - particularly when you need to get back into the Champions League - and you can miss years of development. Ruben Loftus-Cheek says hello.”

-Sam Tighe (Bleacher Report)

You might think that all this is fine given we won the league, but developing young players and winning trophies should not be incongruous. The future of Andreas Christensen, in many respects, is going to be the proof in the Chelsea pudding. Speaking with @chelseayouth he told me that “Christensen establishing himself would definitely class as a success. He signed at 16, came through the academy system, loan system; it would validate the model they put in place and Emenalo would love it”. I do not think anyone doubts the Chelsea board and their ability to generate money from this investment system they have cultivated. However, Christensen offers them the opportunity to prove that the development system is not simply an excellent money-making exercise.

Chelsea have arguably the best academy in world football. They were the first team to retain the Champions League (albeit in the UEFA Youth League format) and likely would have won it again had they been granted access as the holders. The level of talent being produced both individually and as a collective stands up to anything in Europe. Why, then, have Chelsea struggled to convert 5-7 years worth of top European talent into a single first team player? Should it even be seen as an issue when other domestic sides are also struggling?

I was made aware of Norbert Elgert after his effusive praise of Chelsea’s Academy in a UEFA Youth League match in the 2014-15 season. Elgert’s coaching career at Schalke influenced the likes of Julian Draxler, Benedikt Höwedes, Mesut Özil, Manuel Neuer and Leroy Sané to name a few; he is widely considered to be an authoritative figure on youth development within Germany. He spoke after a UEFA Youth League game between Chelsea and Schalke in 2014-15 where Chelsea put on one of the most complete performances you are likely to see: “Chelsea were clearly the better team in every department and my team had no chance […] maybe they are better than the Barcelona team who won the competition last year.” He went even further stating that “I see no player in my 1st XI who has a chance to play in the 1st XI of Chelsea [Academy]”. That Schalke team featured Manchester City’s £50m man Leroy Sané.

Years on from that encounter Leroy Sané has played the equivalent of 69 senior games. In fact, Sané has played more senior minutes for Manchester City in the Premier League alone (1,787 minutes) than the entirety of that Chelsea side has played in three seasons across every competition for Chelsea’s first team. No player can be expected to reach their potential playing such a little amount of football. The question also remains as to whether Sané would even have got a chance at Chelsea. His rapid development came because Schalke afford chances to talented kids.

“A lot of the ‘solutions’ to youth development depend hugely on the club vision and philosophy. To me, the overriding conclusion that comes from academic research is that there is no one-size-fits-all model. There isn't even a one-size-fits-all for individual player development or any particular coaching approach. I think - and I just think, there is nothing to support this beyond my own opinion - that the keys in youth development are flexibility and adaptability. What works for one player won't necessarily work for another.”

– Tim Palmer (Prozone Sports)

Chelsea are not alone in their inability to successfully bridge the gap between the academy and first team. However, not every club has Chelsea’s embarrassment of riches available to them at the academy level. Had any of this Chelsea crop come through at Ajax, Anderlecht, Porto or Schalke et al. we likely would have been competing to buy them at some point. We are talking about players who are consistently among the best and brightest in their respective age groups both domestically and on international duty. Despite all the accolades and envious looks, not a single one has come close to establishing themselves as a genuine first team player. It is not a question of whether they are good enough, statistically speaking one of them should have been by now. If you continue to block pathways into the first team with players who are good, but not spectacular, kids have no chance.

Are they actually ready to make the jump? This is certainly where Sébastien Chapuis has some interesting thoughts. His definition of “ready” brings with it some wider critical thinking: “I believe in the ‘if you’re good enough, you’re old enough’ mantra. Which leads us to define what ‘good’ means? There are different components to it: being physically capable to deal with the intensity of the duels, the rhythm of the game, being able to play even with good players closing you down, and delivering. There are a lot of young players able to deputise for a one-off game (because of injuries, suspensions) (Editorial note - Tomáš Kalas at Liverpool may be a very good example of this). The most important thing is to be able to be consistently good (and deliver) over a string of games”. The issue with this definition, not that I am arguing the content, is that an academy player can have a superb cameo and then never seen again for months. When was the last time an academy product not named John Terry started 10 Premier League games in a row? Or 5?

Seb makes a very good point about the “rhythm” of a football match. It is not something that I have necessarily thought about in great detail, but how often does a youngster join a match and just look out of sorts? This first-team rhythm is something that can be disrupted by a string of lower level loans. Séb states that “experienced players are prepared to be consistent”. By their very nature they are used to the dynamics of senior football. A young player, conversely, is unlikely to be able to jump in and out of a side and still drop 10/10 cameo performances. Seb often views the world through a more realistic prism than most, saying that “football management is incredibly hard for managers. There is no way a competent manager would jeopardise his chances to win more games by playing someone who is not ready, or benching someone good enough”. If this is the reality, it puts the entire question of development into perspective. It is, according to Grant, “so hard for a RLC (or any youth prospect) to develop without minutes, and crucially, to be match fit to actually do well when a chance arises”.

Is the Dominic Solanke situation going to be a watershed moment for Chelsea’s Academy players? Martin Samuel wrote about how Chelsea’s youngsters could be seeking to move away from the club before they sign their “big” second contract: “Chalobah's contract expires next summer. Chelsea say they want to talk about a new one. Yet, to what end? So, they can sell him for top price at some indeterminate point of their choosing?” It is a fair point and one that seeks to treat young players like securities on a financial market. The time value (one for you option traders) attributed to these assets decreases massively if they are not tied to a contract that runs into their mid-20s. Players entering the last year of their contract are either sold cheaply or run down their final year. “Even if he is frozen out this season, what is he actually missing? One start when it no longer matters? A few substitute appearances that lead nowhere?” Chalobah took matters into his own hands; opting to move and play, then stay and bench warm. Solanke gave up a year of his career because he was so adamant that chances were not going to come at Chelsea. If he scores 15 goals for Liverpool next season? Great?

I asked Grant whether training at Chelsea or playing at any level was best for development. His response suggested parallels with Seb’s rhythm idea: “I think @chelseayouth is onto something when he says that players get conditioned to play at a lower level. Bamford has played so much championship football that he became conditioned to that level and couldn’t progress. Equally, I’m certain about the idea that Loftus-Cheek spending 3 seasons as Chelsea’s 19th player is not the way to go. He desperately needs a reality check and actual minutes. I think the same applies in Holland – hard to step up after that”.

So what other approaches are there? Chelsea’s instability at the managerial level makes internal development seemingly impossible. But elsewhere, is it an approach that could work?

“Tottenham do [youth development] completely different under Pochettino. It's been interesting this year to hear him speak a number of times about how players with potential to make the Tottenham first-team squad in the future are deliberately kept in-house so they can train under him and develop to fit the very specific profile of player that the head coach wants. It's a completely different approach. But it's not necessarily better or worse to Chelsea, it's just different. To my mind, both clubs are producing similar level players. They just have different beliefs about the type of player that should be produced, and therefore, the process of developing that player. Pleasingly, the decision-making within each club's youth development program is, as far I can see, consistent according to their own vision.” – Tim Palmer

Palmer’s description of the Tottenham model contrasts entirely with Chelsea’s approach, one that is “geared around developing players to be the best they can be, regardless of what that ‘best’ looks like […] I don't think the club particularly cares what the player looks like and how they play (in the sense they don't mind if they produce a Kanté or a Fàbregas, as long as they develop the player according to their potential)”. It makes sense given that Chelsea do not know whether a powerful box-to-box midfield prototype is required in the first team one season and then the next a cultured passer. A huge element of luck is therefore required at Chelsea – you have to hope to be the right style of player for the right manager at the right time. Does Jérémie Boga get to have his fantastic cameo against Arsenal without a calamitous injury to Pedro?

“I wish clubs took greater care in where they sent players on loan; I wish they actually kept profiles on clubs around the world so they knew who might suit who, and could therefore call at the beginning of the summer and say would you like to take Jake Clarke-Salter for the season? We think he'd suit you perfectly.”

– Sam Tighe (Bleacher Report)

Chelsea’s loan army approach to developing talent is one that attracts the most ire from the outside world. How dare Chelsea stockpile talent in such a fashion! It also, currently, has not produced a single regular first team player from the academy. Andreas Christensen may buck this trend next season, but it is hardly a ringing endorsement that Chalobah played just 159 minutes of Premier League football last season. So, what is the goal here? Hope someone turns into a world class superstar before giving them games? Or use the loan as a shop window to pinch small profits here and there? Would we have known that Mbappé was a rare talent, or asked him to prove himself on loan at Bristol City first? You know... just in case…

Marcus Rashford’s emergence at Manchester United was less by design than it was complete luck. His arrival came a few months after he was completely marked out of a game by Fikayo Tomori, as Chelsea U18s swept Manchester United U18s 5-1 in the FA Youth Cup. Harry Kane spent four loan spells looking like the dictionary definition of mediocre (14 goals in 56 games), before exploding at Tottenham (70 goals in 109 games). Kane, in particular, seems to have followed a well-trodden path at Chelsea. Although the one caveat has been that despite a less than stellar series of loans, he still was afforded a tangible opportunity. Kane was not a superstar talent like Mbappé, but is slowly turning into one because of faith and chances (if he is not already). The amount of people who saw Kane as a one season wonder was astronomical. Had he been an import like Gabriel Jesus, people would have been fawning over him after one goal. Kane had to have back-to-back seasons of complete and utter quality before he was acknowledged.

What I have admired about the elite clubs over the past few seasons is that they value the presence of academy graduates. Whether they buy these players back in or simply promote where appropriate, the proof is there. Surrounding genuine world class talent with 5-6 graduates who are all capable of playing significant minutes is a winning formula. Florentino Pérez coined the phrase the “Zidanes y Pavones”, which basically meant to have the Zidane’s of this world Madrid needed the Pavon’s. Pavon representing young Real Madrid graduates from La Fabrica. There is a tradition, history and pride in these graduates formulating part of Madrid’s success. They have been through the club’s machine and made it out the other side. Some may turn into an Iker Casillas or Raúl, while others may simply become dependable squad players like Nacho or Raul Bravo. They key factor here is that Madrid continue to afford opportunities to their graduates, one way or another, and value their experience as a product of their academy.

Matthew Whitehouse in The Way Forward: Solutions to England’s Football Failings summed the situation up perfectly: “the problem with sides like Manchester City and Chelsea, and others across Europe like Madrid and PSG, is that they are clubs with the means to buy in the best talent and thus don’t need youth academies. The irony is that they are very good developers of young players because they can afford the best facilities and coaching. However, if they cannot offer these players a route to the professional game between 17 and 21 then they are doing a disservice to their players”.

Ultimately, if the board are sincere about having some academy presence within the first team, then changes are required. Honestly, it is not difficult to manufacture minutes for a top prospect. Mohamed Salah, who could barely control a football at Chelsea, managed to play 500 Premier League minutes in half a season. So, it cannot be difficult to find 1,000 minutes across all competitions for an academy player. The club must either make development a key performance indicator for a head coach or give the head coach long enough to implement an entire philosophical overhaul without pulling the plug halfway through. Either way the coach must feel confident enough in their own future to want to commit to developing players. Or, as seems to be de rigueur, we simply sell our talented kids and buy them back (if they want to come back) at a later point.

Ending on a really interesting point from Tim: “a lot of clubs have a vision and philosophy based upon what was successful in the past five years, when we should really be creating a vision and philosophy for what will be successful five-ten years from now”. Chelsea’s academy has always seemed ahead of the curve in this respect. Maybe it is time for the club to follow suit. If we are so successful swimming in chaos, what could we achieve in infinitely calmer waters? There is clearly no prescribed formula for success, but without opportunities and a little faith, we may never see if the next JT exists.