It’s fair to say that Chelsea will be crowned premier league champions by the end of the 2016-17 seasons. However, yes they’ve been very good this season under Antonio Conte, yes their stand out players such as Hazard, Costa and Kante have all been exceptional but the clubs ability to give young English talent a chance is none other than a joke. After their under 18’s triumphed in the FA youth cup final, you look at that squad and see such exciting prospects in the likes of Trevoh Chalobah, Mason Mount, Isaac Christie Davis and Dujon Sterling and you just don’t know if they will make their breakthrough even though they have shoed star quality in major youth competitions. However, they are still very young, most are not 18 yet but the talent is there, but what will happen a French, Spanish or German teenager will be bought for a ridiculous amount meaning chances are those English teenagers will be left to watch their opportunity getting stolen from them.
The English talent they have within their academy is no short of exceptional, players such as; Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Tammy Abraham, Nathaniel Chalobah and Lewis Baker, are all part of Chelsea’s under 23’s but like I mentioned in the last edition all this fresh young talent is loaned out, well most of them are loaned out while in Chelsea’s case the other half are left to rot in the depths of their squad until players reach the peak of their career and end up at a mediocre clubs with less chance of developing.
Behind Man City, they have the 2nd most expensive academy set up but I think this is not to develop young English stars into their first team but to simply make their academy look good to endorse Chelsea as a brand worldwide. It’s so frustrating as these Chelsea youngsters could really do the business in the premier league, take Patrick Bamford for example, he was absolutely brilliant in his loan spells at MK Dons, Derby County and Middlesbrough scoring a total of 43 goals and that still was not good enough to push him into the Chelsea squad or even been given a chance on the big stage. Now where is he, signed permanently for Middlesbrough and no disrespect to them but they are an average side and look to be dropping into the championship next season.
So many managers have all done the same at Chelsea from Carlo Ancellotti to Jose Mourinho to Antonio Conte none of these managers have gave young English talent a chance to prosper, so does this decision lie with the owner Roman Abramovich? Because surely these managers don’t have the same philosophy. I think Abramovich just wants to splash as much cash into the academy to make them look good rather than a developing academy.
Teams like Chelsea need to change their ways if England are to see a team/squad as good as Germany’s or Brazils.
