Chelsea Reserve & Youth Team

[Dwmh]

Just now, ROTG said:

Great response and not challenging anything you say, with the exception of more praise should be given to both Arnesen and Enenalo for their structuring of the academy and continuing to keep Roman believing in it.

On the coaching side Bath and Co need recognition for achieving so much and continuing the success.

This isn't the same as the old forum used to be....  🙂
I'm not so sure though.  We opened for business at 7 or 8 before most others.
We had 2 or 3 years of success as a result.
We had no success with kids that arrived  in older age groups.
Our success with kids that were born later has been no better than say Arsenal who caught up with our plan.
We stopped winning all the Youth trophies 3 or 4 years ago.

There will be people who know the details of all this a lot better than I do.  But I can't help thinking that everything we did turned out to be replicable by everyone else.  So hard to credit individuals other than the person who decided to take U8 training seriously.

[Sciatika]

Isn't the joy of it that it was replicated and more kids had the opportunity to be the best that they can be?

We are also starting to see girls from the academy, such as Beever-Jones who played on Saturday, and Cerys Brown and Jorja Fox.

[ROTG]

1 hour ago, Sciatika said:

Isn't the joy of it that it was replicated and more kids had the opportunity to be the best that they can be?

We are also starting to see girls from the academy, such as Beever-Jones who played on Saturday, and Cerys Brown and Jorja Fox.

Absolutely its great to hear that the same level of coaching is also on the girls side.

One can only hope Stewart, Winstanley and Shields keep there noses out of the academy, both boy and girls

[chiswickblue]

16 hours ago, ROTG said:

Great response and not challenging anything you say, with the exception of more praise should be given to both Arnesen and Enenalo for their structuring of the academy and continuing to keep Roman believing in it.

On the coaching side Bath and Co need recognition for achieving so much and continuing the success.

I don't know if this was ever clarified, but I don't think that Arnesen and Emenalo had that much direct input into the academy teams, I understand their roles as being more related to recruitment, including youth recruitment.

So Arnesen did bring in the likes of Bruma and van Aanholt, but he wasn't involved in the structure of the academy, coaching, or the signing of kids under 16 from other English clubs - which is where the real success lies.

Emenalo was much more focused on recruitment and players closer to the first team, but also including the loan army. The buy to loan approach disappeared for a few years, but now seems to be back in a more limited version thanks to the FIFA international loan retrictions.

[Dwmh]

21 minutes ago, chiswickblue said:

I don't know if this was ever clarified, but I don't think that Arnesen and Emenalo had that much direct input into the academy teams, I understand their roles as being more related to recruitment, including youth recruitment.

Thanks for the clarification, I know you are very informed on these things, I'm not.
Now that everyone has the same model, do you think there is anything the club can do or is doing to repeat the success of a few years ago?

For me the good thing about Emenalo was that the club was peaceful when he was here and he seemed to work with Marina and the mangers well.  That didn't seem to be the case in Arnesen's time.
Arnesen was here in 2012-13 when De Visser drove around the Benelux countries on his Mobility trike and picked up tons and tons of young talent paying full prices and only taking playes 2 or 3 other clubs also wanted.  A huge success as the price of players jumped and there were almost no failures in that set (unless you count selling players for a big profit who go on to do more as a failure).

Not sure what happened in Summer 2017 when we bought Rudiger but also a whole host of players who had recently appeared in Italy or very near and who all flopped small or flopped large.  Emenalo left in Nov 2017 to go to Monaco.  Not sure how responsible for the 2017 follies he was.



 

[chiswickblue]

I think there's a constant race between the top clubs to snap up the best players in smaller clubs academies, and also from each other. Players want to move to Chelsea because they know the club has a very good recent record of producing players that play in top flights around Europe, which creates a virtuous circle. We can fall down when we sell off good academy players without giving them a chance. But young players are still willing to take the risk, as they know that another top-level club will give them a chance, even if Chelsea don't. Let's see how long this lasts.

My reading of the 2017 situation was that Emenalo was sidelined as the club wanted to give Conte the sort of players he wanted. Emenalo left and we had a disastrous few years in the transfer market.

[Sciatika]

On 17/10/2023 at 07:45, Sciatika said:

Isn't the joy of it that it was replicated and more kids had the opportunity to be the best that they can be?

We are also starting to see girls from the academy, such as Beever-Jones who played on Saturday, and Cerys Brown and Jorja Fox.

It seems Neil Bath is taking on a new role that will include both the male and female academies.

[JaneB]

3 hours ago, Sciatika said:

It seems Neil Bath is taking on a new role that will include both the male and female academies.

New roles for Bath, Fraser and Francis | News | Official Site | Chelsea Football Club (chelseafc.com)

I missed this at the time.

Don't know if this is what you mean?

[Sciatika]

From ChelseaYouth who is pretty trustworthy.

 

[ROTG]

On 17/10/2023 at 15:34, chiswickblue said:

I don't know if this was ever clarified, but I don't think that Arnesen and Emenalo had that much direct input into the academy teams

My angle was more of them being them championing for the academy and i believe in Arnesen case when he first came to the club was involved in setting up a structure and hierarchy of the academy, not forgetting thank to RA the club got a state of the art training complex in cobham.

If memory serves me Emenalo first job was to overhaul the clubs scouting set up

What every it reaped rewards that may not be seen again with the current gang of three directing sporting operations

[Ham]

Absolutely scandalous. The club are going to charge £1:99 per game to watch the U21s and U18s.

https://www.chelseafc.com/en/news/article/live-stream-chelsea-games

This was always free. 

[Michael Tucker]

3 hours ago, Ham said:

Absolutely scandalous. The club are going to charge £1:99 per game to watch the U21s and U18s.

https://www.chelseafc.com/en/news/article/live-stream-chelsea-games

This was always free. 

Times change mate. And 1.99 per game isn't exactly exorbitant is it? We'll see if there's enough interest moving forward.

[Ham]

1 hour ago, Michael Tucker said:

Times change mate. And 1.99 per game isn't exactly exorbitant is it? We'll see if there's enough interest moving forward.

For the development games I think charging is totally wrong. 

[Michael Tucker]

1 hour ago, Ham said:

For the development games I think charging is totally wrong. 

Understood. We'll see what sort of crowds they draw now.

[Dwmh]

I'm more interested in first team streams.  They used to be available from midnight for free.
Is that changing too?

 

11 hours ago, Ham said:

For the development games I think charging is totally wrong. 

Begs the question(s), is the Academy investment for the long term value of the team and brand?
Or is it a way to create a short term sellable asset and make money.

10 hours ago, Michael Tucker said:

Understood. We'll see what sort of crowds they draw now.

Not sure we will ever see the streaming crowd.  Do they report view numbers?

 

[Sciatika]

1 hour ago, Dwmh said:

Begs the question(s), is the Academy investment for the long term value of the team and brand?
Or is it a way to create a short term sellable asset and make money.

Are those things contradictory?  Surely that depends on the player.

[Dwmh]

16 minutes ago, Sciatika said:

Are those things contradictory?  Surely that depends on the player.

🙂 no not really.  I was just making the point that brand development decisions have a lot of paralells with player development.
So is the club cashing in on brand demand generated by the first team instead of using the Academy to boost commitment to the club.

[Dwmh]

https://thechels.net/2023/previewing-chelseas-2023-24-fa-youth-cup-challenge/

Quote

Previewing Chelsea’s 2023-24 FA Youth Cup Challenge

Posted By chelseayouth on December 8, 2023

In each of the last three seasons we’ve previewed Chelsea’s FA Youth Cup campaign with something of a proclamation that it was about time the Blues brought the famous trophy back to Cobham once again. Five straight triumphs between 2014 and 2018 set a certain level of expectation and history – the club is the second-most successful in the competition’s history behind Manchester United – that has not been met since those record-breaking antics ended.

........................

 

[Bison]

None of the sporting directors can claim credit for him so he won't make it here.

In 2-3 years times he'll be playing for another Premier League team whilst we watch Mudryk fail at the basics every game. 

[xceleryx]

27 minutes ago, Bison said:

None of the sporting directors can claim credit for him so he won't make it here.

In 2-3 years times he'll be playing for another Premier League team whilst we watch Mudryk fail at the basics every game. 

Heard the same about McEachran, Clarke-Salter, Mancienne, Kakuta, Colkett, Feruz, and the plethora of others over the years. 

[Bison]

29 minutes ago, xceleryx said:

Heard the same about McEachran, Clarke-Salter, Mancienne, Kakuta, Colkett, Feruz, and the plethora of others over the years. 

Also heard the same about Reece James, Christensen, Tomori, Mount, Livramento, Gallagher, Solanke, Tammy, Gilmour etc. All proven Premier League quality players comfortably better than a lot of rubbish we've wasted money on over the years. 

[Dwmh]

1 hour ago, Bison said:

Also heard the same about Reece James, Christensen, Tomori, Mount, Livramento, Gallagher, Solanke, Tammy, Gilmour etc. All proven Premier League quality players comfortably better than a lot of rubbish we've wasted money on over the years. 

Are they?  Livramento and Gilmour are still trying to prove themselves.  Christensen had just one season as first choice rather than covering for injuries (proven at La Liga standard perhaps).  Tomori ditto.  Solanke is still not a proven PL striker IMO.  In the end nor was Tammy I am sad to say.
 

[Rob B]

3 hours ago, Bison said:

Also heard the same about Reece James, Christensen, Tomori, Mount, Livramento, Gallagher, Solanke, Tammy, Gilmour etc. All proven Premier League quality players comfortably better than a lot of rubbish we've wasted money on over the years. 

Marc Guehi,  Jack Cork, Ryan Bertrand, Hudson-Odoi,  Colwill, Aina, Lewis Hall and that’s before you even make a case for the likes of Declan Rice, Musiala, Olise, Nketiah etc.

Not saying all of these are world beaters (some are) but if there’s one thing I find it difficult to criticise it’s the talent within our academy.  I would say Cobham is about the surest bet in the country in terms of producing Premier League standard footballers, so Chelsea Youth is bang on the money with his tweet.

[Mark Kelly]

6 minutes ago, Rob B said:

Marc Guehi,  Jack Cork, Ryan Bertrand, Hudson-Odoi,  Colwill, Aina, Lewis Hall and that’s before you even make a case for the likes of Declan Rice, Musiala, Olise, Nketiah etc.

Not saying all of these are world beaters (some are) but if there’s one thing I find it difficult to criticise it’s the talent within our academy.  I would say Cobham is about the surest bet in the country in terms of producing Premier League standard footballers, so Chelsea Youth is bang on the money with his tweet.

Cobham certainly appears a safer bet than Santos. 

[Bison]

39 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

Cobham certainly appears a safer bet than Santos. 

And the Ukrainian league.