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When Mason Mount stepped on to the Wembley pitch on Saturday afternoon against Bulgaria, he became the eighth Chelsea academy product to make his England debut in the last two years. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Tammy Abraham, Jack Cork, Dominic Solanke, Nathaniel Chalobah, Declan Rice and Callum Hudson-Odoi went before him and, in accounting for almost half of the last eighteen overall debutants in that time, the Blues extended an unrivalled recent…

For all of their remarkable exploits in recent years, Chelsea have struggled to impose themselves against Aston Villa in Under-18 football during that time. After scoring 24 times against them in three matches during the 2014-15 season, they’ve not beaten them by more than a single goal at Cobham, and only achieved the feat once in total since. So, despite emerging with a fourth successive win to maintain their 100%…

Throughout Chelsea’s recent successful seasons at academy level, the first few matches haven’t always laid a marker for what was to come. The odd hiccup early in the campaign has been a bit of a common feature and so, for Ed Brand’s latest crop of youngsters to come out of their first three matches with nine points, including trips to Arsenal and Southampton, is a very encouraging sign for the…

The headlines will lead with news that Michy Batshuayi and Antonio Rüdiger guided Chelsea’s Development Squad to a 3-0 win over Liverpool on Monday night but, make no mistake about it, this was a confident and swashbuckling team performance that offered all manner of encouragement for the season to come. Certainly, having two seasoned pros in the ranks helped, and Batshuayi grabbed a brace, but there were also promising outings…

The start of a new season is a typically exuberant time, full of excitement and possibility, before the grind of the ten months that follows begins to take effect. Thar wide-eyed wonder at what might be possible brings out both the best and worst in people and, in academy football, that typically means scintillating moments of promise mixed in with no little error. Throw in playing in front of Frank…