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The more things change, the more they stay the same. For the fourth time in six seasons, Chelsea and Manchester City will contest the FA Youth Cup Final, and in the two campaigns they didn’t square off in the showpiece occasion in 2018 and 2019, each racked up an additional Final appearance. You have to go back to 2011 to find the last time one of them didn’t reach the…
In a year where everything we know has been turned upside down and nothing is what it seems any more, football can bring a soothing familiarity to settle you back down. For the eighth time in ten seasons, Chelsea have reached the FA Youth Cup Final, and set up a fourth clash with Manchester City since 2015 after beating their neighbours Manchester United 1-0 at St George’s Park on Friday…
33 players, 33 comments. October’s Loan Report features a bumper crop of Chelsea loanees, driven by a pandemic-influenced transfer market in which any plans for trimming the fat around the edges of this particular arm of development strategy have been put well and truly on hold until calmer waters can be found. With plenty to catch up on, let’s get stuck in. Ethan Ampadu, Sheffield United Had to bide his…
September has seen the 2020-21 season get in to full swing across Europe and with it has come the expansion of the latest Loan Army. Almost three dozen Chelsea players are out on loan now and, with the domestic transfer window in England for Football League clubs still open until mid-October, it’s set to grow further still. Uwakwe finds early success Every player wants to make an instant impression when…
Six months has rarely felt so long. 190 days after Chelsea beat Everton in PL2 action, competitive academy football returned with the Development Squad’s opening EFL Trophy fixture away to Oxford. Andy Myers’ boys suffered a narrow 2-1 defeat, and will be frustrated with the result on the balance of play, but pleased to be back playing. It was a new-look Development Squad too, with 17 year-olds Levi Colwill, Lewis…
The end of the 2019-20 academy season was as abrupt and as unexpected a development as most involved at this level will ever experience. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide left a near six-month hiatus from competitive football, but the coming week sees the return of meaningful action at this level where, once again, Chelsea figure to be keenly involved when it matters most. What a twelve months. Emboldened…
And we’re back. The 2020-21 Loan Army season started five days before the 2019-20 season finished, when Victor Moses and Inter were on the losing side in the Europa League Final against Sevilla, drawing a line under the longest campaign any of us are likely to witness in our lifetimes. Earlier that week, however, Danilo Pantic had made his debut for Serbian Premier League side Čukarički, kicking off another year…
Sometimes things just don’t go to plan. Saturday’s FA Cup Final is a case in point; losing to Arsenal wasn’t part of the script as far as Chelsea were concerned, but it happened, and now Frank Lampard and the club have to plot a path forward and continue to make the promising progress they’ve shown throughout much of the extended 2019-20 season. On an individual level, the same thing happens…
First things first, nobody’s pretending it was a perfect season. We know where the club is, where it needs to improve, and how much work is ahead in order to close the gap on Liverpool and Manchester City. That being said, it was a season of vindication. It was a season that proved that giving young, home-grown players a chance is a choice, not a by-product of winning or of…
The final Loan Report of the season wraps up the loose ends from the last week in England and, while action continues for a while yet in Italy, we’ll keep track of that on Twitter. England Premier League Aston Villa saw out the season and achieved Premier League survival without Danny Drinkwater, who made just three appearances and played 207 minutes there. Championship There was far more intrigue in the…