TheChels.net – Chelsea FC Youth & Reserves
The island of misfit toys, so the story goes, is inhabited by unloved playthings. Isolated and unwanted, there they stay under the rule of King Moonraiser until someone wants them, and a toy is never truly happy until it is loved by a child. As the 2016-17 loan season begins in earnest we can apply some of this classic tale to affairs at Chelsea. Michael Emenalo is our King Moonraiser,…
Eight years ago this spring, fifteen young boys put pen to paper as official members of the Chelsea Football Club academy, Under-8s beginning their journeys amidst dreams of becoming the next big thing. This July, seven of them become the latest scholars in a long line of recent hot prospects coming through the system at Cobham along with three team-mates who have joined them along the way. It’s a hugely…
It seems as if we have the same conversation year after year on the Under-21 front. Questions about the quality and effectiveness of the Premier League structure abound relentlessly with prognostication from all-comers as to the direction things should be taken, whilst frustration sets in for Blues fans, players and staff alike at a perceived lack of opportunities to progress into the first team at Stamford Bridge. So, whilst it…
By any stretch of the imagination, by any definition and by any standard you wish to apply, the feats achieved by Chelsea at Under-19 and Under-18 levels over the past three years have been historic. The younger group became the first side in more than sixty years, and only the second ever, to win three FA Youth Cups in a row, whilst the Under-19s became the first team of any…
It’s been another hectic season on the Chelsea loanee front with almost eighty goals plundered by 24 of the 35 players to be plying their trade away from Stamford Bridge on a temporary basis. Nobody reached double figures but Marco van Ginkel’s eight goals led a host of players who weighed in with important strikes throughout the campaign and, exclusively, you can watch each and every one of them right…
The last three seasons have returned almost 3000 appearances and some 300 goals from dozens of Chelsea youngsters embarking on more than 100 individual loan moves. It’s an operation of immense logistical ambition on a scale never before seen in England (and only occasionally anywhere else) and yet, for all of that, can we really say it’s been a success? Speak to ten people with some level of knowledge and…
In the final Loan Report of the season we have two goals from a pair of the less-heralded loanees, and one of them in particular proved extremely decisive at the very end of the campaign. Headliners Papy Djilobodji has been something between a figure of derision and an encapsulation of everything wrong with Chelsea’s transfer policy since joining last summer but he has played pretty well for Werder Bremen in…
Chelsea’s penultimate Under-21 match of 2015-16 saw a young side travel north to Manchester City and come away from the Etihad Stadium with a hard-earned 1-0 victory. Despite giving up plenty to their opponents on paper, they proved more than a match on the mitch in a game that was wide open for long stretches before tightening up late on, but substitute Charlie Colkett pounced for an opportunity winner five…
The Loan Report turned up its second domestic title winner of the season this weekend whilst, with the season finishing for several teams, John Swift signed off his Brentford stay with another goal, and a fellow Championship player celebrated promotion. We begin, though, with Marco van Ginkel. Headliners The Dutch international midfielder was deemed surplus to requirements by a nondescript Stoke City team who are finishing the season in mid-table…
Chelsea’s wonderful Under-18 season came to a disappointing close on Saturday morning as a young team fell to a 3-0 defeat away to Blackburn. Daniel Butterworth’s first-half hat-trick proved their downfall as the demands of a hectic schedule took its toll on the group as a whole, but with many of the next generation earning important minutes and valuable experience, a number of positives can be taken away from the…