Chelsea’s Development Squad kicked off the new Premier League 2 season with a goalless draw away to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Friday night. A marquee match-up between the two best on-pitch academies in the country opened the campaign some three months after they met in a third consecutive FA Youth Cup Final and, despite many of those involved having featured in those showpiece spectacles, there was plenty…
The 2017-18 Chelsea Academy Season Preview: Under-18s
We often say at the outset of each new Under-18 season that it’s becoming increasingly harder to continue the feats achieved by the previous generation. The class of 2017-18 are this year tasked with living up to an historic treble trophy haul from 2016-17, that included a fourth successive FA Youth Cup, and that was secured in record-breaking fashion. It was all the more remarkable for the fact that it…
The 2017-18 Chelsea Academy Season Preview: Development Squad
The bar has been raised. Not only do Chelsea’s academy teams have to live up to a comprehensively successful 2016-17 campaign in which their Under-18s completed a clean sweep of trophies in the coming season, they approach the big kick-off at the end of a summer that has seen a host of those who have gone before them move on from Stamford Bridge in search of pastures new and opportunities…
The Loan Report: August 1-6
We’re back for a new season! No fewer than 25 Chelsea players have already secured themselves loan moves for the 2017-18 season and, with the English Football League getting underway this weekend, the Loan Report returns to keep tabs on each and every one of them. Headliners The most notable performance of the opening day of the campaign belonged to Jamal Blackman, who helped Sheffield United to a winning start…
Young Blues win in Bergerac
Sébastien Chapuis is an English football television pundit on Canal+ and SFR Sport in France since 2013. He is currently studying to obtain his UEFA A Licence. Seb is the U19s Coach of Poitiers FC. You can follow him on Twitter @SebC__. Here’s a little report from my trip to Bergerac which has been a pleasant week end, in a pretty little village I never went to before, after an…
The Chelsea Academy Class of 2017
A great many things herald the start of a new season but, for those in the academy world, the first day of work for a group of fresh first-year scholars is truly the sign that things are underway again. So it is that 2017-18 kicks off for defending Premier Academy League and FA Youth Cup champions Chelsea as they welcome ten new 16 year-old prospects charged with picking up the…
The Loan Report: A Pre-Season Primer
As Chelsea academy players return for pre-season, a hive of activity has already begun to determine just how well-stocked the 2017-18 Loan Army is set to become. With Danilo Pantic (Partizan Belgrade), Nathan Baxter (Woking) and Fankaty Dabo (Vitesse) already having secured moves, the Blues have wasted little time in getting down to business, and plenty more are expected to follow. To celebrate the beginning of another campaign, here’s something…
Summer Self-Scouting: Matt Miazga
As part of our review of the 2016-17 Chelsea Loan Report season, we’re focusing on ten of the 44 players who embarked upon temporary moves away from Stamford Bridge. The ten players have been selected as being amongst the most interesting of the group; be it for their proximity to the first-team squad under Antonio Conte, for the league they’re playing in, the progress they’ve made at a tender age,…