Youth & Reserves

To say Chelsea have something of an affinity with the UEFA Youth League would be something of an understatement. They’ve won a remarkable 40 of the 47 matches they’ve played in the competition, accumulating a +100 goal difference along the way, and have reached the final in each of the last four occasions they’ve played in it. However, they only have two Lennart Johansson Trophies in the silverware cabinet back…

Chelsea’s Under-18s remain unbeaten this season, but saw their 100% start come to an end away to Brighton on Saturday morning, with the Seagulls enduring the same fate at the end of a hard-fought 1-1 draw. Both teams came into the match with four wins from four so far this term; the hosts topped the table by virtue of having a superior goal difference, but the promise of a fascinating…

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…