Chelsea’s Under-18s suffered their first defeat of the 2018-19 season on Saturday morning as they went down 2-0 away to Tottenham Hotspur. A week after being held to a frustrating draw at home to Leicester City, Andy Myers’ new group of scholars discovered more of the lessons dished out by full-time academy football as they fell to goals in either half courtesy of Paris Maghoma and Armando Shashoua. Dan Davies…
It was an evening for learning lessons and finding perspective. When the team news ahead of the Development Squad’s Premier League 2 fixture at home to Derby County came out some 45 minutes before kick-off, social media was abuzz, for not only was Tammy Abraham involved at this level for the first time in more than two years, he was joined in an exciting front three by Callum Hudson-Odoi –…
A bunch of young Championship teenagers lead the way in this week’s Loan Report; four England youth internationals, four more goals, and a hell of a lot of promise. Headliners The League Cup often provides opportunity for the next generation of academy talent to step up and get their feet wet in professional football. Fikayo Tomori, Mason Mount, Kasey Palmer and Trevoh Chalobah have all however jumped in at the…
It was a frustrating start to home affairs for Chelsea’s Under-18s on Saturday afternoon, as they were forced into sharing the spoils with Leicester City, following a 1-1 draw at Cobham. The Blues, who had only dropped points at home to Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur over the entirety of the previous two seasons, were made to work hard throughout against a typically dogged and well-drilled Foxes team. They thought…
The new Chelsea Loan Army season is barely two full weeks old, but already we’ve had plenty of action to reflect on, and a healthy goalscoring start to the campaign. Headliners Three more goals came long over the past seven days, beginning with Mario Pašalić’s strike on debut for Atalanta. A substitute in their Europa League qualifier away to Hapoel Haifa, he entered the fray after an hour, and took…
Another Chelsea Under-18 season is off and running as the young Blues recorded a 3-1 opening-day win at Southampton on Saturday morning. Having previously come unstuck on the South Coast in each of their last two visits, the fixture looked to be a particularly tricky one to kick things off with when the schedule was released a month ago, but a resilient performance saw then emerge victorious. Late first half…
Well, how do you improve on that? We asked the same question a year ago when Jody Morris’ Under-18s went into the 2017-18 season off the back of an historic treble-winning campaign. Their answer was to go one better, securing a quadruple success in which they retained all three trophies – including a record fifth successive FA Youth Cup – and added the inaugural Under-18 Premier League Cup to their…
No one academy season is like the one that preceded it; the very nature of youth development encourages progression, change, and the eternal hope of feeding players through the system and into professional football. As we get ready for the big kick-off of the 2018-19 Chelsea academy season, things look markedly different, even by usual standards. We’ll cover a new-look Under-18 team tomorrow but today’s focus is squarely on Joe…
The Loan Report returns for another season – the ninth in a row on TheChels.net – and with 22 players already out and about, there’s plenty to sink our teeth into. Headliners Mason Mount, as he did so often last season, made the headlines on the opening weekend of the Football League campaign by scoring on his Derby County debut. Working under Chelsea legends Frank Lampard and Jody Morris at…
Europe’s most notorious loan empire has just finished another record-breaking season, but it might also be on the verge of finally downsizing. Over the past ten months, 39 players have played more than 80,000 combined minutes over 1050+ matches, scoring 99 goals, keeping 37 clean sheets, winning titles, securing promotion, lifting cups, and experiencing the heartache of relegation. It’s a familiar story to regular readers of the Loan Report, with…