Every Chelsea fan should know that we have one of the best youth systems in the world, but in the last 10-15 years we haven’t produced many quality players; our last successful youth academy graduate is our current captain John Terry which embarrassing to be honest. We have seen some potential talents come and go but never seen them make a push for a first team place.
Josh McEachran was dubbed to be the next Frank Lampard and look at him now; currently playing for Brentford in the Championship as we sold him for £500,000 in the summer. McEachran made his first appearance for the senior team when he was 17 years old against MSK Zilina of Slovakia in the Champions League, where he impressed coach at the time: Carlo Ancelotti. After 11 domestic appearances for the blues, McEachran was then sent out on loan to Middlesbrough, Vitesse, Swansea, Watford and Wigan over the next 5 years.
Another potential prospect that never made the grade was France’s Gael Kakuta. The blues brought him into our academy from Lens but controversy surrounded the deal as Lens reported Chelsea for ‘tapping up’ Kakuta and convincing him to cancel his contract at the club, Chelsea were banned from registering players for 2 years and after all this trouble Kakuta only made 6 domestic appearances at the club and spent 5 years out on loan in various countries including Spain, Italy, Holland and England but never managed to impress the Chelsea staff. In the summer of 2015 Kakuta was released by Chelsea and signed by back to back Europa League winners Sevilla with the Spanish club having to pay a compensation fee to Chelsea as the player was under the age of 24.
Chelsea have made many mistakes with the Academy over the years but surely they have learnt from their mistakes as they currently have the crem dela crem of youth systems. This summer the club sent out Isaiah Brown, Dominic Solanke and Lewis Baker out on loan to Vitesse; all these players are rated highly by manager Jose Mourinho with the Portuguese manager saying “If Lewis Baker, Isaiah Brown & Dom Solanke don’t play for England, blame me” which is probably a massive confidence boost for not only these 3 players but for the players who are currently in the academy that dream of playing for Chelsea.
Chelsea Youth Academy won the UEFA Youth League and the FA Youth Cup in convincing fashion with players like Loftus-Cheek and Musonda showing their quality in both tournaments. Loftus-Cheek has already been promoted to the senior team and has recently been promised a run of games in the first team to prove himself after Chelsea’s woeful start to the season as the current Premier League champions only have 8 points from 8 league games and sit 16th in the table.
Charly Musonda has shown his talent on and off the pitch as the young Belgian likes to show off his samba skills on Social media and  was one targeted by some of the worlds best clubs whilst he was in the Anderlecht academy; Arsenal, Chelsea, Barcelona and Man City all wanted the talented Belgian’s signature with Chelsea beating them all to get him.
I think the club should start promoting more youth players as it allows the club to create world class players without having to pay the usual large sum of money they would have to if they wanted someone like Isco or Antoine Greizmann. Some people may say “why buy eggs and flower to make a cake when you can you buy cake somewhere else” and they have a point but when you produce something of your own it feels more refreshing and you feel more proud of it.
Another point is that we wont have to spend an incredible amount of money on ‘home grown players” like we almost did on John Stones, as we could promote players like Kasey Palmer who is in sensational form at the moment with 7 goals in his last 4 games and with the new FA home grown rules coming up in the next couple of season you could see Kasey Palmer, Musonda  and Tammy Abraham give squad numbers at the Club.
Finally my last point is that many national teams could prosper if Chelsea promoted more players; in the next 5 years I can see Musonda, Loftus-Cheek, Palmer, Boga, Baker, Brown and Solanke all making it into their national side’s but this will only happen if the players are given the chance at Chelsea or out on loan; our loan system has become massive over the last couple of years as we currently have 33 players out on loan with a couple of full internationals in that list but some of them are up and coming talents. If Chelsea use the loan system to improve talent instead of a business I can predict a bright future for Chelsea football club.
