Previewing The 2023-24 Chelsea Academy Season
The 2022-23 academy campaign at Chelsea was interesting and largely promising, yet there was a sense of business left unfinished, of meat being left on the bone, and of work still to do. Mark Robinson?s Development Squad challenged long and hard for the PL2 title before falling short in the season?s final weeks, while the Under-18s saw a good start fall away to a tough middle before finishing strong under a change of manager.
The FA Youth Cup and UEFA Youth League challenges were certainly disappointing and ended prematurely, but there were senior debuts to savour for Bashir Humphreys and Omari Hutchinson, recruited to Cobham at different ages and from different pathways but successes each, plus the emergence of Lewis Hall as a first-teamer of some acclaim, the latest successful graduate to go from the Development Centres housing six and seven year olds all the way through to the bright lights of Premier League football. Of course, the very nature of academy football and youth development lends itself to a cycle of perpetual works in progress, of incompletion and of work still to do, and those motivations remain as strong across the management structure on that side of the road at Cobham as they move into 2023-24. Recruitment has been strong, led not just by Jim Fraser and company in the younger age groups, but through the lens of Neil Bath, Joe Shields and the Director-level collaborative effort that focuses more on the professional age-level competition. Those combined ef...
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