Chelsea Academy season review: Part 1 - The U18's League

Another year comes to a close and it has been another very successful one for the Academy here at Chelsea. Only narrowly missing out on massive success at the last hurdles, it has still been a season full of promising young players and huge prospects. This will be the first of a four-part season review of the academy and the first part will be covering the U18′s league.

Usually the league tables never make for a good reading for Chelsea, and this is down to the fact that the club has put much more emphasis on player development than results and, especially the second half of the U18′s leagues, usually results in lower rankings. This season, it seemed like that trend could have been stopped. For the first time, we have seen a new format in the U18′s with the season being split into two parts; the first part saw the teams split into three leagues – in Chelsea’s league was Fulham, Crystal Palace, Liverpool, Wolves, Man City and Middlesbrough.

Things could not have got off to a better start, as our first game was to be against Manchester City. It looked like a tough opener, but proved to be anything but as Chelsea ran out 6 – 1 winners. It was a perfect start and it set the tone of what was to come as Chelsea powered their way to the top of group 3, and that is where they stayed having won 9 of their 12 matches and only losing 1 in the last game to Fulham.

Highlight (6 – 1 win over Manchester City):

Phase 2 of the league saw Chelsea in the Elite group among the best teams from the other two leagues; these were Fulham, Reading, Everton, Man Utd, Southampton, Bolton and Crystal Palace. This was going to be the interesting part as we would see how Chelsea would cope against the best in their age group and potentially fight it out all the way to the final, and be crowned U18′s league champions.

However, as previously mentioned, with players at this time of the year moving up to the U21′s squad, and their involvement in the U19′s NextGen series and U18′s Youth Cup as well, some players saw very little league action, which meant an even younger team. Inevitably, this affected the results with the only highlight coming in the shape of a 5-1 away win over Crystal Palace.

Highlight (5 – 1 win over Crystal Palace):

The league would finish with Chelsea in 6th place, having only won 4 of their 14 matches in this round, and missed out on being able to go to phase 3 for the right to try and be champions. Still, there were a lot of positives to be taken from the season as a lot of young players were once again used. Left-back Kevin Wright made the maximum appearances in the league this season, followed by Jonathan Muleba.

The top goalscorer for Chelsea was Alex Kiwomya with 10 goals, followed by Jeremie Boga and Connor Hunte with 5 each. A total of 39 players were used at U18′s level this season.

So, all in all, a mixed bag for the U18′s league season, but still a very positive one with some young players stepping up to show that they could be big talents in the future. Players like Boga, Hunte, Colkett, Wright, Loftus-Cheek and many more have proved that there is still plenty of quality waiting in the wings.