Chelsea Academy season review: Part 2 - The U21's League

You can check out the U18 league season review here: Chelsea Academy season review: Part 1 – The U18?s League

A file photo of a U21 game between Chelsea and Liverpool

Moving on with the end of season reviews at academy level, we come to the U21′s league. This is a brand new format for this year replacing the old Reserves league. It is the same format as the U18′s league – an initial group phase followed by a second phase with the groups split depending on where the club finishes, and then a playoff scenario for the winner of the league. As with the U18′s, Chelsea‘s phase one group consisted of Liverpool, Wolves, Middlesbrough, Fulham, Man City and Crystal Palace.

Traditionally, this level of football is very tricky for Chelsea, apart from the 2010/11 season, where we won the league after a penalty shoot-out against Blackburn. With the combination of players going out on loan and players coming up from the U18′s, it proves to be a very unstable squad that changes on a regular basis. At the outset, it was thought that the idea of the new setup was to keep your better youngsters at the club and have them playing against the best youngsters from the other clubs to create a competitive atmosphere. Unfortunately, it seems that philosophy was not adhered to. Comments from Dermot Drummy near the end of the season seem to indicate that he feels a little let down by the fact this was not played out, and we will have to see if that philosophy changes at all next season.

The first game of the season saw the league start with a bang and a 5-0 thumping of Wolves. That proved to be a one-off though, as it took us until November to record another win. We then went on an impressive run of 6 wins from 7 which was almost enough to take us through to the Elite stage of the second phase. However, we just missed out on that spot and instead went through to Group stage. The best game of the first phase was indeed the 5 – 0 thrashing of Wolves. You can watch the highlights below:

The second phase of the league saw us drawn against Everton, Aston Villa, Fulham, Middlesbrough, Blackburn and Sunderland. This time of the season also saw more players depart on loan in the shape of Billy Clifford, Sam Walker, George Saville and Lucas Piazon. Also, the cup competitions at Academy level, the FA Youth Cup, and the NextGen series would also deplete the squad at times, leaving us very thin.

In the end, we managed to finish in the middle of Group 1, having picked up 5 wins from 12 games and losing 5 in the process. The pick of the games from this section was a 3-2 win over Middlesbrough at the Bridge, highlights of which are below. Obviously finishing in 4th place meant that there would be no place for us in the playoffs at this level, and the season would finish with a 1-0 win over Blackburn Rovers.

As far as appearances go, Lewis Baker made the most this season with 16 starts out of a possible 24 games played across the 2 group stages. Baker is followed by George Saville with 15 starts, and then Nathan Ake and Billy Clifford follow up with 14 starts. A total of 41 players played a part in this season’s league. Islam Feruz finished as the top scorer at U21′s level, with a total of 8 goals, followed by Lewis Baker with 6.

As I said, it will interesting to see how the new system will work, and if Chelsea approach it any differently next season with regards to what players get an opportunity to play.