Firstly and possibly most important is continuity, Neil Bath has been the Academy Director since 2004 and has overseen the most dramatic change in the academy and turned it into something very special indeed. But there is far more to it than that. Whilst Roman, Gourlay ect obviously are interested in the academy and what is does they have no intention of interfering and dictating what goes on in the academy. Neil Bath has had the last 8 years to with the help of the footballing people around to do what he believes is right to make the academy as good as it can be, and unsurprisingly it has worked.
The academy functions as a whole unit from top to bottom, the philosophy of Chelsea football club is taught from the age of 7 all the way through to the U21's. At the start of the change in academy set up coaches were brought in to make changes which had mixed results but now Chelsea are not only developing players but developing coaches also. Dermot Drummy has moved through the ranks from U16's coach to now being U21's coach, Paul Clement before him went from U18's to Reserves to first team assistant and now is with Carlo at PSG. Steve Holland went from the reserves to assistant for the first team. Adrian Viveash came in at the young age levels and has quickly worked through the U15's, U16's and is now U18's manager and doing very well. This is not progression for the sake of it, these coaches Chelsea are developing and progressing are of a very high standard and deserve to move through the ranks.
The results speak for themselves, every year the standard of player gets higher and higher. We have seen our U18's team look incredibly formidable and this is a young team, we have U16's moved through to U21's football already, we are not afraid to push our better players to be better. Our success in the FA Youth Cup is another indication of the strength at academy level.
The problem is, no matter how good our academy is, when the structure set up around the first team is so poor we are never going to see the real progress of these young players that we should be seeing in them getting into the first team. Time and time again we see players be at the top of their age group all the way up to 18/19 and when it comes to push on it falters.
What the academy SHOULD be showing to Roman and the people surrounding him is what can happen when you let football men dictate the football matters. Gourlay, Buck and Roman may be very good when it comes to business and the business side of football but what qualifies them to understand the running of a successful football club over any other fan on the planet?
Imagine what would happen if a team of football men were charged with the running of the club overseen by Roman, the football board are accountable to making sure that the club is solid from a football standpoint, using their knowledge of the game to put forward their best choices for managers, players ect. Let Gourlay deal with the business side, the sponsorship the shirt sales, he actually seems pretty good at that but keep away from footballing decisions.
Emanalo is a man who take a lot of criticism, at the end of the day we have no idea of what his involvement is with the poor choices that have been made recently. But what i think he has done well is his ability to bring in the right players, the signings we have been making have been very good indeed.
Lets say for a moment we have a football board consisting of Guus Hiddink as the Director of Football, someone like Pat Nevin who is clearly a very intelligent and articulate man with Chelsea at his heart and Emenalo to continue player scouting. Charged with the job of creating some stability to the club, if actually given the licence to do so i think we would see some results similar to what the academy has produced. Even if it is not these, but just people who know football and how the workings of the football side of the club should be, just anything to create stability and continuity at the club.
So yes, the academy certainly puts the first team to shame, but Roman should use it as an indication of where things are going wrong at first team level and finally address the instability at our club.
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