An FA Cup final triumph will do little to quell the fires at Stamford Bridge
And here’s the thing – it wouldn’t have cost the club a penny. Other than Rice, who was released at age 14 in 2013, all nine were involved across the Blues’ three consecutive FA Youth Cup final victories between 2015 and 2017. All three were also against today’s decider opponents, Manchester City.
Arsenal's Declan Rice. Photo: John Walton/PA
One would presume that at least a couple of that golden generation will be in action at Wembley Stadium this afternoon, hoping to help Chelsea to a first FA Cup triumph since 2018, but things didn’t turn out that way. Only James and Chalobah still remain with the Blues, with the remaining seven all deemed surplus to requirements across recent years.
Players moving on is par for the course at any academy, but a look at the numbers provides food for thought for the club’s top brass. After departing Stamford Bridge, those seven players combined have gone on to make more than 1,300 appearances across Europe’s top leagues, won more than England 100 caps combined and fetched £325m in transfer fees.
Having allowed that young crop to leave west London for one reason or another, the Chelsea of today is almost unrecognisable from the club that Mount, Abraham and others cut their teeth at. The BlueCo consortium took over from Roman Abramovich in 2022 and despite spending a staggering amount of money since, the controversial, unprecedented project has utterly failed so far.
One billion pounds was spent across the new owner’s first three transfer windows alone, as a squad which had only won the Champions League the previous summer soon underwent a complete overhaul. With almost £2bn spent on more than 50 signings in a youth-first strategy across their four-year reign, the club are no closer to returning to the top of English football.
In fact, many disillusioned fans feel they have fallen even further behind.
Now searching for their sixth permanent head coach since Champions League-winning boss Thomas Tuchel was sacked in 2022, the club are at risk of finishing in the bottom half of the table for the second time in four years after the spectacular dip in form which led to Liam Rosenior’s dismissal last month after just 107 days. The Chelsea faithful will be hoping success today at Wembley can lift the spirits among an increasingly disillusioned fanbase and at least secure Europa League football for next season.
But facing a showdown with Man City, who Chelsea defeated three times across their five consecutive FA Youth Cup triumphs between 2014 and 2018, begs the question: why splash out almost £2bn on youth when the club once had so many promising young players on their hands?
While Moises Caicedo (£115m) and Enzo Fernandez (£107m) have impressed in SW6, the likes of Wesley Fofana (£70m), Romeo Lavia (£53m), Christopher Nkunku (£52m), Pedro Neto (£54m), Raheem Sterling (£47.5m), Alejandro Garnacho (£40m) and Axel Disasi (£38m) failed to make an impact worthy of their price tag with some of that cohort since departing.
Dundalk's Tyreke Wilson. Photo: Ben McShane/Sportsfile
Chelsea had won just two FA Youth Cups in their history before 2010, but went on to clinch a remarkable seven across the next nine years. Dubliner Conor Clifford captained the Blues to the first of that run. They also won the Uefa Youth League for the first time in 2015, making it back-to-back successes a year later.
2010 marked the beginning of that golden decade for the Cobham academy, led by head of youth development Neil Bath. He is credited with transforming the club’s youth set-up and bringing through graduates from John Terry to current Chelsea captain James, but left in 2024 after 31 years of service to the club, a moment which signalled a seismic shift in youth structure under BlueCo.
As well as the aforementioned names, many other top-flight players were let go at Cobham like Eddie Nketiah (2016, now at Crystal Palace), Michael Olise (2017, now at Bayern Munich), Jamal Musiala (2020, now at Bayern Munich), and Rio Ngumoha (2024, now at Liverpool).
Rice is the standout name, with the midfielder signing for Arsenal from West Ham for a club-record £105m in 2023 and now on the cusp of helping the Gunners to Premier League glory for the first time in 22 years ahead of what will be his second World Cup with England next month.
However, it’s the graduates that did go on to senior level for Chelsea who could have been in action at Wembley today, had things turned out differently.
Fan favourite Mount, who made nearly 200 appearances for the club, was an ever-present from 2019 to 2023 and played a key role in their Champions League triumph in 2021 with an assist in the final, also against City. But in 2023, just over a year after BlueCo arrived, the boyhood Chelsea fan was allowed to leave for Manchester United in a deal worth £55m.
City’s Guehi left Stamford Bridge for Crystal Palace in 2021 before arriving at the Etihad for £20m last January. Young defender Lewis Hall is also an academy graduate who was deemed surplus to requirements, leaving Chelsea for Newcastle in 2024. Midfielder Billy Gilmour, now at Napoli, is another. Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Hudson-Odoi were both let go under the BlueCo ownership in 2023, as was England midfielder Conor Gallagher a year afterwards. The list goes on.
In fact, from a wider perspective, 12 months ago only James remained on the books from the club’s entire 2021 Champions League winning 23-man squad, representing a significant overhaul in just four years.
Over the years, Chelsea’s Cobham set-up has produced nearly £1bn-worth of talent who are now owned by a top club, leading to many Blues fans scratching their heads wondering why their club have been spending obscene amounts of cash on replacing the very same talent that they allowed out the door.
Across their three successive FA Youth Cup final clashes, City had the likes of Phil Foden, Real Madrid’s Brahim Diaz, ex-Chelsea man Jadon Sancho, Liverpool’s Jeremie Frimpong and Celtic’s Kelechi Iheanacho in their squads but as a whole, the groups didn’t go to achieve the same consistency as the Chelsea crop, although more recently they triumphed in 2020 and 2024.
Ironically, current Chelsea defender Tosin Adarabioyo captained City in their 2015 and 2016 final defeats to the Blues, while League of Ireland winner and current Dundalk defender Tyreke Wilson started for City in the 2017 showpiece.
Now a decade on, Chelsea are a club unrecognisable from their glittering underage success of the 2010s. Having let so many of their top academy talent depart since, while BlueCo throw more than a billion pounds in the hope of replacing them, they are still no closer to achieving that aim.
Even a first FA Cup win in eight years today will do little to quell the fury many fans feel at the worrying direction the Londoners are heading in.