Unbuckle your seatbelts folks, Terminator Todd has reached his inevitable destination. First he came for any Chelsea player over 25, then the Champions League-winning manager.
The academy graduates were next, followed by another two permanent managers with a club legend dragged in as a temporary pain-sponge. European football and any semblance of success or order fell somewhere along the way, which leads us here, fresh off the A3 at Cobham.
Chelsea’s world-leading academy appeared sacred, but what value are idols to hedge-fund managers? The news that venerated academy chiefs Neil Bath and Jim Fraser are leaving Chelsea should deeply concern fans, the last link to the pre-Clearlake era on the men’s side of the club. Everyone now in a position of any significant power at Chelsea has been appointed in the past two years. John Terry has some heavy lifting to do in his part-time academy consulting role.
Bath had been at the club since before all but two of their current players were born. Alongside Fraser, he built the academy which won seven FA Youth Cups in nine seasons and has produced more England internationals than any other since 2010. The pair had been tasked with creating Chelsea’s “Vision 2030” project as well, but have left after just 18 months. This was not the plan.
The story goes that Fraser was handed his P45 despite being promoted to head of youth development in February 2023. Bath, at the club since 1993 having joined as a part-time schoolboy coach, believed the pair came as a package, so they left as a package. The divorce might be amicable, but it is divorce nonetheless. As is so often the case, it’s the kids who get hurt.
There are some points that bear making here – change is not inherently bad, but compounding risk creates much greater scope to go wrong. Joe Shields and Sam Jewell, tasked with stepping into Bath and Fraser’s shoes, are both incredibly capable.
The shift from Brighton-lite to Manchester City-on-Thames continues afoot, with Shields set to be joined by current City head of U9-U14 coaching Glenn van der Kraan at Cobham. There is an established-enough structure in place to keep the academy running for the near future, provided the wrecking team don’t fancy a crack at that too.
But these departures validate fears that Cobham is being deprioritised in favour of importing players and blocking the top of any academy pathway. This could disincentivise young domestic talent from joining and encourages the best to leave between the ages of 16 to 19 in search of clearer first-team options.
A number of promising youngsters have already been linked with an exit, including Rio Ngumoha and Frankie Runham. Why stay and fight when the light at the end of the tunnel is only getting further away? The Bath/ Fraser news came the day before Chelsea’s annual scholar night when U17s sign their scholarship agreements with the club.
The overarching transfer philosophy devised by the ownership and co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart is: buy as much of the finest young talent worldwide, and you will inevitably find some diamonds. This is the masterplan which has produced Cole Palmer and Mykhailo Mudryk.
Kendry Paez and Estevao Willian, two of the most talented South American prospects of their generation, will both join Chelsea next summer when they turn 18. This is the clearest indicator of the club’s approach to youth scouting – bring in the best, and only the best. Their scouting operation outside Europe appears unparalleled.
The issue here is a fundamental misalignment with reality. Chelsea have now gutted all the structures and systems which made them two-time Champions League winners and the second-most successful English club of the 21st century.
What’s left, on the evidence of the past two seasons, is an upper mid-table club with a vast coalescence of potential, an unproven manager and a fundamental lack of leadership or experience. Developing footballers is not a linear process – talent at 18 does not inevitably lead to excellence at 21, or 25.
Chelsea are now losing the figures who built the academy which underpinned the success of the past two decades. The graduates who choose to stay are now solely vessels for pure profit and Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) navigation, with little-to-no hope of ever escaping a pathway to nowhere. Chelsea are aiming for a squad full of £100m players, not £30m Armando Brojas. If only it were that simple.
At every level, the club’s fate is now in the hands of Clearlake employees, the product of decisions made by football club owners with a short and sharp history of getting things spectacularly wrong. There is no-one else left to blame.