This is a piece from Duncan Castles, Jose's nut holder and a Chelsea critic this season (believe it or not) so make of it what you will. But it's an interesting prospect.

Quote

In addition to favouring graduates of their lavishly funded academy in the first eleven, Chelsea want Conte to take a hands-on role in the unit’s direction. Though Conte is not opposed to the idea of involvement in the academy, he has made it clear to the club that he is only prepared to take responsibility for youth development if he is granted full control over it.

Quote

Despite this history of failure under a succession of high-quality first-team managers, Chelsea rejected Conte’s request to appoint his own man. Neil Bath has headed up the academy throughout Abramovich’s ownerships, leading the club to four successive FA Youth Cups and two UEFA Youth Leagues.

Quote

Conte’s decision to distance himself from the academy unless he has complete control over it has been reflected in his use of what advocates of Cobham’s youth team argue is a prime crop of players. With 35 matches played and the English title almost secured, Conte has granted academy graduates a total of just 128 minutes of League football. Nathaniel Chalobah, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Ola Aina and Nathan Ake’s playing time has been spread across 18 substitute appearances. Not one of the quartet has yet been trusted to start a Premier League fixture

https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/conte-chelsea-odds-academy-players-italian-plays-hardball-new-contract-092358602.html

 

Love the work Neil Bath has done but I'm not opposed to giving Conte the freedom to do what he thinks would make more sense. If it means more youth players get integrated into the team, I'm all for it. Thoughts on this?

Although conte did hand players a chance at juve such as pogba,i just cant see him playing youth regularly for us,

No, he's earned the right for control with transfers and to appoint his own replacement for Holland (as much as im a fan of the club number two, its not an argument worth alienating Antonio over), however the way we run the academy is quite evidently working so why change it?

14 hours ago, Argo said:

No, he's earned the right for control with transfers and to appoint his own replacement for Holland (as much as im a fan of the club number two, its not an argument worth alienating Antonio over), however the way we run the academy is quite evidently working so why change it?

I think there's a point to be made that perhaps the academy has prioritized success in youth competitions over taking measures that would see to a smoother transition into the first team? I mean, I don't exactly blame such a strategy given the constant revolving door that is the Chelsea manager job. But still, I don't think it would be outrageous to let Conte try his hand with this. Especially if we plan on keeping him for the foreseeable future (which I hope is the case). Our academy is head and shoulders above any one else's in the country and one of the best in Europe. We have a world class player in our ranks waiting to be unearthed. We just haven't gotten around to doing that. This might be the way.

I don't quite get what 'full control' would actually mean in this context. Academy boss is a full time job, so its not like he could take over the day to day minutae involved in Bath's job. It seems completely logical for first team manager and academy boss to work closely together to smooth the transition of players into the team, but surely they should be doing that anyway?

Edited May 15, 20179 yr by Kentonio

Duncan Castles writes anything and everything to belittle any club/manager/player if they aren't either playing under or associated with or in fact Jose Mourinho himself. He is literally the man's personal journalist.

By the sounds of things, this article is the result of a man’s imagination. However, I would have thought Conte distracting himself with ‘full control’ of what must be a few hundred young footballers would be a recipe for first team disaster.

The other thing that it makes me think is; what’s the definition of success for our Academy? Would you swap the four FA Youth Cup wins for having say two academy players now actually playing regular first team football? And would you swap having no academy players in the team for having two or three in there and perhaps finding that we’ve finished 2^nd or 3^rd instead of 1^st?

Castles is nothing but an arseh0le

Castle doesn't even know how many games we've played this season. 

I doubt he knows anything about our manager's job. 

38 minutes ago, Snedger said:

By the sounds of things, this article is the result of a man’s imagination. However, I would have thought Conte distracting himself with ‘full control’ of what must be a few hundred young footballers would be a recipe for first team disaster.

The other thing that it makes me think is; what’s the definition of success for our Academy? Would you swap the four FA Youth Cup wins for having say two academy players now actually playing regular first team football? And would you swap having no academy players in the team for having two or three in there and perhaps finding that we’ve finished 2^nd or 3^rd instead of 1^st?

 

Yes to the former, no to the latter. I'd swap every youth trophy from the past 5 years if it meant we had 2 or 3 top class homegrown players starting for us. 

Fake news

15 hours ago, Snedger said:

By the sounds of things, this article is the result of a man’s imagination. However, I would have thought Conte distracting himself with ‘full control’ of what must be a few hundred young footballers would be a recipe for first team disaster.

The other thing that it makes me think is; what’s the definition of success for our Academy? Would you swap the four FA Youth Cup wins for having say two academy players now actually playing regular first team football? And would you swap having no academy players in the team for having two or three in there and perhaps finding that we’ve finished 2^nd or 3^rd instead of 1^st?

 

Fully agree with @TheChelseaBlues on this. Youth trophies are meaningless versus having a few youth players become first team regulars. I don't think Marcus Rashford ever won a youth trophy or even Harry Kane, yet they've become regulars and that is a great achievement. THE great achievement.