In recent years, Chelsea have been quite up and down, especially since they were taken over by Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly in 2022.

Fans have not always been able to smile in this new era at the club. With that being said, there is something at Chelsea that supporters are always proud of, something that is more consistent.

Chelsea’s academy is top tier

Cobham has produced some of the finest footballers playing in the Premier League right now, as well as in Chelsea’s first team. This season, 20-year-old Josh Acheampong has been a regular under Xabi Alonso, lining up alongside Levi Colwill in the backline. Both hail from Chelsea’s famous academy.

Had Reece James not been injured, he would also be playing in this Chelsea team. When everyone is available, James still gets into this Chelsea side.

Training Ground Guru has Chelsea at the top of its academy rankings in England, and it is really not hard to see why when you look at the players the Blues are producing and have already produced.

True, not all of these players are still at Chelsea, which we are going to get to, but many of them are shining at other Premier League clubs. A study by BBC Sport earlier this year revealed that Chelsea academy graduates had racked up 5,673 minutes combined in the 2025/26 Premier League campaign by the beginning of April.

At the time, only Manchester City’s graduates came close after amassing 5,162 minutes. Next on the list was Brighton & Hove Albion with 3,846. Cobham is on a whole other level.

Chelsea often forced to sell top talent like ‘unbelievable’ Marc Guehi

You can say that Chelsea’s minutes are quite inflated because of the manner in which they use their academy and, ultimately, how often they sell talent produced at Cobham. Marc Guehi is a perfect example.

Chelsea are often heavy spenders in the transfer market, which needs to be offset by player sales because they do not generate the same amount of money as their big six rivals. That is mainly due to the fact that Stamford Bridge is not as big as the Emirates, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Old Trafford etc. Simply put, Chelsea’s gate receipts are significantly lower, so they are not making as much money on matchday as their rivals.

The whole front-of-shirt sponsor farce under BlueCo has not helped either, making player sales even more vital to this Chelsea regime compared to the last one. Guehi was sold under Chelsea’s previous owners, but it is the same principle. The club had to make sales and Guehi was a casualty, although assurances over game time would have also been a deciding factor in his move to Crystal Palace in 2021.

But the point is, Chelsea have used their academy and the conveyor belt of talent it has produced to generate income. Guehi was only sold for about £18m, but that went down as pure profit on Chelsea’s books because he was an academy player. Financially, you can see the use Cobham has.

In a sense, it has become a bit of a double-edged sword. Chelsea are producing elite talent and making profit, but they are also developing players for direct competitors.

Guehi is now at Manchester City and regarded as one of the best centre-halves in the Premier League.

“His focus in every single detail in the game, in his private life, to be a professional is unbelievable,” his former manager Pep Guardiola said back in May via City Extra. Because of a lack of a pathway into the first team and other reasons, Chelsea have lost other incredible talent at a much younger age than Guehi.

It was only a couple of years ago that Rio Ngumoha left Chelsea’s academy for Liverpool’s. He is now tearing things up at senior level.

Declan Rice and Michael Olise were also once on the books at Chelsea’s academy, although the nature of their departures was much different to Ngumoha’s. But the point still stands. It can, at times, feel like Chelsea are developing players for others as if they were a feeder club, when in reality, you are talking about one of Europe’s most prestigious outfits, two-time Champions League winners.

Chelsea’s rivals have kept hold of most of their elite talent

In contrast, take a look at some of Chelsea’s Premier League rivals, and they have kept most of their top academy players. For example, City possess even more wealth than Chelsea but have still trusted the likes of Phil Foden and Nico O’Reilly.

They lost Cole Palmer, which is much worse than losing Guehi, to be fair, so a top player can slip through anywhere. But there is no denying that Chelsea’s overall track record is far worse. We have not even mentioned Newcastle United duo Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento.

Arsenal obviously have Bukayo Saka and Myles Lewis-Skelly. Lewis-Skelly could have actually been sold to Chelsea amid reports he was offered to the Blues and other clubs in the summer. The Gunners kept him. Vice versa, would BlueCo have done the same if Arsenal made a big-money offer?

Those at Chelsea will argue that James and Colwill are their version of Saka and Lewis-Skelly or Foden and O’Reilly, for example. But it cannot be forgotten that James got his shot in the first team because of Chelsea’s transfer ban and Frank Lampard, a manager who trusts young players.

In the universe where that transfer ban does not happen and Maurizio Sarri remains at Stamford Bridge, James probably never makes it into the first team.

Chelsea have the best academy in England and perhaps the world. Barcelona’s world famous La Masia is the only European academy you would rank above Chelsea’s. Cobham produces fine talent and makes the club a lot of money, but at the same time, it has aided some of Chelsea’s biggest Premier League rivals, which hands BlueCo a bit of a dilemma now and going forward.

Acheampong could sign a new contract in the future, but if not, the club are going to have a serious decision to make. How they manage his situation will tell us a lot about Cobham’s future.