Kenyon or Gourlay, you decide

I never liked Peter Kenyon, to me, he was a Manc, only interested in lining his pockets without looking after Chelsea. And I don't particularly like what I have seen of Ron Gourlay. But, was allowing Kenyon to leave one of the biggest mistakes Abramovich has ever made?

When Abramovich brought Chelsea, the club was hardly known across Europe and the rest of the world. Kenyon was brought in to change that, and it has to be said, he did a brilliant job, he over saw the change from a medium club, to a real heavyweight of European football.

There was always controversy with Kenyon, the tapping up of Sven Goran Eriksson and Ashely Cole to name but two. But he did do right by the club and its supporters during his time at the club, and during the clubs most successful ever periods.

Kenyon stepped down in 2009 and was replaced by Ron Gourlay, a former work colleague at Umbro and Manchester United. Since Gourlay arrived, the club has seen the reigns of Avram Grant and Scolari, the failure to keep Guus Hiddink on as manager, and the ruthless and stupid sacking of Carlo Ancelotti.

Not to mention the controversy surrounding the move away from Stamford Bridge and the attempts to undermine the CPO. To me, Gourlay seems a smug individual and its difficult to see what he has actually done for the club during his time as Chief Executive.

So have your vote on the poll > Kenyon or Gourlay.

Lacking Plan B

It’s been a nearly season so far for Chelsea, results just haven’t gone our way even when we have dominated games. The recent draw against Norwich however, just highlighted that AVB’s unwillingness to divert from his football philosophy, showed that if ‘plan a’ doesn’t work, then Chelsea don’t win.

After 30 minutes against Norwich, Lampard limped off with a calf injury; Lampard’s midfield role is where AVB likes his attacking midfielder to play, his ‘Modric’. Now on the bench, AVB had Malouda and Essien available, instead of bringing on Essien like most people in his position would have done, AVB opted for Malouda because he is seen as more creative than Essien.

The result was, we had a midfield with a player who simply cannot play in the central midfield role, while our most creative midfield player Juan Mata was stuck out wide, not able to dictate play. The unwillingness to divert from the original plan left us static and easy to defend against; needless to say we had enough chances to beat Norwich and should have done with great ease. But the problems would still be there, but people just wouldn’t highlight them.

Only once this season has AVB moved away from his ‘plan a’, Manchester United away, when in the second half we dominated United and were again, just a stroke of luck away from taking something from the game. Mata came central and another winger came on, something that perhaps should have happened against Norwich, with De Bruyne signing this week, maybe this is the signing that can help bring Mata centrally, but that would mean Lampard would be playing a bit part role this season, something he has openly been upset about.

AVB’s ‘plan a’ does work, it did it with Porto, but he had the players to do so. Maybe he has been naive with his loyalty to his philosophy, but is that a bad thing? Perhaps based on the league position yes, but with a few more round pegs being signed, the squares ones can move on.

Taking time with Courtois

A few weeks ago I caught my first sight of the future Chelsea number one Courtois, and on my first impressions he looks a very good prospect indeed. However, discussion on twitter shows that many Chelsea fans are already confident that Courtois could come into the first team next season and challenge Cech for his number one jersey, this is very unlikely and Courtois has a long way to go yet before he is ready for Premier League football.

I must say now, I am basing my opinion on Courtois from a few highlights and the game I saw him play, every time the camera focused on him, he was barking out orders to his defence. Now for a 19 year-old who has just moved to a different country with a different language, that is impressive and a good sign for the future. Courtois is also an excellent shot stopper; he made several classy saves to keep Atletico Madrid in the lead and looked commanding in the air.

Like every goalkeeper though, Courtois has his weaknesses, primarily in distribution. During the game he kicked several balls out of play and hit hopeless kicks up front for the lone striker to chase, that is something over time and with experience and extra training he should improve on and become better at.

Obviously, comparisons with David De Gea are going to happen, De Gea has struggled with adapting to the style of the Premier League and has been found wanting on a number of occasions. Chelsea’s initial plan was to let Courtois have another season in Madrid before bringing him back to England for a year on loan in the Premiership, so he can learn at the expense of another club. It would be a mistake to rush him back to England while he is still young and learning; any mistakes in England would be crucified by the press and would put a huge dent in his confidence, and Chelsea fans confidence in him.

Courtois is undoubtedly a great prospect for the future, and is showing signs of being a world class goalkeeper, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves and keep our expectations in check. It’s going to be a long wait until our new number one arrives to take over from Cech, but my guess is, it’ll be worth it.

Chelsea Web Chat

Chelsea's biggest flop

Since Abramovich took over the club in 2003, the infrastructure of the club was in desperate need of fixing, the Harlington training ground was badly out of date and was light years behind the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool. In 2004, Chelsea recieved planning permission to build a new training facility on a 140-acre site in Cobham, Surrey. The first team moved in during the 2005 season, however the complex was not official opened until 2007, while the final phase, and the one I will be looking at more closely, did not finish until 2008, the academy and community pavillion for for Chelsea's youth teams and football in the community projects.

Chelsea has never been a club that has brought players through it's academy, yes we have brought through some great players like Peter Osgood, Bobby Tambling, Graeme Le Saux and current captain John Terry, but the list is nothing like the ones boasted by the likes of West Ham and Manchester United. And since Abramovich invested his oil money into the club, the progress of youth team players has been stunted even further, because managers can go into the transfer market and buy ready made players without having the trouble of trying to bleed a youngster into the team.

Since the move to Cobham in 2008, the clubs reserve and academy teams have had success, last season the reserves won the Premier League reserve league, while the academy team lifted the famous FA Youth Cup in 2010. The top goal scorer in the reserve league was Fabio Borini, a striker who has made just four appearances for Chelsea since arriving in 2007, his reward for his goalscoring form? A loan move to Swansea. The Youth Cup winning team of 2010, a team which included Jeffry Bruma and Josh McEachran, their rewards? One a loan move to Hamburg and the other gets left out of the first team all together, and for the rest of them, reserve team football is as good as it gets.

And McEachran is a very good example of the point I am trying to make, the boy clearly has talent and is good enough to make it in the Premier League, he requested a loan move to Wigan Athletic earlier this season, but the move was blocked by Chelsea because they said he featured in their first team plans, so far he has played just eight minutes of Premier League football, and is there is talk of Chelsea signing Jack Rodwell from Everton for £20 million in January.  Another is Carl Magnay, who spent five years at Chelsea in the academy and reserve team without making a single first team appearance. He decided to give up and move on, like Michael Mancienne, who spent years out of loan without even getting a glimpse of the first team. Youngsters don't want to sign for Chelsea because they know that the chances of them making it into professional first team football are so slim.
I guess the main point I am trying to make is, what's the point of having a 20 million pound state of the art training ground complex for the youth and academy teams if they have no realistic chance of joining the first team? With the Financial Fair Play rules coming into force very soon, we might not be able to go and splash £20 million on a midfielder who is only 20-years-old. Instead we might have to introduce somebody like Connor Clifford, a midfielder who was captain of the FA Youth Cup winning side and captain of the Premier League reserve league winning side into the team, but maybe then we might start seeing some value for money as far as Cobham is concerned, because right now, it's been a failure.

Chelsea Web Chat

The future Mr Chelsea?

At the age of nine Sam Hutchinson signed as a youth player for his beloved Chelsea, following in the footsteps of father Eddie, who was also on the books with the Chelsea academy.

Sam progressed through the youth set up with relative ease, graduating as a third year scholar and becoming reserve team captain in the process. Sam was to turn professional in 2006, but suffered injuries during both the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons, which hindered his progress into the first team despite then manager Jose Mourinho claiming he would be a future Chelsea first team player.

Sam's breakthrough came in 2007, when he made his debut on the final game of the season against Everton and signed a new four year deal with the club.

Sam was taken on the pre-season tour to America, sadly, after just a handful of reserve team appearances Sam would face another injury that would limit his season to just six reserve team appearances.

Sam couldn't be kept down for long, back in the first team squad in early 2009, Sam would again travel with the first team to America and made appearances in pre-season friendlies against the Seattle Sounders and Club America.

Sam then got his second Chelsea appearance, coming on against local rivals Fulham in late August. A month later, and Sam got his first start for Chelsea against QPR in the Carling Cup, a game Chelsea won 1-0. Sam made his final Chelsea first team appearance in a 7-0 win over Stoke, where he assisted Frank Lampard to score the final goal.

Injury however, would get the better of Sam, as aged just 21 he decided to retire from football due to his prolonged knee injury, sustained over the previous three years. But Sam didn't leave Chelsea, he stayed working in the academy while studying Sports Science and aiming to earn coaching qualifications.

That would have been the end for Sam, you would have thought. But at the start of this season, Sam returned to the Chelsea reserve team after recovering from his knee injury, after keeping fit at the Chelsea academy while studying for his Sports Science qualification, playing 45 minutes in a 6-1 defeat to Crawley Town.

On the 3rd of October, Sam was back, captaining and playing 90 minutes in a reserve team match against Aston Villa. The knee-injury that he once thought ended his Chelsea career, was gone and yesterday Sam was offered a contract extension to stay at Chelsea for another 18 months.

The fact that Chelsea have stood by Sam even though he struggled with injury shows you how highly they rate the youngster. A few years ago he was nearly ready to step up and challenge John Terry, now he could be ready to take over from Terry, not only as a Chelsea player, but as our new Captain, Leader, Legend.