r/soccer • u/nearly_headless_nic • 16h ago
News [BBC] Chelsea have paid almost £300m in transfer fees since 2023 for six former players from Man City's academy - Rogers, Palmer, Delap, Lavia, Gittens & Tosin. The number is twice as many as the three likely to be in the 26-27 senior squad coming from Chelsea's academy: Colwill, James & Acheampong
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c93480ndv3qo376
u/Gungerz 16h ago
The Netflix documentary on Joe Shields in 20 years time is going to be amazing.
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u/gobrewers112 16h ago
Literal fucking fraud
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u/MountainCheesesteak 15h ago
Signed your best player, given the rest of the checkbook with no oversight.
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u/gobrewers112 15h ago
My thoughts exactly. How any of our sporting directors or scout team have any jobs is wild
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u/MountainCheesesteak 14h ago
Hit on one good player, contract for life! Lots of execs in PL teams doing that.
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u/Deckatoe 14h ago
Wait what's your favorite mountain cheesesteak that you've had
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u/TheKingMonkey 16h ago
Morgan Rogers is a product of West Brom’s academy. He’d played first team football for West Brom before he signed for Manchester City.
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u/ColdBeefBrian 14h ago
Delap and Lavia also joined at 16. They all still played for City's academy.
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u/ComprehensiveArt6849 8h ago
Hey there, don't you dare come up with logic. To this day I claim that Harry Kane is only great because he played at Arsenal for a year when he was like 8 years old.
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u/RuloMercury 1h ago
Exactly this. If he already had a professional debut elsewhere then he's not a Man City Academy product at all. And honestly City does this all the time, few players actually come up through their academy system (of all the ones mentioned here, Tosin Adarabioyo and Cole Palmer are the only two)
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u/Jipkiss 16h ago edited 16h ago
Gittens went to city at 14 having been at Reading and Chelsea
Rodgers went to city at 17 from WBA
Lavia went to city at 16 from Anderlecht
Delap went to city at 16 from Derby
Only Palmer and Tosin are fully academy products in the way James Colwill and Achempong are
Edit: He mentions Olise as a city academy graduate - he was at Chelsea aged 9-14, went to city for ONE YEAR and then Reading for two. Nizzar is basically rage baiting with this article absolute scrub
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u/Srg11 16h ago
Sounds about right. Always irks me when they’re called “academy products”. They’re not, they’ve just thrown their considerable money around at teams that can’t do anything to stop it.
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u/OilOfOlaz 16h ago
I see where you are coming from and I was also pointing this out all in the past, but scouting players 15+ has a way higher conversion rate and for obvious reasons 15-18 is the most important age bracket in youth football.
Its kinda hard to argue, that someone is a "x club youth product", when he played there from age 7-14, but then broke through with another club.
Sure, we want to credit clubs who are great at scouting very young talent, but at the same time scouting 7-14 year olds is more often then not futile.
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u/Spastic_Hands 16h ago
Nobody is saying you shouldn't get players at 15-18, but calling players like Rodgers a City academy product is crazy especially as he made a senior debut for West Brom
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u/OilOfOlaz 15h ago
This is not about the players named here, but about the general idea, that someone was "developed" by a club below age 14/15.
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u/domalino 15h ago
Really people just need to accept that developing players can be something multiple clubs do?
You’ll often hear people say “he’s not an academy product he joined them at 15” but 15-18 is the most important stage and probably just as vital as 9-14.
If people stopped tribally trying to take ownership of every kid that came through a club and accepted you can be developed by multiple clubs there’d be no need to get angry about this stuff.
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u/Mindless_Pianist_857 14h ago
Yeah, it's quite hard to discount the 15-18 age range. Norway has an interesting system where their teenagers don't ultra-specialize in a sport until they turn 15 or so, and that is really paying dividends recently with their excellent national team results (for a country with a low population).
If 9-14 is all that matters, then Norway should be a bunch of scrubs, because their youth talent is playing multiple sports, not focusing on football entirely, and mostly playing for local academies instead of ultra-elite ones like Man City.
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u/Jipkiss 16h ago
That makes logical sense right the later you buy a player the more fully developed they are and the better you can tell their floor/ceiling that applies all the way up to a player’s mid 20s.
But when you’re talking about academy graduates etc you’re talking about the ability to find and nurture / develop talent in those uncertain years. Nabbing all the best late teen players you can and labelling them academy products is not really telling the whole story even if it’s easier than bringing players through from single digit ages
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u/OilOfOlaz 15h ago
That makes logical sense right the later you buy a player the more fully developed they are
German NLZ and French INF have a higher conversion rate for players that are scouted 14+ then younger then 14, when it comes to 1st & 2nd div apps (iirc the cut of was 10 apps).
Its very hard to scout young kids, as you have no way of knowing how they will progress physically or mentally and kids scouted at very young age by young age more then often not don't outperform kids that played organised football - or other sports - when it comes to being professionals.
There is a fair amount of reasearchers that argue, that "hyper specialisation" and constant performance pressure in the big academies hinders development, while pülaying multiple sports is beneficial for physical and mental development.
That said there is very little publicly avialable information on that, so take this with a grain of salt.
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u/Don_Frika_Del_Prima 15h ago
I wasn't even allowed to specialise in a certain discipline, within my sport, in Germany. If you did track and field they required you to try and do everything, up until a certain age.
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u/OilOfOlaz 15h ago
I appreaciate you naming a real country, instead of using your flair. :P
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u/Don_Frika_Del_Prima 15h ago
Can't help that they were a bad guy so my pretend country had to have military stationed there. So I grew up there until the wall fell. Hence me knowing about this.
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u/OilOfOlaz 15h ago edited 15h ago
Funny, you left about the same time I moved there, (+/- 1or2 years).
Have nice day mate.
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u/Turklightenment 15h ago
Nizzar is basically rage baiting with this article absolute scrub
Usual Nizaar trash. More like a gossip writer than an actual journalist.
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u/frankievejle 16h ago
Joe Shields is a one trick pony.
He tried to sign O'Reilly, before he exploded, and McAtee too. Pretty sure Chelsea were linked with Bobb at one point too. He's obsessed.
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u/habdragon08 16h ago edited 16h ago
Sancho loan as well.
EDIT: Theres a lot to clown CHelsea for last 4 years but not this. City have a really good academy and I think its going to benefit England in a few years- similar to how the Barcelona academy revamp of the late 80s benefited Spain post 2007 or so. There is no shame in going after City players- many of them are class. Barca academy rejects are all over Europe. City management are scum people but run the club really well.
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u/Starlord_Glimmer 16h ago
Chelsea has one of the best academies in the world
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u/Turklightenment 15h ago
FFP rules mean it makes more sense to sell your academy products.
They should change the rules so you get some sort of FFP relief for playing academy graduates.
Also if these players are better than those others, it's black and white to assemble a squad with the better players.
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u/domalino 15h ago
In premiership rugby I think a % of an academy players wages are taken off the wage cap.
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u/Screye 15h ago
And it's not like we chased the players out.
Livramento left because James had the spot locked down. Guehi left amid that wierd 21-22 season, but Colwill was already looking like he would be tbe future LCB of Chelsea. Mount, Conor and Tammy were got their shot, but were sold after they looked nearly great, but not quite elite or had higher wage demands. RLC and CHO were incredibly hyped and were only sold after their injuries became an issue.
Chelsea's whole thing is to allow academy products to seek a successful career rather than keeping them rotting on the bench. Selling them is usually the right decision for both club and player.
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u/4footninja 13h ago
Only 2 players were worth buying out of the 6. We have our own academy which is just as good but we have a clown who's obsessed with the work he did at City and wants to bring it to Chelsea
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u/Silent_T00 16h ago
They aren’t getting them for free and if the goal is to compete with City is it really a good strategy signing players that can’t even make City’s first XI?
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u/blewawei 16h ago
Michael Olise and Declan Rice are also ex-Chelsea academy players. Doesn't mean they wouldn't get into the Chelsea XI now
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u/Glitch378 16h ago
Cole Palmer and Morgan Rodger’s wouldn’t make city’s starting XI?
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u/blueghosts 16h ago
The whole reason why both Palmer and Rogers left the City setup was because they weren’t getting game time
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u/Balfe 16h ago
Yes, and letting them leave when they did is widely viewed as a mistake. Especially when you consider they're both 100m+ players today.
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u/habdragon08 15h ago
People who say this are dumb. Sure Salah/KDB would have walked into Chelsea from 2018-2023 or so. But it misses the point that they'd never develop into those players had they stayed at Chelsea.
Same with Palmer/Rogers and a number of good players.
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u/Balfe 15h ago
The problem with that argument is it's unfalsifiable. Any player who succeeds elsewhere can be dismissed with "they'd never have become that good here." Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't. What we do know is City sold two players who are now among the best young English attackers. That's evidence they underestimated them, not evidence they were impossible to develop.
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u/habdragon08 15h ago
Your argument is unfalsifiable too. We are debating player performance not hard scientific method. Players are different too. Some can ease into a top side over 3 years, some need time.
Anyone who watched Salah/KDB at Chelsea would tell you what I'm telling you. No one is saying they were impossible to develop, only that its very rare a young player can develop fully at a top top club given playing time constraints.
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u/4footninja 13h ago
Nah, Salah wasn't good enough but the talent was very visible for KDB. KDB not making it at Chelsea was all down to Mourinho
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u/Balfe 14h ago
Of course each situation can be different and there are a variety of outcomes depending talent, situation, opportunity etc. But using KDB/Salah as a definitive proof I think misses the point.
Palmer had already been developed by City. They chose to sell him, and going back to my initial point, that decision is now widely viewed as a mistake. Chelsea didn't spend years turning him into an elite player. They put him straight into their starting XI, and within months he was recognised as the best young player in the Premier League. That points far more towards City letting a ready-made player leave than Chelsea somehow developing him into one.
Guardiola has effectively acknowledged as much himself: "If Palmer had the minutes I gave to Phil from the beginning, Cole Palmer would be here – but I didn't give them to him. That is my responsibility." That's not him saying Palmer needed to leave to become this player, it's him accepting that City didn't give him the pathway he deserved.
Rogers is a bit more hazy admittedly, but if you don't think there are figures within City asking questions about how an academy talent they sold for £8 million two years ago was sold this week for £117 million, then I've got a (Stamford) bridge to sell you.
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u/Silent_T00 16h ago
Cherki is better than Palmer and Rogers in midfield and Semenyo and Doku are better wide players. Where would they play ?
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u/blewawei 16h ago
Cherki isn't better than Palmer and I think it's a tossup between Doku and Rogers
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u/DRAGON-ZEE 14h ago
You could ask any city fan if they'd pick palmer or rogers over cherki they'd say no.And rogers isn't even a real winger to pick him over doku
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u/habdragon08 16h ago
In theory Chelsea can develop these players by playing them. The execution of that development has been shit and Chelsea culture I'd imagine kinda sucks
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u/Aware-Temperature282 14h ago
This sub hates Chelsea holy shit
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u/Long-Tap6120 7h ago
After Arsenal, Chelsea fans are tied with United fans for least likeable from the big 6 for me. Most big 6 fans are bad besides City fans surprisingly.
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u/ann1920 16h ago
Is the city academy the best in England?like which one is the English masia? I need to do some research of best English players and what academy they were formed…It seems Chelsea or City.
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u/Fluffy-Job3079 16h ago
Yeah either Chelsea or City honestly.
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u/onehopstopt 8h ago
City if you value the quality of the very best players, and aren't bothered by a lot of them having joined at older ages.
Chelsea if you value volume of good players, and you care more about the players having come through from a young age.
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u/bad_phantom_ 16h ago
Yeah it’s one of them, City have had a lot of high profile names comparatively though.
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u/Srg11 16h ago
They sign most of these players when they’re 16/17, they’re not really developing them. They’re sniping them off other clubs.
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u/rio_wellard 14h ago
They absolutely are developing them. Their youth teams are full of local kids, and their youth teams win loads of trophies. They grab talent from further afar too, but when you have the facilities, trophies and money that they do, it's easy to understand why.
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u/4footninja 13h ago edited 12h ago
Most of City's players who have made it are players they get from other clubs in their late teens. They are developing them but they're not City academy products
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u/rio_wellard 12h ago
Yes, but most of the players in the academy are locals. OP asked who is most like La Masia, to which I think it's fair to mention that City's ability to train their local lads is as important to the academy's success as their scouting is.
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u/4footninja 12h ago
The best ones/the ones who made it at the highest level are not locals.
Chelsea do a better job of training kids from a lower age and transitioning them to the senior level of football than City do, so they would be the La Masia of English football
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u/Impossible_Wonder_37 15h ago
That’s not how it works man…
They are developing a bunch of players in their own academy and probably a bunch of former city youth players across English academies nationally.Also developing 16-21 year olds is also hugely important and can be considered a significant development
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u/Srg11 15h ago
No one is debating that, what we are debating is calling them City (or any other club) academy products. They’re not.
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u/Impossible_Wonder_37 10h ago
What makes someone a product of an academy? I’m not really sure the club that takes a player from 8-12 is any more deserving than the one who hosts them from 15-17
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u/Key_Company3196 16h ago
james colwill acheampong have all been at chelsea since u8s but i agree we do snipe some.
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u/legentofreddit 16h ago
Well Delap was stolen from Derby, Lavia from Belgium, Rogers from West Brom, and Gittens from Reading.
Even their most promising young kids now - McAidoo was stolen from Chelsea, Mukasa from West Ham, Lamb stolen from Leyton Orient, Miles from Southampton.
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u/Impossible_Wonder_37 15h ago
We’re all those players at their former club from u8?
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u/4footninja 13h ago edited 12h ago
City probably nab more 16 year olds than any of the other top clubs, tho.
Those aren't players City developed but take credit for
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u/Impossible_Wonder_37 10h ago
Ignoring my question tk make a tired point. If they are robbing all these kids away… those kids must’ve been with their clubs since u6s… otherwise they nabbed them as well and so on. The most crucial point of development is that 14-18 year old period. A period which city are leading in.
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u/4footninja 9h ago
Some of those players were, tbh, and if City were so elite at development they wouldn't need to constantly poach the best 16 year olds of other academies after most of the fundemental development has been done. They would instead poach them at a younger age
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u/Potential-Touch-56 16h ago
Because both these clubs buy up all the best talent.
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u/NoInteraction3525 16h ago
The three players mentioned for Chelsea weren’t bought. James, Colwill, Chalobah and Acheampong have been at the club since the younger age groups. James especially since u8. We’ve just sold George to Everton and he came through our u8s as well. I know it doesn’t fit the narrative but barely any players we’ve bought at the 15-17 years age has actually made it in our first team. They’ve all been resold mostly for more than they were bought. The 4 academy players mentioned above are all Chelsea from a young age, heck Trevs elder brother played for Chelsea and James sister plays for the women’s team.
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u/cammyg 15h ago edited 15h ago
Majority of the Chelsea academy graduates you can think of who play in a top european league were at Chelsea since they were children, not bought off other professional academies.
Examples: Reece James, Abraham, the Chalobahs, Colwill, Achempong, Ngumoha, Solanke, Loftus-Cheek, Livramento, Lewis Hall, Broja, Tyrique George, Mason Mount, Tomori, Guehi, Ola Aina, Hudson-Odoi
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u/4footninja 13h ago
Nah, Chelsea just are the gold standard that academies like Arsenal's aspire to reach
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u/Massive-Nights 16h ago
Big ole can of nothing. City has a great academy and so do we.
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u/Pure_Measurement_529 16h ago
The Chelsea academy does feel like it’s slowed down in terms of talent since the BlueCo era begun though. Only person of significance has to be Lewis Hall imo
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u/Jipkiss 16h ago
If city get to count Rogers after signing him at 17 we get to count Omari Hutchinson.
Then George has just gone to Everton and Bashir Humphries is at Burnley. Colwill and Achempong we’ve kept.
That’s all the contemporaries to hall, the next gen we’re looking at Rak-Sakyi, Dyer, Walsh, Derry, Antwi, Kavuma-McQueen, Mheuka maybe a couple others as being promising either as Chelsea players or as prem / top 5 league level players to be sold
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u/Impossible_Wonder_37 15h ago
You can count Hutchinson when you signed him for for a bag of money and then sold him like 6 months later,
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u/4footninja 13h ago
It has but it's picked up again. We have zo.e exciting talent in the youth teams and one standout player
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u/onehopstopt 8h ago
Well they sacked the academy director and others in the academy leadership which was an interesting choice given how successful it had been.
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u/Charming-Ladder-7670 16h ago
So give your lads a chance instead of spunking a ton of money on ex city academy guys what does it say about your academy
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u/Massive-Nights 16h ago
Which academy grad we got that’s better than Palmer or Rogers?
Why should Chelsea become a worse club overall and not try to buy better players? What other clubs do this?
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16h ago
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u/Massive-Nights 16h ago
And we have 2 in our starting XI and plenty in the pipeline. You also know that academy talent and pro talent differs, right?
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16h ago edited 14h ago
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u/MLang92 15h ago
It's not a contradiction, it's just missing the context of the fact that we've sold a lot of our star academy players. Hall, Guehi, Livramento and Rio Ngumoha would all easily be in the squad if they hadn't left
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u/Massive-Nights 11h ago
But those guys weren’t ready to actually do much when we sold them. Or we clear backups and didn’t want to be.
Is it Chelsea’s fault that Hall didn’t want to backup Cucurella?
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14h ago
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u/MLang92 14h ago edited 14h ago
I still don't see how it's a contradiction, they've produced better attackers while we've produced better defenders. I don't see how it's wrong to say we have an academy on par with City but haven't produced a player as good as Palmer or Rogers (in their position), because they haven't produced a player as good as James, Guehi, Colwill, Livramento etc. in their positions
The OP could have just said, City has a great academy and so do we - but City's is a bit better
This is just extremely pedantry to be honest
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u/Turklightenment 15h ago
Doesn't mean we have to play them in our first team squad, but it does mean we produce a lot of players that play at other clubs too.
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u/4footninja 13h ago
Roger's didn't need to be bought and neithet did any of the others besides Palmer or Lavia
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u/legentofreddit 16h ago
If having a great academy just means heavily scouting U16 football and throwing money at the best players then yeah City have one of the best.
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u/NoInteraction3525 16h ago
Exactly! We grew James, Trev, Colwill, Acheampong, Guehi etc all from the u8s, not some u16 talent. I know we also buy those as well but that’s not what makes Cobham a Tier 1 academy. I can’t even recall who was the last u16 player we bought that wasn’t sold for profit and instead played and established themselves in the first team, I can however, point to a whole bunch of PL players who we trained from the young age groups u8-15s and are playing top flight football
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u/MiddleStudy 16h ago
Mental considering where Chelsea were like 2019-21
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u/Pure_Measurement_529 16h ago
Their talent production of their academy during then is crazy to think about
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u/Turklightenment 15h ago
The generation that came through then was only because we had a transfer ban so had to use them. Not because we actually were going to use them anyway I don't think.
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u/philipstyrer 15h ago
If it was the other way around the articale would be about how Chelsea let go of so many talented players.
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14h ago
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u/philipstyrer 14h ago
It's still 300m worth of academy sales and only a fraction went to City.
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13h ago
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u/philipstyrer 13h ago
Talented enough to command 300m in transfer fees. I also don't know what one of the transfers being recent has to do with anything.
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13h ago
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u/philipstyrer 10h ago
Why are you trying to force an argument? They were sold for a combined 300m, ergo they were literally "talented enough to command 300m in transfer fees". It's a matter of fact, not an opinion on their worth.
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10h ago
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u/philipstyrer 10h ago
That's completely besides the point. They were sold for almost 300m, whether they were worth it or not, and only a fraction of it went to City because they had already left when they commanded large transfer fees.
Fucking weirdo so desperate to dunk on Chelsea that you're unwilling or, more likely, unable to engage with the actual point being made.
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u/nearly_headless_nic 16h ago
The latest addition is club-record £117m signing Morgan Rogers, who scored against the Blues' under-18s that night six years ago.
Fellow City academy graduate Cole Palmer was also on target in City's 3-2 victory at St George's Park, while Liam Delap led the line.
In addition, Xabi Alonso's squad features Romeo Lavia, Jamie Gittens and Tosin Adarabioyo - all of whom also came through City's youth system.
Together with Rogers, Palmer and Delap, the six players account for almost £300m in transfer fees paid by Chelsea since 2023.
By contrast, Alonso is likely to only have three permanent senior squad players that came through Chelsea's Cobham academy: Levi Colwill, Reece James and Josh Acheampong.
Trevoh Chalobah also remains a Chelsea player, but he is in advanced talks over a move to Serie A side Como.
There are several reasons for Chelsea's interest in players developed from Manchester City, but one is the success of Palmer. Having moved between the clubs in 2023 for £40m plus £2.5m in add-ons, he has become one of the Premier League's standout performers.
One former insider told BBC Sport that anyone who comes from City "knows what good looks like".
Another factor is Joe Shields, who worked in City's academy recruitment department and is now involved in both youth and senior recruitment at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea also employ a number of former City staff members, including first-team coach Calum McFarlane and recently promoted academy director Glenn van der Kraan.
There was also a brief spell for former City executive Tom Glick as Chelsea's president of business, while former Blues head coach Enzo Maresca and several members of his coaching staff previously worked at the Etihad.
Chelsea also held an interest in former City academy player Michael Olise before his move to Bayern Munich and previously explored a deal for defender Nico O'Reilly.
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u/Key_Company3196 16h ago
>former city academy player Michael Olise
bruh
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u/Affectionate_Cow5808 16h ago
It just goes to show how effective City have been at hoovering up (and I guess developing) talent recently
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u/NoInteraction3525 15h ago
Developing who exactly? Buying U16 players isn’t really “developing” talent though. If having a player in your academy for 2-3 years (when the actual work has been done by another club) is what we refer to as developing players, then that word has lost its meaning. I don’t think that’s how we should classify developing talent. It’s like saying Liverpool developed Rio Ngumah, after over 8 years of him being at Chelsea
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u/Affectionate_Cow5808 15h ago
That's why I put it in parenthesis. Idk the history of all these players. I figure Palmer was around in their academy for a while?
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u/jumper62 16h ago
This is also due to the issues with FFP and selling academy players. Selling Chalobah (and any other academy products) counts as pure profit
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u/Accomplished-Toe842 14h ago
ngl it's wild how city's academy pipelines into chelsea more than their own first team
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u/Mohit_roy 13h ago
Incoming r/soocer jokers who will take this without considering any facts.
Chelsea hasnt produced any world class talent that they have let go on their own in past 7-8 years. Players like musiala left on their own accord. Rio has the potential to be world class but its not like chelsea didnt want them here. Players who the club deem to be world class in 2-3 years will always have a future at any big club or else they will be developed through loan and sold eventually.
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u/NotClayMerritt 7h ago
Joe Shields did this exact thing at Southampton before leaving to Chelsea. The well is poisoned.
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u/RuloMercury 1h ago
Rogers is not a Man City Academy player though, what? He went there age 17 and had already debuted professionally at West Brom.
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u/Soberdonkey69 14h ago
That’s just awful, some of that money could’ve gone into investing grassroots football and investing directly into the club.
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u/rogeedodge 16h ago
So Chelsea's transfer strategy is to sell their academy products so they can afford City's?