Chelsea’s project could not have become any clearer during the first six Premier League games of this season despite having been constantly accused of lacking a coherent plan.
Chelsea have named the youngest top-flight team in all six of the match weeks ahead of their seventh game of the season against Nottingham Forest on Sunday. The plan is clearly in place, with growing confidence inside Stamford Bridge that it will eventually reap handsome dividends.
As head coach Enzo Maresca had taken the trouble to explain, Chelsea are still some way behind Manchester City and Arsenal. But the belief is that they are building something lasting and that if they do succeed, they will be in perfect position to win repeatedly.
Opta’s statistics have shown that the average age of Chelsea’s starting team across their six league games so far has been 23 years and 228 days, which is two years and one day younger than the second-youngest, Bournemouth.
Currently, Chelsea are on course to become the youngest-ever Premier League team over an entire season. To do so they would overtake the 1999-2000 Leeds United team (24 years and 162 days), which is also the youngest-ever to finish in the top four.
Chelsea are yet to name a player aged over 27 in their match squad and the only player over 30 at the club is third-choice goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli. The average age of the eight first-team players Chelsea signed in the summer was 23, although that has nudged up slightly since Tosin Adarabioyo celebrated his 27th birthday last week.
Chelsea are in the record books for the youngest team (25 and 250 days) to win the Premier League title in 2004-’05 and also the oldest champions in 2009-’10, with an average age of 29 years and 95 days. What may well interest Chelsea’s owners and sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart most about that is that five players from the ’04-’05 side, Petr Cech, Ricardo Carvalho, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole, also played crucial roles in the 2009-’10 team.
Maresca, at 44, is among the younger coaches in the Premier League and, like some of his players, is accumulating experience while on the job at Chelsea, having never before managed a top-division club. He will be aware that there will be bumps in the road and that the club are rarely much further than two games from a crisis.
However, undaunted, the Italian has said that he fell “in love” with the squad before taking the job, suggesting that he shares the club’s view that opportunity knocks for Chelsea’s youngsters.
Chelsea’s plan has already factored in the increased fixture list that European qualification brought, with Maresca now able to rotate his entire team for Europa Conference League games while keeping his young Premier League side relatively fresh. For all the stresses, strains and chaos of the past two years under Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly, Chelsea, be it through design or some good fortune, may have timed their youth-first strategy well.
Chelsea have a plan to challenge the likes of City in the longer run that is already starting to take shape.
The only real questions are do they have the patience to see it out and will it be as rewarding as they expect? If it is, then there might have been more method than some of the madness had suggested.