This is Joe Cole and you're listening to the London is Blue Podcast.

All right everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Cobham crew.

That's right, we got a Chelsea Youth update about all things Academy.

Phil, how is it going?

It's not too bad. It's been an interesting November because there's been a real shortage of Academy action on the pitch. We've had the international break in the men's game and that's coincided with the under 17 World Cup which Chelsea sent

six under 18 players to so the under 18s have only had one competitive match since

our last update and the development squad have only had one themselves so it seems a decent opportunity to take a step back switch the

focus on to this year's Lone Army, which is much

smaller in number than before, but no less interesting and spend a little bit of time

dedicated to some players who are a little bit further along the development track and

What the future may hold for them. Yeah, no that'll be good. Obviously love to it's we've been doing these like the end of the month because the hope is that there'll be matches that have been played. You can look ahead. You know, but we have our last international break until March thankfully. But obviously it does affect the Academy side as well.

They're still playing games, which is good.

But it's same thing, right?

There's not as much as we would have.

So I love the pivot to kind of the lone army you said it's not as busy right new

limitations gone to the M and all of days where we have three squads worth of players out on loan

able to generate a ton of money from that.

And so the ownership group have had to adapt this season and really kind of change it up.

And it forced some uncomfortable placements, think so there's a lot to kind of go through this

which will be great but it is always important I think for you to kind of level set with everybody on like, hey, what is the role of the lone army?

It's Chelsea see it today, especially

in partnership with the academy,

...