He’s not particularly known for taking age into consideration. It’s always been, “If you’re good enough, you’re in.”
You can’t deny that it has worked for him.
21 trophies later, you would’ve thought he’d stick with the same recipe for winning. But it seems that the manager that has won everything domestically, across 4 countries, has reconsidered his stance on youth, and is now aiming to make youngsters a big part of our future plans, and in doing so, aiming to prove to the world that he is capable of winning with a younger team.
The argument can be made that Mourinho took a 19 year old Raphael Varane into the Real Madrid 1st team, to replace an under-achieving Pepe, a decision which annoyed most at first, but proved to be extremely effective during the course of their campaign.
We’ve grown accustomed to seeing Mourinho working with large squads with a lot of quality. Strength in depth is a huge key in Mourinho’s title winning sides, again, regardless of age. Purchasing a 26 year old Drogba, a 30 year old Samuel Eto’o and a 33 year old Ricardo Carvalho, this philosophy attached to Mourinho suggests that he does aim to find the best possible solution for the team, regardless of a player’s age.
Turning our attention to Chelsea for a moment, we’ve seen the evolution of this philosophy, ironically created by Mourinho and ended by Roman Abramovich himself. We are now seeing the positives in keeping a young squad, whether it’s to remain sustainable on the field for the longer term, or to narrow down our loss margin, and widen up our profit margin, all we know is that Abramovich is working with Sporting Director, Michael Emenalo, to recruit the best young talent in the world.
Our youth “Revolution” started with Lucas Piazon being signed on a pre-contract during Carlo Ancelotti’s era in charge. Although the sum of £7m seemed to raise a few eyebrows (no pun intended Carlo!), we’ve seen the quality Piazon possesses in recent times. His silky dribbling skills earned him a loan move to Manuel Pellegrini’s Malaga side, who were known for their extremely attractive style of football, which could only be seen as a compliment to young Piazon.
The new philosophy continued with the purchase of Islam Feruz from Celtic, a centre-forward who has had rave reviews from regular youth game spectators. Nathan Ake, another import, broke into the first team last term for Rafa Benitez, and looked of the same sort, adjusting himself in midfield, which was a change from his more familiar centre-back position.
More recently, we have “splashed” out on the Belgian trio of £12m Romelu Lukaku, £8m on Kevin De Bruyne and £7.5m on Thibaut Courtois. Among them, Victor Moses, Andre Schurrle, Juan Mata, Cesar Azpilicueta, Oscar, Eden Hazard, Marco van Ginkel and Ryan Bertrand are now among the 17 in a 30 man first team that are aged 25 or under, a number which was unheard of until 2-3 years ago.
The only “old but gold” players we have left are Frank Lampard, John Terry and Petr Cech.
This transition from old to new may come at the cost of a few points we may miss out on due to lack of experience at times, however, having younger players has worked for several teams across Europe, and under Mourinho’s guidance, who’s to say what’s achievable. It’s really all up in the air at the moment, we’ll only know what we’ve got when we see them in matches.
As it stands, here’s our old bench and new bench:
Out with the Old:
Turnbull, Ferreira, Mikel, Moses, Marin, Benayoun, Ba.
In with the New:
Schwarzer, Ivanovic, Bertrand, van Ginkel, De Bruyne, Schurrle, Lukaku.
It was confusing as to why Mourinho would take on such a project, but his personal preferences outweigh any consequences we may feel are possible to take place. And he’s taken on the challenge gracefully. Here are a few of his thoughts regarding our new buys:
He says he has 3 groups of players in the squad:
‘I have in the same group the guys that were with me before, I have the players from the first team that came here after 2007 and I am working with them for the first time, and I am having a third group which is a very special one,’
Mourinho goes on to talk about our new acquisitions:
‘Andre Schurrle is still so young but he already has great record because he plays in his national team, he has played Champions League and he played three complete seasons for Leverkusen,’ he says about the 22-year-old.
‘So he is a player who is absolutely ready and he gives us more than one position in attack and adds quality. He will be important for us.
‘Marco van Ginkel is one of the best prospects. He is close to being a finished product. Of course he needs to play and he will, because he is a player with great potential and physically he is more than ready. He is a natural athlete. By the technical and the tactical point of view of course he is a kid, he has to learn, but I think he is very open-minded and we analysed him for quite a long time.’
Mourinho goes on to confirm that Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and Tomas Kalas feature strongly in his plans for the upcoming season.
‘After the development of the players on loan it is the right moment for them to be back. They are very young with space to develop, they will be better year after year and I can imagine in five years they are much better than today – but what they have today is more than enough to belong to this squad.
‘So we are a very young squad. We have an average age of 26.3 and that includes Schwarzer who is 40 years old and JT, Cech and Lampard in their 30s, so if we don’t involve these players we drop to almost an Under-21 team.
‘The reality is the best period of this team has yet to arrive because they are very young and in five, six, seven years’ time is when this team will be in the best moment of their careers.’
It seems as though Mourinho has taken very well to our new philosophy.
However, the season ahead will reveal a newly-humble Mourinho’s true colours, a true personality and his true ability to guide a young squad towards success.
Leave me your thoughts below!
31 thoughts on “Youth Revolution: Old Bunch vs New Bunch”
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Is essien out of chelsea or he is still there?
Still with Chelsea at the moment.
You fucking bloody admi or writer,wateva u cal yoursf,wen did Jose says he doesnt want Mikel?
I wonder where I’ve said that…
Mate read before you type
Thank you Alex, it is difficult replying to all the morons on here!
I dont want US to have anything with Turnbull,Benayoun,ferreira again(released)
Sometime you write shit in here which i do ignore but really out with Mikel, Moses and Marin? Players who have got things to offer, and put trust in Van Ginkel and Andres players you haven’t watched played? I’d be laughing really hard when you’l start criticising these new recruits.
You’ve definitely ignored my article about Mikel then. If you took a moment out to actually read, you wouldn’t embarrass yourself here!
Andre Schurrle is actually a quality player and played very well when we played Leverkusan in the 2011-2012 he played well. Van Ginkel is like a replacement for Lampard box-to-box player timing that attacking run into a goalscoring position. Marin is out on Loan to regain form and fitness, he never said out with Moses, Mikel read it and you will understand.
Again, cheers mate!
Hmmmn:Åℓℓ Ȋ̝̊̅ wnt Ȋ̝̊̅ڪ Ƒσя ABRAMOVICH Τ̅☺ exercise patience on Mourinho nd c him improve †ђξ squad:up blues
This is something all true blues fan has awaited for long time and I’m glad it happening now and I’m very much happy because its wit a professional coach which the whole of chelsea loves
I dont understand this, maybe its my browser but im seeing “out with the old” somewhere in this article rightly comprising of some released players but Moses, Marin and Mikel? Please what does this imply.
Sorry if im intruding in your defence of the integrity of your supposed perfect article. But what we see implicitly refer to you saying Marin, Moses, Mikel and Ba should be shown the way out of the squad as the other released players you associated them with. Not really nice, is it?
Funny you should say that only a couple of days after I published this: http://wp.me/p2Y2iU-4cc …I’d tone down the desperate attempt to sound smart if I were you, just makes one look silly, don’t you think?
Of the legends we have in the squad, you are only talking about Terry, Lampard and Cech. Where is Cole?
Not mentioned. Either by mistake or deliberately, you pick which one you want it to be 🙂
I hope the squad blend as soon as possible. No time.
Why is nobody even mentioning Kenneth Omeruo of Nigeria who is supposed to return to Chelsea after the extended holiday due to the confederations cup. The young lad is good and can easily fit in the team
I agree, he can. In fact, there are a few more that can, but what you read was a rough idea about our bench compared to last season.
You sound like a guy who likes winning once in a while, that’s not so blue is it. The former article is decent but mutually exclusive to this. I wonder why you should be making reference to an alienated article to vindicate yourself of a completely different mess. Does that former article give you the poetic freedom to voice your personal opinion on four different CFC players? No I guess, now this is me being smart. And for this article, I thought you would have taken the easier fix.
That’s all you do, make assumptions. What a shame, I might’ve actually thought much of you on an intellectual level if you didn’t assume everything.
You made your own assumptions regarding those 4 players, you’ve read the article in the way you were expecting to. If you were open to actually focusing on the main points rather than making non-existant ones, you wouldn’t continue to make yourself look daft! Or is this you being “smart” and trying to recover from crashing and dying with re: to my previous comment?
My dream first team is Thibaut Courtois,JT,Ashley Cole, Luke Shaw,David Luis,Frank Lampard,Lucas Piazon,Oscar,Eden Hazard,Romelu Lukaku,and Patrick Bamford.
Azpilicueta?
Dude srsly? No Juan the magician Mata?
Isnt Luke shaw a LB. Y do you have 2 left back in your def?
Right lets make this clear SahilSW6 has said that he will compare last season’s bench with this season coming.
“As it stands, here’s our old bench and new bench:
Out with the Old:
Turnbull, Ferreira, Mikel, Moses, Marin, Benayoun, Ba.
In with the New:
Schwarzer, Ivanovic, Bertrand, van Ginkel, De Bruyne, Schurrle, Lukaku.”
This is the whole statement so before jumping to conclusions if you read it and think you would understand what he is saying, he is not saying lets sell them just comparing the bench
Ok, here I am apologising for my errors. Im sorry if I had offended you but I must admit the detail wasn’t that obvious initially and maybe you should have probably addressed the first complain. Anyway I sincerely apologise to you the Author and I do reference Alexcfc8. But Im a little bit confused. Are we disposing the former bench into the first team or under 18?
I’m not offended, just disappointed you didn’t understand the matter in the article. It’s not to bash other players, it’s just showing our transition. In response to your question, neither. They’ll either be sold, loaned, played, on the bench, or left out altogether.
Thank you, hope this clears up all the confusion!