Academy: More New Contracts and First Friendlies

It is time for a quick update from the goings on in the academy as there has been a bit of activity that needs to be caught up on including the first playing action of the 2014/15 season and 2 new contract signings.

First up is news of the first pre season outings for the academy sides. The U18's were in action today against Bournemouth at Chelsea's Cobham training ground. Unfortunately there is no news of the team from the game today but we do know that the U18's ran out 4 - 1 winners in this first outing and the goals were scored by Charlie Wakefield, Kyle Scott, Ike Ugbo and Dan Kemp. It is a good start in what is a young U18's team given that a lot of the U21's are with the first team and a lot of the main U18's group are with the U21's.

Also today saw the U21's play their first pre season game, the first game was to be up against Sutton Utd away from home. The team that started the game was Brad Collins, Ola Aina, Alex Davey, Isak Ssewankambo, Kevin Wright, Mukhtar Ali, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Charlie Colkett, Alex Kiwomya, Charlie Musonda and a trialist called Modibo Tounkara. The substitutes for this game were Dabo, Grainger, Clarke-Salter, Houghton, Quintero, Palmer and Brady. The game was a good workout for the young team but ended in a 0 - 0 draw although Chelsea had the better of the chances striking the woodwork on a couple of occasions.

Next up is the news of some contract signings. Not mentioned in the previous group that signed their pro contracts there is another player who signed a pro deal this week and that is the defender/midfielder who has joined from Barcelona's academy Josimar Quintero. Quintero agreed to join last summer but was not able to join up with the club until now. Having now signed his deal with the club he has joined straight up with the U21's team and played in the friendly game today. Roumers of a loan move to Vitesse are already mooted but I doubt that is true as he is unlikely to be ready for that level of football now.

Finally this week there was something of a suprise, at least for me, in that 21 year old goalkeeper Matej Delac has signed a new 2 year deal with the club. The surprise is because despite being highly rated since joining Chelsea he has really struggled to get games at various loan clubs which is becoming something of a long list and in those 6 clubs he has only played a total of 35 games since 2009. It is unlikely that he will be part of the first team squad this season so a loan is to be on the cards, who that club is unknown but given the recent history it is unlikely to be at a good sized club.