Once Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital had completed their takeover of Chelsea earlier this year, from the outset, making use of the success of the Blues' academy has appeared at the forefront of their thinking.
In the club's official announcement, Boehly made the declaration: "Along with our commitment to developing the youth squad and acquiring the best talent, our plan of action is to invest in the Club for the long-term and build on Chelsea’s remarkable history of success."
Significant investment on buying players in the form of Cesare Casadei and Carney Chukwuemeka were made in addition to the recruitment of the likes of Zak Sturge and Eddie Beach. There was no hiding from the fact that academy chiefs Neil Bath and Jim Fraser were being backed from the outset with the American owners seemingly excited by their vision.
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Now, the Blues have agreed another deal with the ambition to both develop the youth squad and acquire the best talent. Chelsea have agreed a five-year deal with AiScout, a fully automated talent analysis and development platform.
The ambition is for players, from an amateur background, to be able to engage via a mobile phone to access trials, drills, scoring, rating and feedback, with their results then being able to identify those who could be of interest at the highest level. It's a system set to complement current scouting and to send experts into environments more informed.
The ambition is to enable a workflow that allows Chelsea to be more efficient and also to hopefully not fall short in identifying any potential talent, by being able to compare statistics to baselines of current academy players. The partnership will also be able to better inform decisions made in-house by helping accurately identify physical issues that occur during growth and to assist in recuperating injuries accurately.
It's an area the Blues hope to continue to improve in, with much made of the likes of Boehly's enthusiasm for data and use of it during his involvement in other sport.
Chelsea's Head of Youth Recruitment and Assistant Head of Youth Development, Fraser said: "They're very excited, we're excited because they're excited. They understand that they want to work with young talents and they understand how well the academy has been developing over the years and understand we want to stay ahead and be competitive so they're very supportive of this in particular, but all of the work. We want to keep that going, of course."
Ben Smith, Head of Innovation and Research at Chelsea added: "The club have had really good engagement and support from a data perspective, with the new owners coming with a North American perspective having worked across the Dodgers and the Lakers and the analytic support in North American franchises at the moment, in particular, is chalk and cheese compared to what we've done here.
"They want to build on what we've done and help accelerate that growth. This is really complimentary with that strategic direction. It's not just data for data sake, it's a real thing that will help us make much better performance decisions but it also supports that analytical evidence-based approach to better decision-making and long term sustainable success."
While the project fits in with the ethos of the new owners, the Blues have been involved with developing the app into something suited for their purpose and helped during the research and development phase of the project. During this, one player out of a test pool of 50 who downloaded the AiSCOUT player app and had never been trialled or scouted before, was even able to earn a trial.
Ben Greenwood downloaded the app, completed his profile where he added images and videos, and generated impressive data by entering the club trials. His data was flagged within the app and he was then invited to trial with the Chelsea FC U18 team for eight weeks. Greenwood eventually went on to sign for Bournemouth.
At the heart of the project is Chelsea looking to ensure a competitive advantage. Finding and recruiting the best talent has only become more intense with the improvements of other clubs and Brexit focusing resources within the United Kingdom.
Fraser noted: "This country is very competitive at the minute for recruitment. Brexit has made it there. We have to stay ahead of the rest. I'm sure you've been to some other training facilities recently, Palace, Leicester, Tottenham etc, everyone is developing their infrastructure. 15 years ago, no one had anything like this and that was a big step forward for us.
"People are perhaps catching up and we've got to stay ahead and working with partners and collaborating with talented people is important to us."
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