The Blues enter the most prestigious competition in academy football at the third round and were handed an away trip to fellow top-flight side Leicester when the draw was held earlier this month, in a repeat of our match at the same stage last season.

It has now been confirmed that this year's FA Youth Cup third-round fixture will take place on Friday 13 December, with kick-off at Leicester's Seagrave training ground at 7pm. As a result, our Under-18 Premier League away game against Crystal Palace, originally scheduled for the following day, will now be played at 11am on Tuesday 17 December.

This will be our sixth consecutive away game in the Youth Cup, having not been given a home draw in the competition since the first match of our 2022/23 campaign.

When we travelled away to Leicester in the third round of last season's Youth Cup, Donnell McNeilly opened the scoring in the first minute, before further goals by Michael Golding and Shumaira Mheuka gave us a 3-1 win. We were eventually eliminated in a penalty shootout at Millwall in the quarter-finals, after further away wins at Everton and Crystal Palace.

Chelsea are nine-time winners of the FA Youth Cup, most recently when our Under-18s were captained to victory by Reece James in 2018. Our last appearance in the final came four years ago, Cole Palmer scoring the winner for Manchester City against a Blues side featuring Levi Colwill.