To mark 10 years of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), the Premier League’s director of football Neil Saunders recently visited Cobham to check in on one of the best-performing academies during that time.

Chelsea have won numerous titles including the FA Youth Cup, UEFA Youth League, Premier League 2 and Under-18 Premier League over the past decade, though it is the progression of so many young players into the senior game that has brought most pleasure to those working at our Surrey training base.

Leading that group of staff is our long-serving academy boss Neil Bath, who was recently promoted to director of football development and operations. Bath hosted Saunders at Cobham to launch the Premier League’s EPPP 10-year report, highlighting a decade of progress across the game.

The EPPP was launched by the Premier League in 2012/13, in consultation with the English Football League, the FA and clubs, with the aim to develop a world-leading youth development system which produces more and better homegrown players.

Across the league, those numbers have indisputably improved; almost £2bn of investment into youth development by the Premier League and clubs over the past 10 years, 566 homegrown Premier League debutants since the launch of EPPP, and 47 per cent of players to have featured in England’s top flight in the last decade being classed as homegrown.

At Chelsea, those figure are even more impressive, with six Academy graduates having started our most recent Premier League game and two of those – Mason Mount and Conor Gallagher – currently representing England at the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Ethan Ampadu (Wales), Andreas Christensen (Denmark), Nathan Ake (Netherlands), Ike Ugbo (Canada) Tariq Lamptey (Ghana) and Jamal Musiala (Germany) also join the list of those in Qatar who have spent time in our Academy programme at Cobham.

Bath, who joined the Chelsea schoolboys coaching staff in 1993, has been backed by those above him and those across the road, the head coaches who ultimately pick the starters and substitutes.

‘It’s always a team effort, everybody’s in it,’ he said. ‘Frank Lampard put them in and gave them the opportunity. Subsequently, Thomas Tuchel kept going and Graham Potter has kept going.

‘The new owners have gone on that fact, that we will continue that opportunity, and I am very confident they are excited about supporting and taking this vision forward. It will get their full support.’

That specific concept is the Academy’s Vision 2030 project, which Bath has previously discussed with this website. The premise is not to rest on the laurels of seeing Reece James, Trevoh Chalobah and Armando Broja running out for the men’s first team but instead refocus on producing the next generation of homegrown players.

Bath believes the future player will be even more tactically intelligent, submerged as they are in social media analysis and Monday Night Football breakdowns of goals and systems of play.

‘The conversations you have with a 12-year-old now are unbelievable,’ he said.

‘So how are we going to develop players in our coaching content and in our games programme to be able to move with the trends of the game, which are scrutinised through video and data more and more?’

One area of the Chelsea system that has been a clear focus for Bath over the past decade has been the education programme offered to our young players, with the creation of a full-time school for those in the Under-15 and Under-16 age group, as well as a day-release programme in the year groups below.

In conjunction with this, Bath has provided extra support to staff who have developed a bespoke, contemporary and age-appropriate education programme addressing social issues off the pitch that the players may face.

Internal and external personnel are carefully selected to provide workshops which are designed to equip our players for the various situations they may encounter. This programme ranges from discussions on how best to manage activity on social media to ways in which players can support the fight against all types of discrimination.

‘Of our full-time players in the school that did eight GCSEs [last summer], something like 98 per cent of them passed above average,’ Bath added. ‘Those are really quite impressive results.’

Results for Bath and the Chelsea Academy come in many shapes and guises, not only restricted to the football field but extended to the classroom and the more holistic development of our players as young men.

Among the Vision 2030 targets is to continually achieve above national average GCSE and A-Level results, as well as win more trophies and produce more players than rival academies. More boldly, Bath wants to maintain the current rate of a quarter of the first team squad being comprised of Academy graduates.

With EPPP bearing fruit, and Chelsea’s Academy in particular topping the class, such big ambitions are necessary to keep those at Cobham pushing to produce the best.