Graham Potter’s small group gets him involved with

Thomas Tuchel made a real effort to get to know the young players at Chelsea and went to watch many of their games, something which didn’t take a lot of time but was hugely appreciated by the fans.

Managers earlier in the Roman Abramovich era hadn’t done so, and while Frank Lampard did do it, there was a sense that the fact he was English and had played at Chelsea made it more expected.

Antonio Conte and Maurizio Sarri had precious little interest in the youth system.

We would expect Potter to be more Tuchel and Lampard than Sarri or Conte, and this international break without the senior players will have been a crash course in the talents at the club.

The pictures published today show Dylan Williams and several other academy stars training with the first team at Cobham, and the friendly played last week saw them mixed in with non-international players too.

Let’s hope Potter was paying attention.

Chelsea News