Thomas Tuchel slightly surprised supporters when he revealed on Friday that none of the academy players who had featured in the last round would be involved against Plymouth in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
'Tomorrow is not about youngsters," was the German's pretty blunt response to questions posed about his approach to Saturday's game despite acknowledging the importance of a pathway from Cobham.
"With all respect, I like the guys, but they play today with the academy, and they need to make sure their team wins this game. The professional squad will take care of the game tomorrow."
The choice to go with such a strong squad relates to the brief winter break Chelsea have just had. Tuchel chose to use the FA Cup tie as an opportunity to get his squad back up to match intensity before travelling to the UAE for next week's FIFA Club World Cup.
But this exclusion of Cobham talent for competitive minutes could be a step in the path towards a sad repeat of 2021's summer exodus in the transfer market. Where Marc Guehi, Tino Livramento, Myles Peart- Harris, Lewis Bate and Dynel Simeu all left the club. Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori also form a large bulk of the estimated £94m revenue gained from sales last summer.
The trio of academy talent who could be in line to form a similar trend is Harvey Vale, Charlie Webster and Jude Soonsup-Bell. All three have less than 18 months on their current deals and have featured in senior squads over the past two months.
Both Vale and Soonsup-Bell started in the Carabao Cup quarter-final win over Brentford before Christmas, whilst Webster was an unused substitute in that game and the FA Cup third-round win over Chesterfield. Vale's contract situation is anything but certain despite positive indications after fresh talks recently via Simon Johnson from The Athletic.
Huddersfield wanted to take Vale on loan for the rest of this season, but Chelsea opted to keep him around. Partly due to Tuchel being impressed by the 18-year-old and the importance of resolving his contract running down.
Vale has been a standout talent from Cobham over recent years but finds himself in an area of the pitch where he is like to be competing with fellow academy alumni Mason Mount. Given where Tuchel has fielded him so far, in the front three, you can also throw Chelsea's plethora of attacking players into that list.
That's not even accounting for the reality of Conor Gallagher returning from his outstanding loan at Crystal Palace this summer. You also cannot deny the influence Guehi, Livramento, Abraham and Tomori have over situations like this moving forward. All four players opted to move away and are thriving in England and Italy.
The fear for supporters is again that Marina Granovskaia will see the lure of securing funds from exciting academy talent to increase the pot for major first-team additions. Like Romelu Lukaku was signed for £98m from Inter Milan last summer. Very close to the money they recouped from academy sales.
With other unwanted senior players on Chelsea's books heading into this potentially defining summer window, the hope will be 2021's flurry of exits is not the beginning of a yearly trend.
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