Academy: Coaching Changes for New Season

Yesterday Chelsea confirmed some changes among the coaching staff in the Academy set up. The changes are material changes to the coaching set up at U21's and U18's level and mean promotions for some promising young managers.

The first change is that Dermot Drummy is no longer the manager of the U21's side. Drummy has been at Chelsea's academy since 2007 when he joined as U16's manager and eventually took over as U18's manager when then manager Paul Clement moved up to manage the reserve side. Since 2011 Drummy has been in charge of the Reserve/U21's side and he has won the FA Youth Cup and the U21's league as a manger.

Drummy is being moved into a role called "International Head Coach" and whilst it is a very fancy title what it means is that he will be in charge of all the coaching staff throughout the Chelsea Foundation Group trying to improve the quality of the coaching that goes out to all the football schools and training courses throughout the world that Chelsea run.

Whilst Chelsea are writing this up as a promotion it is certainly not one, unless Dermot felt that he no longer wanted to do day to day coaching then this is a move that is moving Dermot aside to enable Chelsea to bring through our young coaches. Bringing through good young coaches is also something that Chelsea do very well, Steve Clarke, Brendan Rodgers, Paul Clement and even Steve Holland currently working with Jose have been Academy coaches and we have a good group of young coaches at the club.

So who will be the men benefiting from this move? Firstly is Adi Viveash who up until yesterday has been the U18's manager and who will not take up the role of the U21's manager. Viveash is a manager that I like very much, he always talks about the game and development of players in the right way and as a technical coach you can see in the way he sets out his teams and the way he can make changes to a game to turn things around that he is very knowledgeable in what he does. It is certainly a promotion deserving to him and I have no doubt that he will do a tremendous job with a group of players that he certainly knows inside out having brought them through already his U18's age group. It has not been mentioned but I assume that current assistant to Drummy Andy Myers will continue in his role.

Moving into the now vacant U18's job is current U16's manager and assistant to Viveash in the U18's Joe Edwards. For those not familiar with Edwards, he was a former Chelsea schoolboy and is is Chelsea fan. When his career in football did not work out he turned his hand to coaching and has steadily grown into the job. Having not seen much of his coaching style to date it is hard to for me to make any assessment as to how he will do. Having said that he has already been working with the U18's on a regular basis and knows the group of players very well. It will be interesting to see how he does in the role and what he is able to bring to it.

It is always good to see progress in the academy set up and this is indeed progress, it is also something new to look at for next season and that is always exciting too. Good luck to all 3 in their new roles.