Using this result as evidence of some sort of academy collapse is nonsense. I get the feeling a lot of people who don't actually pay much attention to the youth teams are popping on here, reading the comments and then reading the wrong things into it.
This age group is becoming very unbalanced, partly due to the talent in it but also because of who is being promoted to the U21s and from the U16s when. That is absolutely the right way to go about it, because at this level the priority is making the right decisions for each individual, not preserving a team to win competitions. So yes, they've been really struggling, and this result is basically just a continuation of that - almost inevitably given how strong Chelsea are at this level at the moment.
Meanwhile, our U21s, who have recently benefited from a few key players returning from loans and also some very highly-rated promotions from the aforementioned U18s (Fosu-Mensah et al), just won again against the 'league leaders', Sunderland - we are six points behind them but have three games in hand thanks to the utter shambles that is U21s scheduling. As you can see from any recent U21s thread, they're playing some sublime football too. So we're basically smashing it there. Over the last few seasons we've handed out thrashings to a couple of big rivals, notably two 4-0 victories over City in a row. You'll note that no-one tried to suggest that meant City's academy was a shambles and falling apart. Again, this success doesn't necessarily mean our U21s set-up is a worldie, it simply reflects the timing of player development and availability, which is and should always be the priority.
There are serious issues which need to be resolved asap with the leadership of our academy programme. But those issues are not yet having an impact on the quality of youngsters we're getting at this level, and this result has nothing to do with them.
People need to get their heads around the fact that youth football is not the same as senior football. It works differently, matches are treated differently, 'teams' are a different thing, the objectives are different, and results should be interpreted differently too.
