Harvey Vale nominated for PL2 Player of the Month; Chelsea U23 sign Bradley Ryan

Chelsea youngster Harvey Vale, who has recently trained with the senior team as well, has been nominated for the PL2 Player of the Month award for August. The 17-year-old scored three goals and provided one assist in three PL2 games last month. While our development team have drawn two of those matches and lost the third one, Vale’s contributions have been crucial.

Other nominees include Aaron Ramsey (Aston Villa), Omari Giraud-Hutchinson (Arsenal), Evan Ferguson (Brighton), James McAtee (Man City), Dylan Stephenson (Newcastle), Jonathan Tomkinson (Norwich) and Dilan Markanday (Tottenham), with the winner to be named shortly.

Chelsea have signed Bradley Ryan from sixth-tier side Welling United after a successful trial period. The 18-year-old attacking midfielder was on the bench for our match against West Ham United U23. He is the second youngster to join Chelsea from Welling in recent times after Declan Frith.

The UEFA Youth League is back after getting cancelled last season because of the COVID-19 pandemic! Chelsea are in the “Champions League path” of this U19 competition, and thus face the same clubs as the senior team in the group stages. (There are 32 additional youth teams in a knockout “Domestic Champions path”, with the two paths then intersecting in the knockout rounds.)

The group winners will advance straight to the last-16, while the second place teams face a one-leg playoff away to one of the teams to have progressed through the Domestic Champions path.

Players born on or after 1 January 2003 are eligible to play in the competition this season, with an additional five players born in the 12 months prior to that date also eligible, provided they have been registered at the club for the past two years.

Chelsea have released the initial list of players for the competition, which can be viewed here.

GOALKEEPERS: Prince Adegoke, Lucas Bergström, Teddy Sharman-Lowe, Sami Tlemcani

DEFENDERS: Derrick Abu, Luke Badley-Morgan, Josh Brooking, Alfie Gilchrist, Brodi Hughes, Bashir Humphreys, Alex Kpakpe, Sam McClelland, Richard Olise

MIDFIELDERS: Edwin Andersson, Leo Castledine, Ben Elliot, Billy Gee, Joe Haigh, Lewis Hall, Samuel Rak-Sakyi, Dion Rankine, Xavier Simons, Josh Tobin, Harvey Valey, Charlie Webster

FORWARDS: Bryan Fiabema, Louis Flower, Tudor Mendel-Idowu, Malik Mothersille, Zain Silcott-Duberry, Jude Soonsup-Bell, Ronnie Stutter, Jimi Tauriainen, Silko Thomas, Jayden Wareham