Excellent read from ChelseaYouth on youth development. Kane and Linegaard prime examples of how club should develop youth. Give them tough and varied loans and bring them back at age 20-23 to give them a real look in the first team or sell them. Important thing is to not look too closely at their performances on loan. As long as you are confident in their talent, thats good enough to bring them back unless of course they display attitude problems or are truly catastrophic during their loan spells.
Once in a while you will get your Harry Kane, the world class player who makes it all worthwhile. Most of the time you get Linegaard, solid squad players who can give you 20-25 games a season in a title winning season. You then invest your money in truly world class signings to complete the squad.
We have a bunch of youth coming through on whom decisions need to be made soon. I believe the likes of Ake, Chalobah, RLC, Betrand Traore and Lewis Baker can become solid squad players as early as next season whereas someone like Christensen will become a truly world class player. Time will tell though.
Point is that we have an academy that is still not paying dividends to us in terms of adding to the first team squad. We need to improve because our youth is talented but at the same time not miss out on world class players in the market. Its a difficult balance but one we need to find.