We are delighted to announce that we will be launching an Under 21 team!
Manager Robbie Simpson said: “As part of our pathway we are implementing a Chelmsford City Under 21s side.
It will be overseen and run by Rob Moore, with the assistance of Scott Keys.
Rob has been with the club for a couple of season now, initially with the partnership with Coggeshall and then last year, we implemented him as our head of player pathways, so he was liaising with Mickey to bring player through from the academy and give them the opportunities to grow and develop along the pathway to becoming Chelmsford City first team players.
Launching this Under 21 side has come as the next stage in the process really.
A big thanks to Coggeshall for last season, even though it probably did not work out as well as we would have hoped for both sides, however there were definitely some positives and learning to take from both sides but we hope to help Coggeshall in the future with this model and with this pathway.
Alongside our Under 21s playing really competitive games against both mens team and other Under 21 outfits, Rob will also be in charge of finding these players loans or dual registrations to clubs like Hullbridge, where Rob came from or Coggeshall and others, to get them experiences in other changing rooms and other mens football environments to help their development; that will be great for them.
Rob’s remit will be quite vast, he will be involved in helping Mickey and our first team, and also running the 21s and getting our players that are in the zone of post academy, pre first team out playing as many games as possible, developing as much as possible in different environments against different layers.
We have actually be handed a great opportunity to join an under 21 behind closed doors friendly league with a whole bunch of professional football clubs, so that is testament to what we have been doing and the way we have been developing players to be invited to such a league with the status of some other sides which will be in it so that will be fantastic for our young players.
We are really looking forward to getting this up and running and getting going, I am sure there will be a few teething problems in the early stages, but certainly this is something that all professional clubs implement now, in terms of their pathways and their development pathways post academy through to first team, the majority have their Under 21s or Under 23s sides now.
So we are really looking forward to it being another part of our step towards a professional football club.”
Head of Academy Mickey Spillane said: “This is another great step to ensure we create an elite pathway at our club.
It allows players further time to develop and offers flexibility within our system and beyond for a vital age group to progress into our CCFC 1st team.”
Head of Player Pathway Rob Moore said: ”
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