Chelsea's Youth Development Proving to Be Guus Hiddink's 'Trophy' This Year
LIBERTY STADIUM, SWANSEA, WALES — Some would say it's an Arsenal way of approaching things by lauding success from moments that don't always merit it.
Chelsea will not be winning any silverware this season. Nor will they be qualifying for Europe in 2016/17. The Premier League champions have crashed and burned spectacularly, and not even Guus Hiddink has been able to pick up the pieces in the same way he did back in 2009.
Or has he? Chelsea's interim manager may not be lifting a trophy at the end of the campaign, but he will leave Stamford Bridge with an altogether different prize—that of knowing he's done a sufficient enough job of blooding the next generation of Chelsea stars.
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In some ways, that alone has become for Chelsea what finishing in the top four is for Arsenal. The club doesn't have much else to cling onto this season, so they need to take solace in the progress we're seeing from the likes of Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Kenedy, Bertrand Traore and Matt Miazga.
The quartet all got game time again when the Blues traveled to face Swansea City on Saturday. The substitutes' bench also featured Kasey Palmer and Charlie Colkett. Regardless of the mixed fortunes they enjoyed on the day—Miazga was subbed at half-time after a difficult first period—the fact Hiddink is sticking to his new approach of testing them out stands for something.
Top of the list is giving new boss Antonio Conte an opportunity to assess these up-and-coming players in a competitive atmosphere. We're getting a glimpse of what they can do, good and bad, which has not always been the case at Stamford Bridge.
The fact Chelsea lost 1-0 to the Swans on Saturday means little in the bigger picture, as Hiddink himself hinted at after the game. With nothing else to play for in their remaining fixtures, Chelsea are attempting to get ahead of themselves for the new season.
"I hope they don’t get used to [losing]," Hiddink explained on Saturday when Bleacher Report asked what his young players could learn from the Swansea defeat. "They must get used to winning and try to be in a winning situation always.
"In the long run of a competition, you will have a defeat, but there must also be a reaction. You can almost see in big games and after big games how [young players] react."
That's the key here. Chelsea are playing for something much more significant than a moment in their history that can be measured by silverware. Such has been the turmoil in west London, the need is to revitalise the club with a different brand and perspective. The only way to do that is by testing the new formula and ironing out the problems it throws up.
The Jose Mourinho era is well and truly gone. With the manager sacked for a second time in December, the January announcement that John Terry wouldn't be offered a new contract to remain beyond this season finally cut the chord of what remained of that generation.
What Hiddink has been allowed the club to do to some degree is begin looking forward. Too often, it's where Chelsea have been most guilty of failing, and it's finally caught up with them.
Whenever Roman Abramovich has been busy chopping and changing managers, the club has survived the pandemonium because of the players who occupied the dressing room. Outside of Terry, there was Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Petr Cech and Ashley Cole—all major talents capable of sustaining success.
They've never been replaced, so the methods of old have got Chelsea where they are now—mid-table and up the creek, seemingly without a paddle.
This summer is promising to be as significant as when Abramovich first arrived in 2003. Back then, the owner threw money at the situation. It transformed a top-four team into genuine title contenders.
Chelsea have long since been established in that vision, and it's Conte's job to ensure 2015/16 has been nothing but a blip. Money will be spent to help remedy that, yet the market isn't what it was 13 years ago. TV rights and other commercial benefits mean Chelsea can't dictate things the way they once did.
Top-billed players are harder to come by these days, especially as a lack of UEFA Champions League football may mean a move to west London could prove a hard sell.
Conte is going to have to work with what he's got, which means doing what no Chelsea manager has done in generations: He needs to bring through the kids.
Tommy Docherty is the success story at Stamford Bridge when we think of Chelsea teams in that sense. It was he who put his faith in unknown players such as Ron Harris, Peter Osgood and Terry Venables.
That generation went on to define Chelsea for much longer than it should have, and it wasn't until Abramovich's billions arrived that the club surpassed the success stories of the 1960s and 1970s.
Which is why Hiddink's new-found approach is as symbolic as a trophy. When he first left the club in 2009, he handed the reins over to another Italian in Carlo Ancelotti, having set the Blues back on the right track. The damage caused by Luiz Felipe Scolari's brief tenure was largely repaired with the FA Cup, a sign of how far Hiddink had taken Chelsea. Now, the emergence of the young players is representative of that, and it's Conte who should feel the benefit.
Without picking up three points against Swansea, the disappointment of defeat is doing Hiddink a favour as he attempts to pass on his wisdom to players who weren't even in their teens when he was last in charge at Stamford Bridge.
Loftus-Cheek is the one making headlines. Of the four youngsters who featured at the Liberty Stadium, the 20-year-old was the only homegrown player. The others have been signed from elsewhere, so Chelsea's No. 36 is understandably the darling of the the club's supporters, who voiced their frustrations when he was substituted late on.
"They can be upset, but we do many things with 10 minutes to go," Hiddink said, responding to the fans' reaction. "We have the right to change any player on any minute and of course they may be upset, but I would have changed him even if he had made a goal so that he could be applauded.
"[...] It’s important to understand that outside the efficiency and outside the action that he plays that he must get used to the intensity of the games. Although some players might not be playing good—and I’m not just talking about him—we let them go and have the experience of 90 minutes.
"The last game against Villa, he had a cramp on 70 minutes, but rather than substitute him, we let him go to have this experience. When there are more tight games in the score, when you’re 1-0 down, then we have the right, and I will do so, to change whoever it is."
Hiddink also gave some insight about how Traore has progressed since the turn of the year. The Burkina Faso international is one of many Chelsea players who have been on loan in recent seasons. He spent two years at Vitesse Arnhem, yet despite that experience, he rarely featured this term until more recently.
"He could have gone on loan in the winter, and I talked to him and said it would be better to stay half a year and he wished to do that," Hiddink revealed. "We made a programme with him, and he responded very well and made progress—not just in January, but from February on he made some good progress.
"That's good to see. First in training, you must make this progress. Because if the gap is too big, I don't want to put him in a big pond and he is drowning."
Transferring those training-ground experiences to first-team matches, Hiddink has started the process of making it easier for the likes of Traore and others to swim in the ocean that is the Premier League.
That's his success story at Stamford Bridge this season. With six games remaining, the hope is that it continues as the benefits represent so much more than points on the board at a time when they matter for little.
Garry Hayes is Bleacher Report's lead Chelsea correspondent. All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Follow him on Twitter @garryhayes.
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