Chelsea’s academy was the leading producer of Premier League players for the 2024/25 season.
The Blues reclaimed top spot in the PA news agency’s annual study from Manchester United, while Liverpool gave the largest share of their own first-team minutes to homegrown players.
Cobham delivers the goods
Twenty Chelsea academy graduates appeared in the top flight over the season, playing a total of 28,524 minutes.
That was two players and over 5,000 minutes more than any other academy. Manchester City were second on both counts, with 18 players playing a combined 23,462 minutes, dropping United to third.
Chelsea captain Reece James and fellow defenders Levi Colwill and Trevoh Chalobah contributed heavily to their side’s Champions League qualification, all earning places in the latest England squad in the process, but their academy also produced first-team regulars for other Premier League clubs.
Newcastle full-backs Tino Livramento and Lewis Hall, Nottingham Forest duo Ola Aina and Callum Hudson-Odoi, Crystal Palace captain Marc Guehi, Tottenham striker Dominic Solanke and Aston Villa’s Ian Maatsen all topped 1,000 minutes. At the other end of the scale, fellow Cobham graduate Michael Golding played 45 seconds for Leicester as a substitute against Southampton – the lowest playing time for any player to feature in the Premier League this season.
United fell behind their Manchester rivals as well after selling Scott McTominay to Napoli while Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho frequently found themselves out of favour.
Fourth-ranked Arsenal, helped by the emergence of Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly, nearly doubled their total from 11,869 minutes to 21,894.
Liverpool ranked seventh with the rest of the top 10 made up of clubs from outside the Premier League – Ajax and Barcelona in fifth and sixth, with Championship sides Leeds and Hull sandwiching ninth-placed Anderlecht.
Brighton, Tottenham, Leicester, Everton and Crystal Palace also ranked in the top 20, with Nottingham Forest one place outside. Brentford were the lowest-ranked Premier League club, 274th of the 275 academies represented – ahead of only Rochdale.
They and Wolves were among 185 academies to produce just a single player apiece.
Homegrown heroes
Liverpool’s title win was heavily driven by their own academy, with homegrown players accounting for 16.7 per cent of their playing time.
Trent Alexander-Arnold led the way with 2,575 minutes, with Curtis Jones and Caoimhin Kelleher also over 1,000 and Conor Bradley and Jarell Quansah playing significant parts.
There were cameos too for Viteszlav Jaros and Jayden Danns but Liverpool’s seven homegrown players were topped by Manchester United’s eight. Garnacho, Kobbie Mainoo, Rashford, Jonny Evans, Toby Collyer, Chido Obi, Tyler Fredricson and McTominay combined to play 6,292 minutes for their formative club, 15.2 per cent of United’s playing time.
Colwill, Chalobah and James led Chelsea’s third-placed tally of 6,150 minutes, or 14.7 per cent.
Six clubs gave over 10 per cent of playing time to homegrown players, with Crystal Palace only just below that mark. That included five of the traditional ‘big six’, with Tottenham the only exception.
Chelsea and Manchester City used six homegrown players each. Southampton had five – as did Spurs, though Mikey Moore, Brandon Austin, Dane Scarlett, Will Lankshear and Alfie Dorrington accrued just 602 minutes between them.
Brentford’s sole representative league-wide was at least their first homegrown player in the history of the PA academy study, Ryan Trevitt playing eight minutes against Spurs in September.
That left Wolves as the only team not to field a homegrown player, though they had Luke Cundle, Wesley Okoduwa and Tom Edozie in matchday squads as unused substitutes.
