Chelsea beat Man City to retain FA Youth Cup
Chelsea lifted the FA Youth Cup for a third year in a row with a comfortable 3-1 win over Manchester City at Stamford Bridge.
Following the 1-1 draw in Friday’s first leg, goals from Dujon Sterling, Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori completed a 4-2 victory on aggregate.
It is the fifth time out of the last seven that the Blues have won the trophy, going back to 2010 when Rohan Ince and Josh McEachran – now at Fulham and Brentford respectively – were part of the Chelsea side to beat Aston Villa.
Led by Jake Clarke-Salter, who made his first-team debut this month, the current crop of young Blues kept the ball well against City in the first half but struggled to carve out chances until Mason Mount twice shot wide just before the break.
They took the lead deep into first-half injury time when the City defence and goalkeeper Daniel Grimshaw misjudged a long ball on the edge of the box and Sterling nipped in to score.
City thought they had equalised early in the second half when Isaac Buckley-Ricketts tapped in after Chelsea keeper Nathan Baxter had saved, but the flag went up for offside.
And a few minutes later, the home side doubled their lead. Abraham, who missed the first leg through injury, got on to an Isaac Christie-Davies cross and his looping header drifted in off the underside of the bar.
Only good goalkeeping by Grimshaw prevented a dominant Chelsea from running up a larger score, though he was beaten again by Tomori’s bullet header from Mount’s cross.
City did pull a goal back late on, Brahim Diaz netting after the Blues defence had failed to clear a corner, but Chelsea closed the game out.
It was Joe Edwards’ last match in charge of the Chelsea youngsters before moving on to a new role overseeing the development of some of the players out on loan.
