Chelsea make it four in a row in TGG’s Academy Productivity Rankings
Written by
Ryan Inghilterra & Ian Westbrook
September 7, 2026
Chelsea are the most productive Academy in England and Wales for the fourth successive edition of TGG’s exclusive Academy Productivity Rankings – but there is plenty of movement beneath them.
The Rankings, now in their seventh edition, measure each Academy’s contribution to developing the players who appeared in senior professional football during 2025/26. They are the only publicly-available resource of their kind in the UK.
This year’s edition is the most comprehensive we have produced. The research, carried out by Data Scientist Ryan Inghilterra, has been expanded and the methodology refined in a major way, and the result is a bigger, deeper and more accurate picture of which Academies are producing professional footballers.
Bigger and better
For the first time, Welsh players and clubs have been included alongside their English counterparts. That brings Cardiff City, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham – the four Welsh Academies within the Elite Player Performance Plan – into the table alongside the 85 English Category One to Three Academies.
Previously, only English players were included wherever they were playing.
League coverage has also grown massively – from nine competitions to 23. Previously, the data covered the top five English divisions plus Serie A, the Bundesliga, La Liga and Ligue 1. This year it also takes in the leading leagues across the rest of Europe, Major League Soccer, Liga MX and the A-League, following English and Welsh Academy graduates wherever they play.
As a result, the player population has risen from 1,814 last year to 2,067 this time – 1,897 English and 170 Welsh – with every player researched individually and every Academy finding linked to supporting evidence.
The scoring has been sharpened too. Competition weightings have been recalibrated using Opta’s league-strength ratings, minutes played have been introduced as a secondary factor, and where a player came through more than one Academy, the credit is now shared according to the time he spent at each. In Academy Rankings 2025/26: How the research was done, Ryan explains the process in full.
The top 20
The table above shows the top 20 and four of the 12 columns. TGG Members can see the full table: all 89 Category One to Three Academies, each club’s total score, its points from graduates in the Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, National League and overseas leagues, its Category and first-team tier, and where it finished last year.
We are incredibly proud to have topped the Academy Productivity Rankings for a fourth successive year
Chelsea Academy Director Glenn van der Kraan:
Chelsea, then the chasing pack
Manchester United dominated the first three editions of the Rankings, finishing top in 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2020/21, but Chelsea have led every edition since – and their advantage has held despite the expanded scope of this year’s research.
Chelsea Academy Director Glenn van der Kraan told TGG: “On behalf of everyone at Chelsea Football Club, we are incredibly proud to have topped the Academy Productivity Rankings for a fourth successive year. That record reflects the hard work of so many people across the Academy and the entire club and I thank the club’s ownership and Sporting Directors for their support and backing which has made this possible.”
Arsenal are second and United third for the third successive year, with Manchester City climbing to fourth – a rise that last year’s analysis anticipated, given the number of City graduates aged 23 and under already playing league football.
Southampton and West Brom, both Category One, are the only Championship clubs in the top 10, while Category One Reading are the highest-ranked League One club in 12th.
Cardiff are the highest new entrant, the leading Welsh Academy and the highest-ranked Category Two club, in 16th. We will be speaking to Cardiff’s Gavin Chesterfield and Reading’s Michael Gilkes about their Academies’ performances later this week.
Movers and fallers
While millions of pounds have been spent on players from abroad this summer, the Rankings show the scale of the contribution Academy-developed players continue to make across the professional game – and the table is far from static from one year to the next.
Inside the top 20, Nottingham Forest are the biggest risers, up 10 places to 18th, with Brighton climbing six to 15th. Everton drop from fourth to seventh, and Sheffield United, 10th last year, fall out of the top 20 altogether.
Wolves, Bournemouth and Brentford are the only Premier League Academies outside the top 20 – and all three sit outside the top 30. However, of those clubs, Bournemouth still had a Category Three Academy in 2022, which was the same year that Brentford’s Academy was reopened.
Further down, the biggest climbers are Category Three Bristol Rovers, who rose 21 places despite their first team being relegated to League Two in 2025. The biggest fall belongs to Wigan, last year’s biggest risers, who dropped 26 places despite extending their record of starting at least one Academy graduate in every game to 194 consecutive first-team matches.
Members can see every club’s position and movement – including the highest-ranked Category Three Academy, the lowest-ranked Category One Academy, the lowest-ranked Premier League club and the other double-figure risers and fallers – in the full table.
Members’ Masterclass tonight
Ryan Inghilterra will deliver a live Masterclass for TGG Members at 7pm tonight, walking through how the Rankings were put together and sharing his insight into the results. Membership starts at £9 a month and includes the full table, every previous edition and a place at the Masterclass. Find out more here.
For TGG Members Only:
Previous editions of the Rankings:
- 2016/17: 1. Manchester United, 2. Arsenal, 3. Chelsea. SEE FULL TABLE
- 2017/18: 1. Manchester United, 2. Arsenal, 3. Tottenham. SEE FULL TABLE
- 2020/21: 1. Manchester United, 2. Arsenal, 3. Chelsea. SEE FULL TABLE
- 2021/22: 1. Chelsea, 2. Manchester United, 3. Arsenal. SEE FULL TABLE
- 2023/24: 1. Chelsea, 2. Arsenal, 3. Manchester United. SEE FULL TABLE
- 2024/25: 1. Chelsea, 2. Arsenal, 3. Manchester United. SEE FULL TABLE
How the Rankings work
Using data from FBref, we identified every male player listed as English or Welsh who made at least one appearance in one of the 23 competitions covered during 2025/26. Each player’s Academy history was then researched and cross-referenced against sources including Transfermarkt, club biographies, governing-body records, interviews and news reports, with an Academy credited only where source-backed evidence showed he was part of its formal youth system before his 18th birthday.
Each player is weighted according to the strength of the highest-level competition he appeared in, calibrated using Opta’s league-strength ratings, with a limited adjustment for minutes played. Where more than one Academy contributed to a player’s development, his points are divided between them – by time spent at each where reliable information exists, and equally where it does not.
The Rankings do not assess the current quality of an Academy’s youth teams. Accrington Stanley have been removed following the closure of their Academy in May 2025; the other 85 clubs from last year’s table have been retained and, with the four Welsh additions, the Rankings now cover 89 Academies.
For the full explanation of how this year’s Rankings were researched and calculated, read Academy Rankings 2025/26: How the research was done.
An Academy was counted as having contributed to a player’s development where source-backed evidence showed that he had been part of the professional club’s formal Academy or youth system before his 18th birthday. Trials and non-Academy development activity were not counted.
As in previous editions, a weighting is applied according to the senior competition in which each player appeared. This year, those weights were calibrated using Opta’s league-strength ratings and converted to a common scale across the expanded range of competitions. The strength of the highest-level competition in which a player appeared remains the main factor, while minutes played provide a limited adjustment to reflect his level of involvement.
If a player attended more than one Academy, his points are divided between them. Where reliable information about the length of each spell is available, the allocation now reflects the relative time spent at each Academy. Where comparable duration information is not available, the points are shared evenly.
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