When Frank Lampard was unveiled as Chelsea head coach last July he made a promise. "It's really important to develop young players and that will be one of my first jobs," he said. “It will be one of the things we will look at strongly."
Figures published by the CIES Football Observatory indicate that he has delivered on it.
Only Norwich City gave more Premier League minutes to under-21 players than Chelsea in the first half of this season, according to the CIES, with Arsenal trailing behind in third.
Up to New Year's Day, under-21s accounted for 23.3% of minutes in Frank Lampard's team. Norwich were leading the way with 24.2% and Arsenal were on 17.8%.
From there is a big drop off, however, with West Ham fifth highest on 10.5%. Tottenham Hotspur are near the bottom on 3.5%, while Crystal Palace had not given a single second to an under-21 player.
It highlights how dramatic the change in Chelsea's squad has been after years when they relied on experienced campaigners.
Frank Lampard has given debuts to nine academy graduates in all competitions, with Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, Christian Pulisic, Mason Mount and Reece James among the young players to have racked up more than 1,000 minutes in the league up to March.
Callum Hudson-Odoi has played 770 minutes since returning from his achilles injury.
Abraham and Tomori have since turned 22 but the figures to January are boosted by the breakthrough of Billy Gilmour and debuts for Tariq Lamptey, who joined Brighton in January, Armando Broja and Tino Anjorin.
The bulk of Arsenal's under-21 minutes come from Bukayo Sako, Matteo Guendouzi, although several other young players have featured too. Gabriel Martinelli, Joe Willock, Reiss Nelson and Eddie Nketiah have combined for a little more than 2,000 up until football was placed on hiatus.
In comparison to other leagues around the world, the Premier League lagged far behind in terms of opportunities for young players up to January. The average across the 20 teams is 8.5%, placing England 74th out of 93 top divisions.
The Premier League is still marginally ahead of Serie A and La Liga, however. Turkey's Super Lig (3.7%) has given the fewest in total.
