Tbf Chelsea’s academy is obviously doing a lot right and fair play to them
Snippets I hear is the pre-Academy stuff there (like the dev/Advanced centre) is pretty serious and not a huge amount of fun. The community trust stuff at Reading is good, but i do think it’s a little unfocused at times (I’ve also seen up to 16 boys in a session with one coach, which is a pretty poor ratio) - maybe that changes as the boys and girls get a bit older
I’ve happily stolen a ton of their training games though and the coaches clearly know what they are doing