Chelsea's machine-like academy operation has seen some brilliant players emerge and play a part in the first team, but it's also seen its fair share of blunders.
Reece James and Conor Gallagher both reside in the current squad, while Mason Mount was sold to Manchester United for £55m last summer after winning the Champions League in 2021. There are many more.
But not all ply their trade through their formative years, instead purchased as raw, unrefined seniors, many of whom fail to ever live up to the hype. There's one such player who failed to make an impact at Chelsea but has now cemented himself as one of the greatest players of his generation. He is Cole Palmer's idol.
Speaking of Palmer. The England international is exactly one of those untested and talented young pros to have made the move to Stamford Bridge – but he's been nothing other than an unmitigated success.
Cole Palmer's season in numbers
Where even to begin? Let's look at it linearly. Chelsea completed the signing of Palmer from Manchester City for an initial fee of £40m back on transfer deadline day last summer, with the 22-year-old having made waves on the fringe of Pep Guardiola's sparkling senior set-up.
Chelsea have toiled and trundled for much of the campaign under Mauricio Pochettino but there have been glimpses of quality, flashes of prosperity yet to come. Palmer has been the fulcrum, the mastermind, the string-puller. He has been, as talent scout Jacek Kulig put it: "one of the most in-form players in Europe".
Having scored the winning goal as City defeated Sevilla in the UEFA Super Cup, his move to Chelsea gave him the licence to thrive – and indeed he did.
Palmer blanked across his opening four Premier League fixtures for the Blues but he has now scored 24 goals and supplied 13 assists across 42 matches in all competitions.
He's rather good, bucking the bleak trend of failed signings at Chelsea in that regard.
But going back to that original point, it hasn't always been that way. With the Blues bosses surely rueing the one-time sale of Kevin De Bruyne, who indeed has a fan in former teammate Palmer and arguably has a seat at the table of the great game's greatest greats.
Why Chelsea sold Kevin De Bruyne
De Bruyne is one of the most iconic Premier League players of his generation. The creative linchpin of Guardiola's illustrious success, he has amassed 378 games for the Sky Blues, directly contributing toward 270 goals, following a club-record £50m transfer from Wolfsburg in 2015 that initially raised a few eyebrows.
This season, the 32-year-old has battled against injuries but has still posted six goals and 16 assists across 22 matches in all competitions, with Guardiola dubbing him "one of the greatest players of all time" and Thierry Henry hailing his "incredible" ability.
Palmer admitted to being starstruck after first training with the likes of De Bruyne at the Etihad Stadium but Chelsea must feel a sense of poetic justice that they have swiped a prodigious playmaking talent from the club that has bathed in the riches of De Bruyne's quality.
Especially so after selling him to Wolfsburg for only £17m, which was a moderately successful recoup at the time but looks rather stumpy now.
To highlight his world-class influence: as per FBref, De Bruyne ranks among the top 1% of midfielders across Europe's top five leagues over the past year for goals, assists and shot-creating actions, the top 9% for passes attempted, the top 5% for progressive passes and the top 2% for progressive carries per 90.
Premier League
5x
Champions League
1x
FA Cup
2x
Carabao Cup
5x
FIFA Club World Cup
1x
UEFA Supercup
1x
Community Shield
2x
Forget all the individual brilliance, the intricacies that make De Bruyne the phenomenon that he is – that trophy cabinet alone marks his transfer to Manchester City as the best possible move for his career.
The esteemed Belgium international will have no regrets over his move away from Chelsea but the Stamford Bridge side must rue the day they shipped him on.
It all could have been so different.