Millwall head coach, Joe Edwards has admitted he doesn’t really like the idea of Chelsea selling off many of their academy graduates.

The Blues are renowned for having one of the best football academies in the world, having made such talented players like Reece James and Mason Mount, but they often end up selling some of them for money— and Edwards wishes this wasn’t the case.

He told the London Evening Standard: “Particularly in Frank’s (Lampard) first spell, when Fikayo (Tomori), Mason (Mount), Tammy (Abraham), Reece (James) were playing regularly, I did think, ‘Well, that’s it then…a lot of them will just be the core of that team for years to come’.

“Some of them feel like younger brothers to me, we kind of grew up together.

“So sometimes it’s sad, when I would love them to still be at Chelsea because that would have been the dream for everyone, but to see the stage that they’re on and how well some of them are doing makes me incredibly proud.

“It’s a huge plus when Chelsea can [transfer] list Mount, Abraham, Guehi and it’s getting beyond £100million,” he added. “It’s credit to the way the club is working at academy level. If that’s the chosen model, if people want to use those finances to recruit what they deem as the best from elsewhere, I guess that’s each club’s prerogative.”

Edwards spent a huge chunk of his life at Chelsea, both as a player and coach at the academy.