The team Chelsea could have had If Kevin de Bruyne and Mo Salah stay

There's no problem with the youth policy at Chelsea. It fact it's probably the best in the world. If Chelsea were Ajax or Porto, we'd be dispatching journalists overseas to find out how it is done. It's doubtful that any club in Europe could better their record.

There is an obvious caveat, however. They are the best at the identification of young talent. Development and nurturing is just not their thing. At least it hasn't been since Roman Abramovich took over in 2003.

Which is curious when the messages put out by Chelsea are that Abramovich's goal, as well as winning trophies, was to build a functional club that operated within its means (albeit, the 'operating within its means' bit only came after a £1billion subsidy). Yet Chelsea have changed in recent years on one level. From being the nouveau riche spendthrifts of European football, Abramovich charged two men with transforming the culture: academy chief Neil Bath and former sporting director Michael Emenalo.

Chelsea had a dual approach. Whilst hoovering up the best youth in their academy, they would also buy up emerging talents in Europe, early and thus cheap. That way they would be able to maintain the early success of Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti years without paying the eye-watering transfer fees and wages which meant the club couldn't break even.

And what a job Bath and Emenalo did, the heroes of this story. The team below is the team Chelsea could have now. And it was constructed for less than £45million. It's difficult to put a precise figure on it, as players moving at 16 have variable compensation costs, but they rarely come to more than £500,000.

All these players were recruited by the time they were 21. The most expensive were Mohamed Salah and Romelu Lukaku at £11m and £10m respectively. If Chelsea were fielding this team, which incidentally cost less than Alvaro Morata, how much better or worse would it be than the current first XI, which cost £350m?

That's a question Abramovich and his managing director Marina Granovskaia ought to be asking themselves. Abramovich owns a club which lacks a holistic vision of integrating the extraordinary talent it identifies and thus, on that level, is failing.

It's easy to point the finger at Mourinho, Antonio Conte and now Maurizio Sarri. But the coaches operate with a culture of impatience at Chelsea. It's understandable that the club has fetishised trophies in the Abramovich era. That has been their identity and it's hard to argue with a club that has won the Champions League, the Europa League, five Premier League trophies, five FA Cups and three League Cups in that time. Yet the cost of that is that they never allowed this team to flourish.

Now you could argue there are some noticeable weakness in our XI, such as at right back. Tomas Kalas tends to play centre half on loan at Bristol City and is unlikely to make the cut at full back in the Premier League. But it is a team picked to make a point, not to win the league. It's not as though you can't buy others players to strengthen it. If we relaxed the parameters a little and allowed for the inclusion of Cesar Azpilicueta, who came at the age of 22 and cost £8m, you would add a world class right back to it.

Eden Hazard could also be in it. He fits our criteria in that he joined Chelsea at 21. He was excluded because his £31.5m transfer drove the cost up and because he was a much more obvious signing at the time, than say Salah or Lukaku, as he had already made a name for himself in one of the top five European leagues. You didn't need to be particularly smart to sign Hazard. Salah for £11m or De Bruyne for £8m is smart.

Were you to throw in a world-class centre half for £50m to bolster our back four, add in N'Golo Kante and Azpilicueta, and you would still have an extraordinary team brought together for around £130m. Or, in Manchester City money, the cost of their full backs.

Abramovich's messages are mixed. The club never wants to compromise on the trophies. Their fans relentlessly mock Tottenham for taking a different approach, which is based on their academy and smart recruitment. But if you take that line, and thus jettison managers every two years, you will have to accept that your best young talents will leave. Sarri has understandably spent the last six months shoring up his own position. The net result is that Callum Hudson-Odoi is likely to end up at Bayern Munich, his development falling between the cracks of the dog end of Conte's managerial days and the start of Sarri's reign.

It's probable that had the club waited for this team to develop, they wouldn't have won the Premier League twice in the last four years. And that's a significant cost to pay. But they would be a better position now.

The question is what kind of club do they want to be? One with a joined-up strategy that makes the most of all of its parts? Or one which lurches from manager to manager, yet wins trophies. Increasingly, the latter model looks less feasible. With a big six, rather than a big four to worry about, trophies looks increasingly hard to win. And this team doesn't look like challenging for the league any time soon. The days of the huge Abramovich subsidies are over. So the bolder path would be to merge the former vision and try to win trophies as well. That's going to take time, however. And a risk of being mocked, like Tottenham.