Chosen

Walsh highlights Chelsea’s vision for the future but also the ghosts of the recent past.

Against Ajax, Chelsea gave minutes to 10 players aged 21 or younger, having not played a player over the age of 28 since the beginning of last season.

Chelsea broke several other records on Wednesday, including:

Brazil international Estevao continues to impress after joining the Blues this summer.

The forward was last week one of three Chelsea players nominated for the Golden Boy award, which recognises the standout young players across the European game – along with Jorrel Hato, Mamadou Sarr.

And, after Hato described him as one of the best teenagers in football after Lamine Yamal, Maresca was full of praise for his display.

He said: “I feel very lucky to be his manager. The fans pay tickets to see players like Cole (Palmer) and Estevao.

“He’s very humble and polite, wants to work hard. He has fantastic family who are very close to him. He’s a special player but we don’t have to be worried that he thinks he knows how good he is. He’s a very simple guy.

“It’s a special night for the club and its young players.”

The Blues are the youngest team in the Premier League and are among the youngest teams in Europe’s top five leagues, coming second behind only sister club Strasbourg last season, which is under the same BlueCo American ownership.

Chelsea’s strategy, which sometimes faces criticism, is by design and one they believe will lead to greater success in the long-term, having already won the Conference League and Club World Cup last season.

Despite that, signing so many young players can send the wrong message to the club’s famed academy and there is a delicate balance to be struck.

Chelsea were horrified when they lost attacker Rio Ngumoha to Liverpool in 2024 and vowed it would never happen again.

Since then, Maresca gave a record eight academy players their debuts last season, albeit against lesser competition in the Conference League.

In addition to Walsh, older academy graduates George and Josh Acheampong, both 19, have been given full-time first-team roles.

Meanwhile, Ryan Kavuma-McQueen, 16, was on the bench against Ajax for the first time and is among an exciting future generation.

South Korea has selected an L3Harris Global 6500 bizjet-based solution for its new airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft. As we discussed at the time, Seoul launched its search for a new radar plane back in 2020, to bolster its current fleet of four Boeing E-737s, the South Korean version of the E-7 Wedgetail that has been selected by the U.S. Air Force, NATO, and the United Kingdom, and is in service with Turkey, South Korea, and Australia. Reports from earlier this year suggested that Boeing had already been eliminated or dropped out of the new South Korean AEW&C competition, something that the company appeared to deny.

According to L3Harris, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has selected its proposal for its next-generation AEW&C program. The L3Harris solution allies a Bombardier Global 6500 airframe with the EL/W-2085 radar from Israel’s Elta. This series of radars is already used in AEW&C aircraft operated by Israel, Italy, and Singapore. It uses side-mounted active electronically scanned arrays (AESA), with additional antennas in the nose and tail helping to provide 360-degree coverage. 

For the South Korean bid, L3Harris had also been in competition with Sweden’s Saab, offering its Erieye Extended Range (ER) radar, also on a Global 6500 platform, a package known as GlobalEye.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, DAPA chose the L3Harris option after it received a higher score following an evaluation.

Yonhap quoted DAPA as saying: “There was no significant difference in the evaluation of the performance of the target equipment, and L3Harris received high scores in the areas of operational suitability, domestic defense industry contribution, and operation and maintenance costs, while Saab received high scores in the areas of contract terms and acquisition costs. As a result of synthesizing the scores for each evaluation item, L3Harris received a high score.”

DAPA further stated: “Through this project, we expect to secure the ability to conduct constant aerial surveillance of enemy aerial threats in both wartime and peacetime, and to enable smooth execution of air control missions led by the Korean military.”

The four new AEW&C aircraft are due to be introduced by 2032, at a cost of 3.0975 trillion won (roughly $2.2 billion).

Exactly what happened to Boeing in the competition is unclear.

Having provided the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) with its four E-737s, under the Peace Eye program, it might have been viewed as a frontrunner in the second phase of the AEW&C acquisition.

In July of this year, reports emerged that the Boeing offering (again based on the E-7/E-737) had been removed from the South Korean competition.

At the time, Boeing provided the TWZ with the following statement: “We continue to support the U.S. government, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, and the Republic of Korea Air Force on our offering for additional E-7 AEW&C aircraft via the Foreign Military Sale process. In addition to detecting, tracking, and identifying targets, the E-7 AEW&C provides unmatched battle management capabilities ideally suited to the ROKAF’s needs.”

Meanwhile, sources familiar with the acquisition told TWZ that Boeing had submitted a proposal and supporting documents for its bid, but that none of the bidders involved met all the requirements outlined in two previous rounds. As a result, DAPA reissued the request for proposals (RFP), albeit with no changes in cost or requirements. Although the U.S. government didn’t resubmit the Boeing offer, it apparently remained a bidder in the competition. Once the RFP was reissued, the U.S. government and Boeing together submitted a letter stating that the original proposal still stood, with the same price tag attached.

We have reached out to Boeing for an update on the competition, but reports from South Korea, at least, suggest that, by the end, the bidding was a two-horse race between L3Harris and Saab.

Once the ROKAF fields its new radar planes, they will be a critical part of a broader effort to significantly enhance the country’s intelligence, surveillance, targeting, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities. In particular, they will help shore up possible gaps in its aerial surveillance coverage as the threat from North Korea, as well as from China, continues to grow.

Seoul approved the new AEW&C acquisition plan in June 2020, with DAPA already discounting any potential domestic solution.

As we reported in the past, South Korea first identified an emerging airborne early warning requirement as long ago as 1980, which it deemed necessary due to the country’s topography. This limits the performance of ground-based radar stations.

However, the first phase of its AEW&C acquisition wasn’t launched until 2005. On that occasion, the Boeing E-7 was chosen in favor of a U.S.-Israeli consortium of Gulfstream, L3, and Israel Aerospace Industries/Elta offering the Gulfstream G550 Conformal AEW (CAEW) — a forerunner of the L3Harris Global 6500-based solution.

Interestingly, however, it seems that Seoul would have opted for the U.S.-Israeli product, especially due to its low acquisition and through-life costs, but export restrictions ruled this out, and the Boeing offer was selected by default in August 2006.

The resulting $1.6-billion Peace Eye project included four E-737 aircraft, the last of which was delivered in 2012.

But there have also been reports that the ROKAF may have been dissatisfied with its E-737s.

In October 2019, the South Korean daily newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported on a ROKAF document that had been submitted to the Korean parliamentary National Defense Committee. It cited “frequent failures” in the period from 2015 to September 2019 that meant the E-737s had failed to meet a targeted availability rate of 75 per cent. This lack of airframes reportedly exposed gaps in South Korea’s air defense coverage due to aircraft being unavailable to maintain constant patrols.

These kinds of concerns will only have increased since then, as North Korea has only expanded its activities in the field of low-flying drones and cruise missiles, which have small radar signatures but pose a big threat to South Korea.

Since Seoul launched its latest AEW&C competition, Boeing has found additional customers for the E-7, with the U.S. Air Force and NATO choosing it to replace or partially replace their aging E-3 Sentry AWACS fleets.

However, the future of the U.S. Air Force E-7 procurement remains somewhat precarious, with a Pentagon plan to axe the acquisition, amid a push to eventually move most, if not all, of its airborne target warning sensor layer into space. In July of this year, the House Armed Services Committee made a move toward reversing that decision.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has also now laid out plans to buy more of the U.S. Navy’s E-2D Hawkeye AEW&C aircraft to mitigate any capability gaps in the interim.

Whatever is decided, the U.S. Air Force’s E-7 program had already suffered notable delays and cost growth, which the Pentagon has said were major factors in the cancellation decision.

With all that in mind, today’s decision in South Korea looks like especially bad news for Boeing.

It should also be recalled that the Global 6500 is a new platform for this technology. It would appear that L3Harris will have to reintegrate the entire CAEW configuration, including its conformal systems, and flight-test it on a new airframe. With the production of the G550 ended, this would appear to be the only solution if a new-build airframe is to be used. We have asked the company for more details on this process.

SAIF ZAIB – (NORTHAMPTONSHIRE) – 61%

1,387 runs, average 66.04, six centuries, six half-centuries

Saif Zaib has been a beacon of light in a season of struggle for Northamptonshire.

Batting at number five, he has often been called upon to rescue a brittle batting line-up from which no other batter features in Division Two’s top twenty run-scorers.

He converted six of his 12 50-plus scores into three figures while also chipping in with 13 wickets with his slow left-armers.

The good news for Northants fans is he remains under contract until the end of the 2027 season.

TOM ABELL (SOMERSET) – 52%

1,022 runs, average 51.10, three centuries, five half-centuries

Though his side’s push for a maiden Division One title faltered in the final month of the season, 2025 was another fine year for Tom Abell.

A century in the penultimate round was his third of the campaign and saw him into four figures for the season with an average of more than 50.

The 31-year-old also helped his club to the T20 Blast title.

MARCUS HARRIS (LANCASHIRE) – 46%

1,027 runs, average 60.41, three centuries, five half-centuries

Former Australia Test batter Marcus Harris has had a year to remember after joining Lancashire.

The 33-year-old initially signed as an overseas for the Championship and One-Day Cup this summer but swiftly put pen to paper on a deal for another two years.

The former Leicestershire and Gloucestershire man – who has won 14 Test caps – made a blistering start, passing 800 runs in May, though his momentum did wane in the second half of the season as Lancashire were unable to mount a push for promotion from Division Two.

Having been part of the 2024 team, Glamorgan’s Colin Ingram was edged into fourth in the voting by Harris.