CLARETS

A full list of the 2023/24 Vanarama National League key dates are as follows:

• Opening Day – Saturday 5 August 2023

• Final Day – Saturday 20 April 2024

• Play-Off Eliminator A (5th v 6th) – Tuesday 23 April 2024

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Play-Eliminator B (4th v 7th) – Wednesday 24 April 2024

Play-Off Semi-Finals – Sunday 28 April 2024

National League Promotion Final – Saturday 4 May 2024

National League North/South Promotion Finals – Sunday 5 May 2024

Chelmsford City Football Club is delighted to announce that Defender, Frankie Terry, has re-joined the club on Loan from Colchester United

Terry, 19, has come through the Academy at Colchester United and experienced a successful spell on loan with the Clarets last Season where he won the Supporters Young Player of the Year award and has now re-joined the club where he scored his first senior goal last season making 26 appearances in all competitions. Frankie had involvement in the Colchester United first team towards the end of last season as well as during the U’s 23/24 Pre-Season campaign.

Manager Robbie Simpson spoke on Frankie Terry re-joining on loan “It’s great to get Frankie back, we had a lot of great loan success stories last year and he was definitely one of them. He won our Supporters Young Player of the Year, fully and deservedly so in my opinion. He came to us effectively as a Youth Team player and left us as someone who can handle the robustness of Men’s football week in, week out. His game has just developed so much and we were just so pleased with the loan from every angle and so were Colchester.”

“Going into this Pre-Season if Frankie wasn’t to be with Colchester’s first team then we’d have always loved for him to come back. He was always keen to come back and Colchester wanted him to come back, it’s taken probably a little longer than we expected once we knew he wasn’t going to be involve in Colchester’s First Team towards the back end of Pre-Season. But the deal’s done now and he adds to our squad, if you look at our defence from last year we had the second best defensive record in the league. We’ve only lost Adebola now from that unit in terms of a defender plus a change of Goalkeeper. We’ve brough in Luke Jenkins as Ade’s replacement. We’re looking strong again in that area and we are delighted that Frankie is back”

Chelmsford City Football Club are delighted to announce the signing of Goalkeeper Josh Oluwayemi on loan from EFL League One Side Portsmouth

Oluwayemi, 22, came through the Academy set-up at Tottenham Hotspur before playing in a range of domestic and European competitions at Under 18 and Under 23 level during his time at Spurs. Oluwayemi had a short term loan spell with Berkshire based Vanarama National League side Maidenhead United to bolster the Magpies ranks towards the end of 2020. Josh departed Tottenham in July 2022 where he moved to Hampshire side Portsmouth, where he has since gone on to make 9 appearances keeping 4 clean sheets in the Papa John’s Trophy and EFL League One.

Robbie Simpson shared his thoughts on Josh Oluwayemi signing for the Clarets “As you could probably imagine given the success last year of Ovie and Eddie we had a number of clubs wanting us to take their goalkeepers on loan, top clubs. Top Premier League Clubs, Champions League clubs so we pretty much had the choice of what we wanted. We identified Josh last season as someone we really like and had circumstances been different i.e. him not being part of Portsmouth’s first team and actually playing the last few games of last season he could well have been with us last season. We’re delighted to get him this season, we identified him as the one we wanted and we’ve been patient and waited for him.”

“A big thanks to Portsmouth for keeping in regular communication with us. We agreed this loan deal quite a while ago but obviously they’ve had a Pre-Season, plus a need to bring in a couple of Goalkeepers before Josh would be allowed to come out. We kept in regular communication with Portsmouth and they’ve been really good to deal with so a big thanks again to them.”

“We’ve managed to get Josh in with us, obviously in an ideal scenario we would’ve had him in earlier and bedded him into the club but Portsmouth wanted and needed him. I’m sure if you asked them they would’ve wanted to get their business done a bit quicker as well. He’s still going to have had over a week with us before the start of the season, with our first game against Farnborough on Saturday. We’ve got the game against Arsenal that he will now play in and we’ve got a great group so I’m sure we will get him bedded in quickly to what we are all about. We can’t wait to see him in between the sticks for us.