"Arnesen on brink over Chelsea 'failure'"

Arnesen on brink over Chelsea 'failure'

Frank Arnesen will be dismissed by Chelsea before the end of the year as Roman Abramovich punishes the club's chief scout and director of youth development for his multi-million-pound failure to establish a single youth signing in the first team, sources close to the club have told Observer Sport. Chelsea's owner was also angered by Arnesen's ill-advised decision to discuss the owner's straitened finances in public.

Arnesen's closest associates were openly discussing the Dane's demise last week as a recent pruning of his scouting network degenerated into impending departure.

'Frank will be out before Christmas,' said an agent involved in one of Arnesen's more controversial deals. 'Roman does not want him near the club any more.' Chelsea last night declined to comment on Arnesen's future employment, while Arnesen said he did not expect to depart: 'I am not leaving Chelsea Football Club at the end of the year.'

Arnesen had positioned himself as a key advisor to Abramovich, playing an important role in the conclusion of Jose Mourinho's highly successful reign as manager as the pair battled for control of first-team transfers. However, it is understood that Arnesen's failure to establish even one youth signing in the senior squad despite unprecedented investment in his recruitment programme eventually placed his own performance under scrutiny. Arnesen then compounded his problems by connecting sackings of his own scouting staff to Abramovich's recent financial losses - angering the Russian billionaire.

In an interview with the Danish newspaper Weekend Avisen, Arnesen explained the dismissal of 15 scouts from his network. He said: 'The credit crisis has meant that Roman has hit the financial brakes, and asked us to cut deep. We have cut down significantly on scouts and other activities.'

The comments were ill received by Abramovich, who carefully guards his privacy. Though the Russian has lost billions of pounds on stock-market investments during the credit crunch, his advisors have publicly dismissed them as 'paper losses', emphasising that the bulk of his fortune is intact.

Acquired from Tottenham at a cost of over £5million in the summer of 2005 (the same compensation fee Spurs paid Portsmouth for Harry Redknapp last month), Arnesen has been paid £2m a year and generously supported in his stated aim of producing 'the best youth development programme in the world'. Abramovich funded the construction of an £11m academy building and has spent further tens of millions on transfers, salaries and agent fees for the young players Arnesen identified.

The former Denmark international had built up a network of more than 50 scouts to find those prospects. With more than half of his scouts employed full-time and many on six-figure salaries, it was the largest and most expensive scouting system in world football, yet had grown infamous for its ineffectiveness.

Among the ill-starred recruits, Serb centre-back Slobodan Rajkovic was acquired from OFK Beograd for €5.3million in November 2005, a then record fee for a 16-year-old. He has yet to play a game at any level for Chelsea, been farmed out to PSV Eindhoven then FC Twente, and in September received a one-year ban from Fifa for spitting at a referee. Michael Mancienne's recent success in being called up by England had little to do with Arnesen. The young defender joined the club as an eight-year-old, long before the Dane's appointment.

Infringements of recruitment rules have led to unnecessarily high compensation payments for the likes of former Leeds United schoolboys Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo and warnings from the Football Association as to the club's future conduct. Critically, not one of Arnesen's signings has established himself as a regular first-team player, leading to public criticism of their quality by Mourinho. Luiz Felipe Scolari has also been frustrated with the lack of options available to him when senior players have been injured. 'I've tried to find new faces, but I haven't been able to bring enough from the youths,' said Chelsea's current coach.

Texto: www.guardian.co.uk



Frank Arnesen job at Chelsea is at risk

Frank Arnesen, the Chelsea director of scouting and youth development, is coming under increasing pressure to justify his £1.8 million-a-year salary after the club removed two thirds of the international scouts working under him in a shake-up of their talent-spotting operation.

The Times revealed on Friday that Chelsea were beginning a significant cost-cutting exercise, with Luiz Felipe Scolari being told that he must sell players before he can buy during the January transfer window, and they wasted no time by sacking 15 scouts that day.

Arnesen is likely to hold on until the end of the season because paying him off would represent more waste at a time of retrenchment, but his future will be discussed in further detail at the end of the season. The Dane agreed a one-year rolling contract when he arrived from Tottenham Hotspur and it may not be renewed.

Arnesen's move to Chelsea caused much controversy 3½ years ago, with Tottenham reporting their London rivals to the Premier League for an alleged illegal approach before settling for £5 million in compensation. In his remit as their scouting supremo, the 52-year-old pledged to provide a youth-team player for Chelsea's first team within three years and deliver a further player every subsequent year, but no one has made the breakthrough. John Terry, ten years ago, was the last home-grown player to become a regular.

The young players who have made league appearances in the past few years, such as Scott Sinclair, were signed from other clubs, yet Arnesen is confident of keeping his job because of the strength of his relationship with Roman Abramovich and Piet de Visser, the owner's personal scout, but the sacking of Avram Grant at the end of last season shows that friendship is not enough to guarantee survival at Stamford Bridge.

Given such failures, Chelsea had always been planning to restructure their scouting network at the end of the season, along with looking at Arnesen's role, but the desire to cut costs in the worsening economic climate has led them to do away with the job sooner than expected.

"We are restructuring our scouting network," a club spokesman said. "We are refocusing our attention on key territories and key targets rather than the existing wider approach."

Texto: www.timesonline.co.uk

24.11.2008 00:33h | Ocultar ou Mostrar Comentários | Noticias