Arnesen on brink over Chelsea 'failure'

[the wes 7,212]

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.

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The Guardian - Observer Edited November 24, 2008 by the wes