Fifteen of Chelsea’s 25-strong scouting staff were laid off on Friday, some of whom were earning up to £100,000 a year. Mind you, even this trimming down won’t put much of a dent in the club’s £74million annual loss, so it’s hardly surprising Frank Arnesen’s arse is twitching.
You see, after all the trouble Chelsea had getting Arnesen, which resulted in us paying Spurs £5million in compensation, it looks as if his rolling contract won’t be rolling anymore come the summer.
The problem for the Chelsea director of scouting and youth development seems to be around promises he made on his arrival, where he claimed he would deliver a youth-team player for our first team within three years and another player every year after that. Unfortunately for Arnesen, who was given a £1.8million a year salary to do this, after a 3 and a half year period Chelsea are still waiting for someone to make the promised breakthrough.
In fact any young players we have seen briefly in the first team, came from elsewhere and the last home-grown player to really make it as a first team player was the Chelsea captain – so clearly nothing to do with Arnesen then.
Still, Arnesen is said to be pretty confident he won’t end up on Chelsea’s redundancy list any time soon because he is, after all, a friend of Roman Abramovich.
Oh dear, how quickly he seems to have forgotten Avram Grant.
Blue is the colour
