Flashback: "Preying" on Youth/ Evaulating #ChelseaFC Youth

[QPR Report]

From a Mail piece re Chelsea youth, news snippet (which I wasn't aware of; maybe others were) - But the whole article is kind of interesting

News of former QPR youth, taken by Chelsea
"...OLIVER SPRAGUE (QPR)
Now playing for Watford's Under 15 side, Sprague scored the winner in a 1-0 win over Chelsea in the Milk Cup in Northern Ireland in July. "

Daily Mail

Chelsea ban scandal: So what does happen to the babes at Stamford Bridge? By Laura Williamson


Chelsea had a big recruitment drive in 2005 and signed a host of young players. Sportsmail tries to find out what has become of them, and how many of those who remain have a realistic chance of making the first team.

JACK SAVILLE (Reading)

The 6ft 3in defender, 18, joined Southampton in March this year and signed a professional contract on the south coast over the summer.
HARRY WORLEY (Stockport County)

The centre back, 20, signed a three-year permanent deal with Leicester City last summer and is now on loan at Crewe Alexandra.
RICARDO FERNANDES (Sporting Lisbon)

Attacking midfielder Fernandes rejected a move to Italy or Spain - with Chelsea offering to pay off the last six months of his contract - and was released this summer.
FABIO FERREIRA (Sporting Lisbon)
A Portugal Under 19 winger, the 20-year-old went to League One side Oldham Athletic on loan last January and during the summer was released by Chelsea.
Released: Ricardo Fernandes
Let go: Fabio Ferreira
RYAN BERTRAND (Gillingham)

The left back, 20, is on loan at Reading, having spent last season at Norwich City.
ANTON RODGERS (Reading)

The midfielder, 16, will train alongside George Saville on Chelsea's two-year scholarship programme.
THOMAS LYSKOV (Reading)

The 18-year-old returned to Reading after failing to settle at Chelsea, but left their Academy this summer following work experience at Aldershot Town. He was hoping to secure a place at Loughborough University.
On loan: Scott Sinclair
MICHAEL WOODS (Leeds United)
The central midfielder, now 19, is still with Chelsea, despite making just seven appearances in the reserves last season after suffering with knee trouble.
SCOTT SINCLAIR (Bristol Rovers)
The 20-year-old is on loan at Wigan. Sinclair has made five first-team Chelsea appearances (four as a substitute) to date.
OLIVER SPRAGUE (QPR)

Now playing for Watford's Under 15 side, Sprague scored the winner in a 1-0 win over Chelsea in the Milk Cup in Northern Ireland in July.
GEORGE SAVILLE (Reading)
The younger brother of Jack, left back George, 16, was one of 12 youngsters to win scholarships with Chelsea's Under 17 side this summer.
LEWIS BAKER (Luton)
Signed at the tender age of nine, he is still at Chelsea's Academy and is said to be progressing well with the Under 13s.
VINCENZO CAMILLERI

Now 17, he left for Reggina where he played in two Serie A games last season.
MORTEN NIELSEN

The Danish striker, 19, signed professional terms in 2007, but moved to AZ Alkmaar on a free transfer in the close season.
TOM TAIWO (Leeds United)

The midfielder, 19, is on loan at Carlisle until the end of December. He also spent a month with Port Vale at the start of last season.



Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1211285/Chelsea-ban-scandal-So-does-happen-babes-Stamford-Bridge.html#ixzz0QDurPDNl

[QPR Report]

And more on Chelsea youth development

Chelsea youth production line still malfunctioning
Talented youngsters beat their Bristol counterparts, but they will find it harder to progress to the first team

Joe Lovejoy in Bristol guardian.co.uk, Saturday 5 September

To the frustration of successive managers, Jose Mourinho the most vocal among them, Chelsea's youth system has been as productive as a one-armed paperhanger in recent years – a failure which has seen them resort to poaching the likes of France's Gaël Kakuta, from Lens. It is a dreadful condemnation of the expensive academy at Cobham that it has not produced a single first-team regular since John Terry muscled his way to precocious prominence a decade ago.

Small wonder, then, that Roman Abramovich and his cohorts sacked 15 of the club's 25 scouts last November. The survival of Frank Arnesen, chief scout and director of youth development at the time, must make the 53-year-old Dane the man to be standing next to if the Bomb ever drops.

Arnesen, remarkably promoted to a seat on the board as sporting director at the end of last season, pointed to Michael Mancienne in response to Mourinho's criticism, but the 20-year-old defender represents a double-edged sword. Yes, he joined Chelsea at the age of nine, and broke into the England squad for the friendly against Germany last November, but he had to go to Wolves on loan to do it. He is back at Molineux this season, having made just four of his 76 league appearances for Chelsea.

That has been the way of it these past 10 years. The Blues' youth scheme has been a nursery not for their first team, but for others, usually in the Championship. Ryan Bertrand and Jack Cork made their debuts for England Under-21s last season while on loan to Norwich and Southampton respectively.

After gaining that valuable experience where are they now? Back in the second tier, with Reading and Coventry. The last time Chelsea were accused of poaching was when they lured Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo from Leeds in January 2007. Woods has yet to start for the first team and Taiwo is on loan at Carlisle.

There were high hopes of Scott Sinclair, but at 20 he has had spells on loan at Plymouth, Queens Park Rangers, Charlton, Crystal Palace and Birmingham and now, after five appearances for Chelsea spread over three seasons, he has just joined Wigan, again on loan.

Nor are Chelsea's results anything special at youth level. Last season the academy's finest lost to Southampton, Crystal Palace, Norwich and Bristol City, among others. So what of the class of 2009-10? Same old story, it would seem.

Yesterday, back at Bristol City, they improved on last year's 4-1 drubbing, emerging from a fractious scrap as 1-0 winners, but their success was as borderline as the score might suggest.

The training ground City share with the Queen Elizabeth grammar school, in bucolic Somerset, is as far removed from the Premier League as the Vauxhall Vectras and VWs in the car park, and Chelsea's pampered wannabes had a ten-minute walk from the spartan changing rooms, past several schools rugby matches, to get to their pitch.

There, in front of a quorum barely 50 strong, they played out a match as unprepossessing as the threatening leaden skies. Out on the pitch, there were parroted, hand-me-down cries of "keep working", "second ball", "one more" [as in pass] and "focus" [when was it that sport fell out of love with the word concentrate?]. Chelsea favoured the diamond formation, and paraded some exotic names, but there ended any similarity with the first team. Danny Mills, Marko Mitrovic and goalscorer Philipp Prosenik acquitted themselves well enough. But first-teamers?

Carlo Ancelotti didn't waste a day off by attending yesterday, and he missed nothing. If he is looking for another John Terry, he is unlikely to try the Under-16s, either. They drew 5-5 with City on an adjacent pitch

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/sep/05/chelsea-youth-football

[QPR Report]

Observer - Big game poachers prey on youthTop clubs are using nefarious tactics - sometimes illegal- to nab kids from the lower leagues at home and abroad

Jamie Jackson and Louise Taylor The Observer, Sunday 6 September 2009

Tomorrow a tribunal will sit to decide on the valuation of Luke Garbutt, a 16-year-old left-back who joined Everton from Leeds United in July. Garbutt's case is one of the many heard each year by the panel who adjudicate when young players from lower-league clubs are spirited away to the Premier League.

The compensation fee for Garbutt will probably be a six-figure sum with lucrative add-ons should he become established in Everton's first team, or be sold for a sizeable transfer fee in the future. On the evidence of past performance by youngsters moving up into the big time, Garbutt is no certainty to establish himself in Everton's first team. There are far more failures than successes when clubs sign promising youngsters – but that does not stop them trying.

Chelsea, a club particularly fond of taking young players from smaller clubs, were punished by Fifa last week with a transfer ban until January 2011 after the club were found guilty of illegally recruiting the teenage forward Gaël Kakuta from Lens.

Fifa estimate that there are 500,000 transfers a year, many of them across national borders, of under-18 players from one club to another. Many of them are the result of a youngster failing at one club only to try his luck elsewhere, but far too many, in Fifa's view, are the result of rich clubs taking advantage of those less well off.

The trafficking of players has become so prevalent, and alarming to the governing body, that the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, wants to outlaw all transfers of players younger than 18 as the trade continues to grow through clubs who, through a scattergun approach, strive to discover new talent as cheaply as possible, whatever the personal consequences.

Chelsea may have been punished because of an international transfer, but they are heavily involved in signing youngsters domestically too. In 2005, within the first nine months of Frank Arnesen's reign as head of player recruitment, the west Londoners signed players between the ages of 12 and 17 from Luton, Bristol Rovers, Gillingham, Stockport, QPR, Reading and Leeds, from whom the Dane signed the 15-year-olds Tom Taiwo and Michael Woods. That pair eventually cost £5m, but only after Leeds obtained phone records that showed the youngsters had been "tapped up" by Gary Worthington, a former Elland Road scout working for Chelsea.

The Premier League leaders are not the only ones. Most of the Premier League behemoths are actively involved in tapping up players and academies and centres of excellence of smaller clubs up and down the country remain on constant alert to the – often illegal – antics of predatory scouts and agents from the big boys.

Schoolboy football is supposed to be fun but, for the Premier League scouts identifying youthful promise and the parents seeking comfortable retirements, it has long been a serious business.

"It's a free for all, a bloodbath," explains Glenn Roeder. "You get scouts from rival clubs who aren't supposed to be allowed into academy under-16 games getting in by pretending to be a kid's father. If they like a player they can then contact his family direct."

Roeder, the former West Ham and Newcastle manager, had a short stint in charge of the academy at St James' Park and, as a coach at Upton Park, was responsible for developing the talents of, among many others, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and Anton Ferdinand.

"There are very few English boys out there who will make it to the top so clubs are desperate to get hold of those they think might have a chance," he says. "By the time you get to under-10 level, especially in the London area, all the best players are at academies but, if they go on to turn professional, there's a good chance it won't be with the club which originally signed them up as a nine-year-old."


Glance at the squads of almost any leading Premier League side and you will also spot foreign players carefully nurtured in overseas nurseries before being spirited to England at around 16. "There will be a few clubs keeping their heads down now," reflects Roeder. "A few thinking, 'We've maybe been a bit lucky here', when they heard about Chelsea's punishment."

Frequently, no regulations are broken and clubs pay a rival adequate compensation. But scouts talk privately of parents deciding to switch their boys from one club to another after they have had a new kitchen or bathroom installed, or had an expensive new car delivered. In special cases such inducements can even come in the form of a new house.

The irony is that boys who are the centre of attention in their early and mid teens can become yesterday's men by 21. Nathan Porritt, now 19, infamously caught Arnesen's eye despite being very much part of the Middlesbrough academy in 2006. At the tender age of 15 Porritt was already represented by the high-profile agent Peter Harrison, who served as the conduit when Panorama secretly filmed Arnesen indirectly offering the forward £150,000 to join Chelsea. Porritt ultimately stayed put on Teesside, signing a professional contract at the Riverside last year. Yet his progress has now slowed and, unable to get near Gareth Southgate's Championship first team, he has been loaned to Darlington in League Two.

Contacted by the Observer on Friday, Porritt claimed to have been in the dark about Arnesen's offer. "It was just stuff my agent done," he said. "It was nothing to do with me really."

With Middlesbrough declining to make a complaint, the FA proved powerless to act, but Simon Jordan, the Crystal Palace chairman and a former Observer Sport columnist, believes all under-16s are "unprotectable under the academy system" which "provides an open door to poachers".

Yet another small club, Stockport County, received £150,000 from a tribunal after losing Harry Worley, a young central defender, to Arnesen's 2005 recruitment drive. Mick Wiblin, head of Stockport's centre of excellence, was stunned when Chelsea asked to take Worley on trial. "You say, how do you know about Harry Worley?," he reflects. "And they come up with all sorts of suggestions."

The implication is that undercover scouts had infiltrated Stockport junior games. Worley, now loaned to Crewe from his latest parent club, Leicester, swiftly became lost in the Stamford Bridge machine but Wiblin believes such signings are low risk for big clubs because the fees set by tribunals are generally modest.

"To stop this the only way is to say that the price for all 12-year-olds should be £300,000 and the price for 16-year-olds £500,000," he says. "Let's see how keen the big clubs – and it's not just Chelsea – are then."

If the footballing futures of Worley and Porritt appear uncertain, they remain two of the lucky ones. After all, even if players drop out of professional football by their early 20s, a couple of late teen years contracted to a Premier League club inevitably offer them a head start in life.

"Promising boys can be offered £5,000 a week when they sign their first professional contract at 18," explains Roeder. "That's £250,000 a year. By 21 they can have a nice house fully paid for. There's a lot at stake."

So much indeed that scouts are increasingly scrutinising infant prodigies and even making seven-year-olds extraordinary offers. Back in 2004, for instance, seven-year-old Niall Mason, from Brighton, was recruited by Real Madrid's academy after impressing during a two-week summer holiday football school in Spain. His mother, father and three-year-old sister accompanied him to Madrid, moved into an apartment near the Bernabéu and watched the boy settle into an English school while training twice weekly with the Spanish luminaries.

This idyll came to an end when his father, Russell, accepted a job in Qatar, running a hospital, the family relocated to Doha and Niall joined the local Evolution Soccer academy. This July, though, the now 12-year-old midfielder told Gulf Times he hoped to shortly swap Arabia for Arsenal and move within easy striking distance of Liam Brady's academy.

In England, location is everything. Under FA rules, boys under 12 have to live no more than an hour's journey from their chosen academy, this time-frame rising to 90 minutes between the ages of 13 and 16.

Roeder feels such stipulations are unfair on some clubs. "At Newcastle it was a real problem," he says. "Drive north and west for an hour and there's a lot of sheep but few young footballers. Travel east and you're in the sea."

There was a time when scouting was an ad hoc art which people simply fell into but these days it is highly regulated and, even at the most modest level, every would-be genius spotter must complete a talent ID course and be cleared to work with children before receiving an official registration card. Rules, though, have always been there to be bent, if not broken, and too many clubs encourage scouts to operate via the back door.

William Gaillard, senior adviser to the Uefa president, Michel Platini, believes this is to the detriment of England's smaller clubs and suggests the FA could tighten up their rules. "Clubs should be paid for the education they provide young players and we believe academies should be protected but we're not going to tell the [English] FA to do this," he says. "All national transfers are in the hands of the national associations. If the FA wants to enact a rule which says: 'No player can be taken from one academy to another without the consent of that first club,' they can."

An FA spokesman says: "Our domestic system is in line with the international one overseen by Fifa. This has been agreed following consultation between all domestic stakeholders."

Small wonder that, as Roeder reiterates: "There's a lot of cloak and dagger stuff going on."

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/sep/06/premier-league-poachers-youth-players

[QPR Report]

Sunday Times September 6, 2009

Chealsea’s tainted team of youngsters

Duncan Castles

It is said that serial offenders become inured to their misdemeanours, that repetition of a transgression leads the perpetrator to consider it normal. Perhaps the phenomenon explains the shock and anger with which Chelsea reacted to being found guilty of inducing a 15-year-old French footballer to breach a contract with his former club. For what makes the Gael Kakuta case unusual is not the manner in which Chelsea acquired the jewel of their infamously profligate academy, it’s that they’ve been caught and punished.

April 3, 2008 represents the high watermark of Chelsea’s youth policy. That evening at Stamford Bridge, a Kakuta header allowed the under-18s to draw the FA Youth Cup final first leg with Manchester City and come as close to claiming significant silverware as one of Roman Abramovich academy teams has managed. The second leg was lost 3-1 and with it an opportunity for Frank Arnesen, then director of the Chelsea academy, to justify the unprecedented investment in his youth project — conservatively estimated at £30m.

Large chunks of that money had been spent on extracting talented young footballers from other European clubs as they approached their 16th birthdays and could be offered scholarship contracts at Chelsea. Looking down the cup final line-up, five of Kakuta’s teammates had been acquired by questionable means.

England youth internationals Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo were part of Leeds United’s academy when Gary Worthington, a coach at the Leeds academy, left the club to take up a role in Arnesen’s burgeoning network of scouts. Worthington remained in contact with the boys, arranging for them to be flown to a League Cup tie against Charlton on a private jet. When they rejected scholarship contracts the following summer in 2006, Leeds cried foul, accusing Chelsea of approaching underage players without their permission.

With Worthington’s phone records — he was still using a Leeds mobile — and photos of the trip provided by a third Elland Road schoolboy, the Yorkshire club requested a Premier League-FA investigation into the approach. Threatened with the deduction of three League points (a hangover from their tapping-up of Arsenal’s Ashley Cole in 2005), Chelsea agreed to pay Leeds an initial £4m for Woods and Taiwo.

The lesson was not learnt. In the summer of 2007, Chelsea took Ben Gordon from Leeds’ academy. Again the left-back had been invited to London to watch his suitors play a cup-tie without Leeds’ permission; again the Yorkshire club obtained photographic evidence (their technical director happened to be sitting a few Wembley seats away from Gordon); again Chelsea were forced to pay a substantial fee to avoid official sanction.

Questions also surround some of Arnesen’s European acquisitions. Both Dutch defender Jeffrey Bruma and Danish striker Morten Nielsen joined Chelsea’s academy before they turned 16. Fifa regulations outlaw such transfers unless the player’s family have already decided to change countries for non-sporting reasons. It is not known whether this was the case with Bruma and Nielsen’s families.

FA procedures in such cases have been tightened up since, with Huw Jennings, the former Premier League youth development manager, playing a leading role. “We felt the Football Association were accepting without scrutiny the reasons given them for players coming,” he told The Sunday Times, “typically a letter from a parent saying: ‘We’ve moved to the UK, our address is Y and my son attends school X.’ The FA were saying okay, that’s fine, shipping it off to the association being dealt with and the [international transfer] certificate being granted. We felt there was sufficient grounds for concern with a number of these applications to ask the FA what level of scrutiny they were applying. We wanted to create a level playing field, so in conjunction with the FA, we agreed a series of checks. It wasn’t aimed at any individual club but there were concerns with a number of clubs who had applied for international clearances for a number of players. I’m not going to deny that Chelsea was one of them.”

In Bruma and Nielsen’s case, Arnesen paid Feyenoord and FC Copenhagen enough for them not to raise objections. To get Sergio Tejera, Chelsea exploited Spanish contract law that prevented Espanyol signing the playmaker to a professional contract until he was 16. By then, Chelsea had offered him an unmatchable wage and could sign him legally by paying Fifa-mandated training compensation.

The controversy surrounding Kakuta seems to stem from Arnesen thinking he was equally free to entice the French attacker. Though Kakuta had signed a “contract aspirant” with Lens tying him to the club until 2008, Chelsea believed the agreement was a pre-contract with no legal weight. Having decided to pursue Kakuta when he shone in an under-16 international against Turkey in November 2006, Chelsea made his family an irresistible offer six months later. The agent Roger Boli was mandated to pay them €1m.

Lens were outraged, more so when Arnesen and Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon offered what the French club say was a paltry €30,000 in compensation. “Everything was sorted with the player,” said Lens president Gervais Martel. “We had a pro contract waiting for him, but Chelsea came and stole him from us. We didn’t get any money, but I think a few people got rich with this deal. People surrounding Gael and probably agents.”

Boli insists his “conscience is clear”. He goes on: “There are many people who have more things to explain than I do. Lens and Chelsea have an awful lot to talk about.” A Lens striker for more than a decade, Boli recognises that Kakuta’s move to England began badly, with the unhappy 16-year-old regularly taking the Eurostar to watch former teammates play. “There were problems,” Boli says. “Gael had no English. With no family members with him, he was homesick and often returned to France.”

Asked, during the FA Youth Cup final, if they’d stolen Kakuta, Chelsea denied Martel’s claim, stating that: “Chelsea is certain that all the matters referred to have been conducted within Fifa and other regulations.”

The fact that the world governing body disagreed, suspending Chelsea from transfers for two windows and ordering them to pay £115,000 compensation to Lens, may reflect a deep-seated disquiet with a club that has a record of approaching those it wishes to recruit while they are under contract to other clubs. Abramovich met and attempted to recruit Sven-Göran Eriksson when he was England manager, and made his first approach to Carlo Ancelotti (the current Chelsea manager) a year before he contracted the Italian. Chelsea were heavily fined in 2005 for approaching Cole without Arsenal’s leave.

That Arnesen works for Abramovich at all (he earns a £2m salary) was originally controversial, the pair meeting on one of the Russian billionaire’s yachts without leave from Arnesen’s then employers, Tottenham. Spurs’ protests were silenced by £5m in compensation as Arnesen entered a battle of wills with Jose Mourinho that ended two years later with the sacking of Chelsea’s most successful coach.

Mourinho complained privately about the senior players Arnesen tried to buy in tandem with Abramovich’s personal adviser Piet de Visser, and attacked the academy for its lack of quality. Two seasons later not one of their youth signings has come close to establishing himself in the first team, while questions continue to be asked as to why many of the deals are handled by agents Arnesen has worked with since his time at PSV Eindhoven, Soren Lerby and Vlado Lemic. Arnesen seemed under pressure last Christmas, then recovered to be formally made sporting director in the summer.

The current calculation for Chelsea is a grim one: Tens of millions spent and little in return beyond internal strife and a Fifa transfer ban. Abramovich is appealing the club’s sentence. Perhaps when that is over he should reconsider the appeal of Arnesen.

Other contentious approaches

The Star Player

Ashley Cole In 2005 Chelsea were fined £300,000 and earned a suspended three-point deduction for tapping up Cole, who was then an Arsenal player — included was a secret meeting at a London hotel THE MANAGER Carlo Ancelotti The Italian’s recently published book revealed that he held talks with Roman Abramovich in early 2008, in a Geneva hotel, while still the Milan manager. ‘We talked only about football... never about money,’ wrote Ancelotti.

Head of Scouting

Frank Arnesen Spurs nearly reported their rivals to the Premier League for making an illegal approach — especially after pictures surfaced of Arnesen on Abramovich’s yacht. The clubs eventually agreed on a settlement of about £6m.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/football_league/article6823472.ece

[QPR Report]

News of The World

£62M and a transfer ban - staggering cost of Chelsea’s search for young stars



By Neil Ashton, 06/09/2009

CHELSEA'S failing football academy has cost owner Roman Abramovich a staggering £62million.
In four years since Frank Arnesen swapped Spurs for Stamford Bridge, he has failed to produce a single first-team regular.

That is the damning statistic after yet another traumatic week at Chelsea.

This is Arnesen's amazing story, stripped bare as they continue to search for a superstar.

In a week when the club have been banned by FIFA from signing players for the next two transfer windows, Arnesen's position is now under intense scrutiny.

This is the first examination of the former Denmark international's transfer dealings, stripping this multi-million pound Cobham talent factory bare.

It is the story of Franco Di Santo, signed from Chilean team Audax for a mind-boggling £3m and then loaned to Blackburn.

Or of Slobodan Rajkovic, bought from OFK Belgrade two years ago for £3.8m and now on loan with Steve McClaren's FC Twente.

Some, such as Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo, were signed in a blaze of publicity, arriving from Leeds for combined fees of £4m.

Arnesen - recently promoted to the role of sporting director - has squandered fortunes on transfer fees and payments to agents in search of a star.

Amazingly, our figures do not include the vast sums paid to agents to bring these young kids to the club.

Abramovich bought up huge plots of land in Cobham to build one of the world's best football academies when he bought the club in 2003.

He also bought Chelsea Lodge, keeping the players under one roof as they moulded them for a future alongside John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba. The training ground, which is housed next to the first-team facilities, was supposed to be a production line of talent equipped to play in the Champions League.

Instead it is a story of failed footballers, many of whom have left Chelsea after failing to make the grade.

Arnesen was brought in from Spurs to oversee the ambitious operation, identifying top talent across the world and then turning them into first-team players.

Abramovich forked out £5m in compensation to bring Arnesen across London, signing the cheque in the summer of 2005 for the best man in the business.

Success
He has paid him handsomely - about £2m a year - as Chelsea attempt to replicate the success story at Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal.

Chelsea's owner wanted a homegrown player, another John Terry, to fire the dreams of their 40,000-plus supporters.

Now the whole project is under the microscope, with questions asked of Arnesen's role in the acquisition of players scooped up from all over the world. Incredibly, Chelsea have not produced a first-team regular since John Terry emerged from the ranks - 11 years ago. Arnesen has spent jaw-dropping sums signing players from south London to Serbia, setting a deadline of 2010 for one of them to push for a first-team spot.

Chief executive Peter Kenyon admitted: "The academy has not produced the results yet, but we didn't expect instant success.

"It is a long-term project and the rewards will come, we are sure of that."

Back in 2005, they were convinced the former Ajax and Valencia midfielder had the eye for talented teenagers. In 2007 construction finished on the £10m academy in Cobham, which is the envy of world football, with another £3m a year poured in for running costs. With a cash-rich owner they aimed to clean up, beating off competition from Arsenal and Manchester United to sign the best kids from every corner of the globe.

They reached the FA Youth Cup final in 2008, losing to Manchester City 4-2 over two legs.

They appeared to be full of promise, but none of the players has made the push for the first team.

Imports
Some are kids who won Chelsea's reality TV, Fame Academy-style programme, Football Icon, to foreign imports with transfer fees ranging from £3m-£5m.

Arnesen was supposed to fast-track the talented teenagers towards the first team, tweaking their game so that they could make the transition.

That was in 2005 and four years later they are still waiting for a first-team appearance. Taiwo, 19, went on loan to Port Vale last season and was recently farmed out to League One Carlisle until December.

Aliu Djalo, usually referred to by his nickname 'Kaby', was signed from Portuguese club Boavista in a deal that could be worth £5m.

Others, such as Vincenzo Camilleri, disappeared without trace after signing from Reggina in a controversial move from the Italians.

Arnesen also relied on his team of talent spotters to sign Harry Worley, now at Leicester, and Danny Philliskirk from Oldham.

Philliskirk arrived at Chelsea as a striker, but has been playing for the reserves in midfield and even defence as the coaches attempt to find a winning formula.

Some believe Chelsea would be better off abandoning the academy and spending £50m on the finished article.

Instead of Franck Ribery though, it's a fiasco.


Don't unpack, Kak
GAEL KAKUTA has been ordered home from Japan to explain his part in the scandal which has rocked Stamford Bridge.

The youngster flew out to the Far East on Wednesday to play in an Under-19 tournament for France.

But as soon as he landed in Japan on Thursday, Chelsea demanded he make the gruelling 16-hour flight back to London.

Club chiefs, desperate to mount a defence and overturn the transfer ban imposed by FIFA, wanted a full explanation of all the events surrounding Kakuta's controversial move from Lens.

While his future at the Bridge is not in doubt, Chelsea are anxious to get their facts straight before launching a counter-attack.

And Kakuta's evidence is vital.

The 18-year-old has always insisted he was not tapped up by then academy chief Frank Arnesen - even though FIFA's damning verdict came down on the side of Lens. The French club had claimed Chelsea 'induced' Kakuta to break his contract.

FIFA suspended Kakuta for four months and ordered him and Chelsea jointly to pay compensation of £680,000.

The Blues also have to fork out another £115,000 in training compensation to Lens.

Billionaire owner Roman Abramovich has made it clear to Chelsea officials he wants a thorough investigation before deciding on the club's next course of action.

The Russian knows he cannot afford a false move with FIFA looking to play hard-ball over the trafficking of foreign youngsters.

Despite being under the fiercest scrutiny, controversial Dane Arnesen has been assured his new position as Chelsea's sporting director is secure.

Frank's for nothing
THE Dane at the centre of the Chelsea poaching storm has courted controversy since arriving in 2005, when Tottenham claimed he was approached illegally. The Blues ended up paying £5million compensation.


2006: Chelsea accused of tapping-up Leeds' Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo. Pay £5m out of court.

2006: Arnesen (right) secretly filmed by the BBC offering £150,000 to Nathan Porritt, 15. The player was attached to Middlesbrough.

2007: Relationship with manager Jose Mourinho breaks down and is reportedly close to leaving Stamford Bridge. Instead, Mourinho leaves in September.

2008: Reggina report Chelsea to Italian FA, claiming contact with Vincenzo Camilleri before he was 16.

2009: Arnesen promoted to role of sporting director at Stamford Bridge.

www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/football/490423/chelsea-transfer-ban.html

[QPR Report]

News of the World

Former Blues rookie Phil Younghusband speaks out
By Luke Nicoli, 05/09/2009

FORMER Chelsea rookie Phil Younghusband believes the Blues' transfer ban was on the cards.

Younghusband was released last year having been with the Stamford Bridge outfit since the

The striker, who played in the reserves, said: "When I heard the news of Chelsea's punishment, it didn't surprise me.

"As first-year pros, the English lads in the squad earned £200 a week, whereas the foreign lads coming into the set-up were on £2,000 a month.

"But to entice the best foreign youngsters, you need to lure them in and offer them something they can't refuse - after all they are on their own away from home. This did create talk among the English lads, obviously, because we knew there was a big difference in the pay but we accepted it.

"It was something we spoke about amongst ourselves but it never affected us on the pitch or caused cliques."

Now 22, Younghusband has relocated to the Philippines - the birthplace of his mum - and become a TV star and model.

The man dubbed 'The Filipino Beckham' added: "I will always have the highest regard for Chelsea.

"My association with them made me a star in my mother's homeland.

"Because of my unique looks and skills, I have got all sorts of exposure in the entertainment business."

www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/489771/Foreign-youngsters-lured-by-Premiership-cash.html

[Macmoish]

re the Chelsea Youth Players: on it goes...

I read last week that Chelsea have something like 30 Players out on loan...



re Ex-QPR Youth, Oliver Sprague. Currently with Hendon

"Young wide player originally signed on dual-registration terms in March 2014 from Northwood before joining permanently in May. Had spells in the youth academies at Chelsea, QPR and Watford, and has also played for Aspis Pyla FC in Cyprus. "

Hendon, Northwood, Aspis Pyla (Cyprus), Watford, Queens Park Rangers, Chelsea

www.hendonfc.net/Squad?method=view&id=2197

www.aylesburyunitedfc.co.uk/players/oliver-sprague

[Macmoish]

Bump...7 years later

And looking at this season, again Chelsea are loaning out something like 30 players