Frank Arnesen has sent a few shockwaves through Stamford Bridge after informing Roman Abramovich that he will be resigning from his post when his contract expires at the end of the season.
But will the sporting director be missed at Chelsea, or was he more trouble than he was worth?
The Dane is a divisive figure amongst the Blues’ faithful and there will be many differing opinions regarding his decision to quit the club. Some fans may be slightly confused as Chelsea’s youth ranks have finally started to bear fruit. Chelsea’s youngsters won the FA Youth Cup last season and several young players have worked their way into Carlo Ancelotti’s thinking.
Promising talents like Gael Kakuta, Patrick van Aanholt, Jeffrey Bruma and Daniel Sturridge are now part of the first team squad and have shown varying levels of success when given their chances to shine. However, Arnesen cannot claim to have anything to do with bringing through 17-year-old Josh McEachran, who is considered as the club’s most promising young talent and has been at the club since he was around 8-years-old.
Although the young talent coming through is very promising and rightly deserves praise, it is not enough to cover the sort of talent that Ancelotti lost from his squad during the summer months (Joe Cole, Juliano Belletti, Michael Ballack and Ricardo Carvalho).
Arnesen was responsible for signing talents such as Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Jaap Stam and former Chelsea star Arjen Robben during his time at PSV Eindhoven. Later at Tottenham he helped bring in the likes of Tom Huddlestone, Aaron Lennon and Michael Dawson who are all now regarded as important players at White Hart Lane.
But why has Arnesen not been able to bring the next Robben or Ronaldo into the Chelsea first team?
The former Denmark midfielder played a key role bringing in decent signings at Chelsea in Salomon Kalou, Jon Obi Mikel and Branislav Ivanovic, but he is also responsible for some of the poorer acquisitions like Khalid Boulahrouz. So, it could perhaps be argued that Arnesen’s benefits do not justify the high profile role he has been awarded and we are yet to see a young player break through from the youth ranks and into the first team. He has had long enough.
Many of the Chelsea fans that will be happy to see the back of Arnesen will remember that he played a large part in the demise of Jose Mourinho. The Portuguese manager’s control of the club lessened when Arnesen and later Avram Grant came into the backroom staff and took over certain responsibilities.
The Stamford Bridge outfit ended up losing a world class coach and any success the club has had since can be attributed to other world class managers who succeeded him. Guus Hiddink had a bright stint with the club during the 2008/09 season winning the FA Cup and former AC Milan boss Ancelotti took the reins and won the double last term.
I would suspect that his decision to resign may be to save some face as Txiki Begiristain, Barcelona technical secretary, is allegedly set to join the west London club in the summer and fulfil a similar capacity to the one that Arnesen is currently employed in.
What do the fans think? Will we miss Frank Arnesen, or is it good riddance?
Boulahrouz was a poor signing indeed, but none of us could have predicted we’d have so little use of him. He did have a great season in Bundesliga the year before so getting him in Chelsea seemed like a good deal in the beginning. Happened to be unlucky, wouldn’t blame Arnesen for it.
The real reason Arnesen is leaving is that the job as manager for the Danish National team is available as Morten Olsen is retiring. Arnesen and Michael Laudrup (despite the latter has recently signed a contract managing Real Mallorca) are both in the running for the job.
As for Arnesens impact during his time at Chelsea, I think that too many people expect results way too quickly. Building an Academy and establishing an effective scouting team requires many years of patience, before fruition. This season we are seeing the very first signs of Arnesens work bringing exciting young players to the first team. The likes of McEacheran and van Aanholt I’m sure will become future stars at Chelsea.
I realise that the young talent will take time to come through the system and patience is a key factor to that, but Arnesen has ruffled a few feathers in his time and I’m not sure ‘sporting and technical directors’ work all that well in English football. I could be wrong, but I’d prefer it if the manager has more control than Ancelotti does currently.
…and thank you for the info on the Denmark job rumours, Dana.