As the underlings continue to jockey for position in the court of Roman Abramovich, Frank Arnesen hit back at José Mourinho’s claim that the Chelsea youth set-up is failing him. In a rare interview, the club’s head of scouting and youth development boasted of his talent-spotting abilities and claimed that Chelsea’s scouting network is the envy of the world.

Mourinho and Arnesen have been at loggerheads since the Dane was recruited from Tottenham Hotspur against the manager’s wishes two years ago, with Mourinho demon-strating his contempt by banning the club’s new recruit from his first-team training sessions. How Arnesen has been justifying the £5 million compensation paid to Spurs has been a matter of conjecture because he has yet to produce one player for the first team and is in danger of missing his self-imposed two-year deadline of delivering a player to Mourinho.

Michael Woods and Scott Sinclair are the only home-grown youngsters to have made their Chelsea debuts this season — coming on for brief substitute appearances in the FA Cup and Carling Cup — and in any case they were poached from Leeds United and Bristol City respectively. The club have 11 England youth players on their books, although none appears ready to make the step up to the Premiership in the immediate future.

However, Arnesen is adamant that the stars of tomorrow will come through in time, pointing out that Chelsea are also supplying players to lesser clubs. “We have 60 talent-hunt-ers working in London only,” he said. “We have to be there to catch the talents. I only need five minutes to see how a guy plays, if he has a good touch and if he can run fast enough. Then I look at how he reacts to a setback. Does he cry or does he get up again?

“Those who don’t make it to our A-level team go back to smaller clubs. Everybody can therefore benefit from this system because a smaller club wouldn’t have been able to train the player as well as we can.”

With Abramovich having invested £30 million in the academy, Chelsea’s facilities are up to scratch. The club’s policy is to focus on players within the M25, but they also recruit from farther afield. “Parents in Africa beg us to recruit their boys because they can’t feed them,” Arnesen said. “Sometimes it’s better to take boys away from bad environments where they might end up with the wrong people.

“Whenever we get a new player to Chelsea, the parents come with us to see where and how their boy will live, go to school and so on. Our job is to make sure a player becomes as good as possible.”

It is in this crucial aspect that Mourinho feels that Arnesen is failing, as he has pointed out on more than one occasion. At the height of Chelsea’s injury crisis in January, the Portuguese cast envious glances at Newcastle United, who have integrated Paul Huntington and David Edgar into their first team, and returned to the theme in the build-up to the Carling Cup final against Arsenal.

Asked if there were any young players at the club good enough to join his squad, Mourinho said: “No. Not one. No chance. Not yet. Frank can give you a better answer because he is in charge of that aspect. As the first-team man, I am waiting for the work they do in the youth department. I am waiting for the final product to be delivered to me.” Mourinho’s passing of the buck is deliberate, with his frustration growing as Arnesen has meddled in transfer policy. Mourinho has successfully fought off several attempts by Arnesen to recruit Alex, the PSV Eindhoven defender, but, having discovered that his rival has the confidence to speak out, he must fear that he is losing the battle for Abramovich’s favour.

Cup-tie violence

— The Spanish Cup tie between Real Betis and Seville was abandoned after 56 minutes last night when Juande Ramos, the Seville coach, was knocked unconscious by a bottle thrown from the crowd. Ramos, touted this season as a potential successor to José Mourinho at Chelsea, was carried away from Betis’s Ruiz de Lopera Stadium but later regained consciousness. Seville were leading 1-0 in the twelfth minute when a bottle, believed to be plastic but filled with ice, hit Ramos. The ambulance in which he was treated was pelted with stones by Betis fans.