AS CHELSEA prepare for the start of the defence of their second Barclays Premiership title on Sunday, The Times can reveal the extent to which their power is growing.

Leeds United might have lodged a complaint about the alleged poaching of two of their best under-16 players, but it seems that Chelsea have been exhaustively attracting the best junior talent throughout Britain and beyond — whomever they play for.

Last year, they not only signed Michael Woods and Tom Taiwo from Leeds, but they also took a pair from Sporting Lisbon, four from Reading, one each from Luton Town, Stockport County, Bristol Rovers, Queens Park Rangers and Gillingham and two ten-year-olds from another senior club.

Chelsea have recently sought the signature of Victor Moses, a 15-year-old with a soaring reputation at Crystal Palace, and are also in negotiations for a 13-year-old from Swindon Town.

Of the above clubs, only Leeds and Sporting have accused Chelsea of breaking the rules. None of the others have accused Chelsea of foul play, merely of operating with extreme effectiveness at the junior end of the game and thus walking off with their best young players before they have a value.

There seem few restrictions to the war chest that Chelsea have at their disposal. Thomas Lyskov, a talented left-sided player and one of the stars of Reading’s highly rated academy, was picked up last summer on a five-year agreement and, when the deal went to arbitration, they had to pay Reading £30,000. However, Lyskov was unhappy at the Chelsea academy in Cobham, failed to thrive there and was back at Reading within three months.

Sporting’s complaint arose 20 months ago, when the Portuguese club discovered that three of their most talented development squad players, Adrien Silva, Fabio Ferreira and Ricardo Fernandes, all 16, had been in England, training with Chelsea without any request from the Premiership club to speak to them.

“Sporting believes that Fifa will know how to protect those who invest in and promote football development at high cost,” Sporting said in a statement. The next summer, Ferreira and Fernandes became Chelsea players.

The dispute among the other clubs is not that Chelsea have been “tapping up” players, but that the rules of engagement make for a grey area that leaves them unprotected and which Chelsea are exploiting.

In years gone by, the smaller clubs would ripen their best young talent all the way through to first-team or reserve-team level and that would be the shop window in which the bigger clubs would spot and attempt to buy them. At that level, these players’ value would be in the millions; if they are snapped up at the age of 11 or 12, they will go for nearer £10,000.

As Keith Agar, the chief executive of Stockport, who lost a 16-year-old defender, Harry Worley, to Chelsea in July last year, said: “When the big clubs start knocking on the door, the parents all smell Wayne Rooney and their heads are turned. Why develop talent any more? In cutting our supply line like this, you are killing the grass roots of football.”

Stockport’s loss of Worley went to an arbitration committee and they were awarded £150,000, a sum that could rise to £650,000 depending on his success. But Stockport are in dispute with Manchester City over another of their young talents and Agar makes the point that Chelsea are not reinventing the wheel, simply hurtling aggressively down a path well trodden by others.

Southampton and Liverpool have academy teams of considerable renown — Liverpool won the FA Youth Cup this year and Southampton were runners-up last — but both also spent considerably on recruitment at academy level.