Apparent ‘in house politics’ at Arsenal’s Academy is continuing, with scout Mark Hayman joining respected goalkeeping coach Alex Welsh and Head of Youth scouting Sean O’Connor in walking away.
Details of exactly why Arsenal have lost a trio of their most widely regarded youth staff is unclear, but disagreements and uncertainty is currently ruling the roost at Hale End. Weeks of rows came to a head in September, when Sean O’Connor quit his role as Head of Youth scouting. He then rejected a potential switch to Chelsea to join Brentford’s setup, and with it he took his vast range of contacts among outfits around the country and within school sides.
In early June, goalkeeping coach Alex Welsh quit the club after 23 years service, leaving many shocked. The highly regarded coach is currently considering his options. Welsh and O’Connor are both seen as two staunch Arsenal men, and the duo leave with years worth of experience and an understanding of the tradition of the club.
The latest move sees another respected scout, Mark Hayman, leave in similar circumstances. Hayman carried out a variety of roles at the club, including liaising with the players, driving them to games and in the final months of his time with the Gunners, scouting.
Further details are expected shortly.
If his main role was driving the players to games, surely no big loss…!
They can pay me to drive players to games. I won’t quit.
Do you think this is a consequence of the restructuring up top with Gazidas bringing in his own men?
i have said on other sites that i think wenger would have been better off staying in london during world cup and getting our coaching and medical staff in order. Clearly both underperformed last season. defensive coaching seemed non-existent and the medical team passed players fit only for them to further aggravate their injury (arshavin,bendtner,cesc). Now it seems the youth team coaching needs sorting too. Knowing Arsenal it’ll take 6 months to do anything about it. Come on Arsene, get it sorted. Get keown and dixon in as defensive coaches. get big dave seaman in as goalkeeping coach
Hopefully the medical staff will be off next.
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If this is in house politics that must mean that someone is pissing everyone off. Any idea who it is? Brady is still head of youth development right? They’ve been working with him for years so weird they’d fall out now.
Dan, medical staff all left at the end of last season. We’ve got a new head physio and club doctor since then.
Says who Jimmy?
You have a source for that news on the medical staff, Jimmy. I have to say that should be good news – things were clearly not as good as they ought to be – we NEVER had accurate prognoses as to when a player would return from injury.
This new problem doesn’t have to be someONE causing the unrest – it could equally be implementation of a new system/way of doing things. Maybe a shakeup will prove a good thing but they certainly need to settle the ship quickly.
what is all this IN HOUSE POLITICS
I WANNA KNOW MORE
is it wenger or Gazidis or Brady or bould
what or who is it
this will be disastrous in the long term
these scouts have contacts alll over the world and I dont wanna miss out on the next ronaldo or messi
JS is it true Martin keown is our defensive coach i heard hes comes back but not sure if its true or not do you know anything about it?
Cause i didnt understand why he left in the first place he made our defensive really strong especially in the champions league run we had with toure and senderos doing brilliant at the back
The medical staff left because they were poached – by England, wasn’t it? And Real stole our groundsman. But this sounds like internal squabbles, and I too would like to know what’s going on. Not that we will. The club’s idea of PR is to treat the fans as morons who are happy to be fobbed off with ludicrous tabloid rumours on the club website, plus statements from Wenger that Cesc won’t be leaving. No, right, like Hleb, Flamini, Ade, etc. weren’t leaving. If Barca can stump up the money, Cesc will go.
but ofrcourse! Mone talks my good man. Always. Everyone has a price. If someone offered 100m or even 80 M for cesc then we would be better off selling him tbh. That is so ridiculousley much money it is insane! How much was West Ham boutght for? Imagine one player worth more than an entire club! Insane!
Barca can’t stump up £50 mil and will not let their prized youth leave to lessen that price tag (oh hell, who is to say if Bojan, Jeffren or any other Barca B team players can be consistently good anyways). Fab4 will have one more go around in the prem, AT LEAST. Don’t believe the bullshit.
I would like more details as to who is running the Academy in terms of coaching and scouting. That being said, we have great scouts in South America and France. We just need to make sure our domestic academy products are given the training to become as skilled as our foreign-born players.
Also JS are Havrd nordvteit, Pedro botleho, kyle bartley training with arsenal?
J.
This is all very foggy. What are the dynamics behind the exodus? Is there a split in the staff with Brady and Bould on one side and others against them? Or is there a philosophical impasse…two conflicting ways of doing things with one side having lost?
I know you don’t usually like to speculate on such things but do you have anything solid about what’s actually going on behind the scenes?
What players have these guys with their lists of contacts got us? Yep, one. Ashley Cole. And he left. They’ve been here 23 years and the youth, although always lauded has been barren. Maybe their contacts aren’t good enough. Man City seem to have done ok with their paltry finances (pre Sheikh). Maybe we needed a shake up. Maybe the guys who got canned, just weren’t good enough.
Firstly Mark is one of our top local scouts and has been for around a decade. Part of an in house scouts job is to stay friendly with kids/families they bring in hence maybe the reason for the confusion over him driving players but make no mistake he is a massive loss as many of our kids were brought in by him.
The whole ethos of Hale End is changing from one of pure development to one of results, and somehow Liam is blind to the effects this is having. Brentford have invested massively in their youth set up and this is where our best people are going as the new owner has decided the best way to provide a lasting foundation is to build from the bottom.
Who is the problem? Well even mentioning no names it’s fairly obvious if you look at who has come in to a high position for the u9s-u16s in the last year or so. HE is the problem.
Extremely worrying times for our club’s long term future and the possible impact should not in any way be underestimated.
On a non-youth subject, don’t write off Cesc yet as there could well be news in the near future.
Who cares? What goalkeepers have been found since Seaman? How many injuries have been sustained? How many youth players have come through the ranks and improved and stayed at a consistently high level in the last 10 years? Three?
Let them go. Let the goal-keeping coach produce 0 goalies for someone else from now on instead of at Arsenal. I’d be amazed if he got work. Let the Head of Youth Scouting find as many Theo Walcotts as he can for Brentford. He’s not the only one with contacts.
you know this could all just be a shake up replacing the old with the new
these coaches have been with us for decades and maybe bringing in some fresh faces is a good idea
Bould has naff all to do with the HAle end academy. He is our U-18 Academy manager. So basically age group of 16-18. Hale End is 9-16 yrs
Clearly there is something not right in the Hale End side of things that needs sorting. Perhaps Brady can get his hands dirty rather than being a figure head who has time on his hands to asst manage irelans for gawd sake!!
This is critical as Bergkamp said the most important part of a childs education in football is at this 9-16 age.
I agree with an earlier post about Gazidis. He has come in and made the place a commercial entity. That will do wonders for the balance sheet but in footballing terms it means cut backs.
Lady Nina said that the amount of money gazidis is ploughing into his management staff might be better served investing in a GK. That says it all really
Since the newcomer is Gazides – before he arrived everyone was getting on fine – you’d have to think he might be the problem. But, while I can well imagine Gazides falling out with Wenger – these people seem a low in the hierarchy to even have met him. Does Gazides have any say over youth coaching? Agree with the point about wasting money on management – typical US business school approach. Sigh. Soon we’ll be playing a never-ending series of exhibition matches in the US and Far East to make the money to pay all those management types their prepostrous salaries.
Just about every other top 4 club that alwys go to far east or usa in the summer to “train” infromt of huge payin crowds…
Can’t believe some people are criticising the club for not revealing anything. Of course they aren’t going to reveal anything if there are any internal conflicts. Things like this happen at every organisation. People leave, new people come in. Not sure if we’ll end up for better or for worse, there are no guarantees for that, but changes happen all the time.
Perfect! You are exactly right!
People here who criticise them…..Stop worry!
Probably because most people commenting haven’t had a real job.
I reckon change can be good. Complacancy leads to stagnation. Arsenal need people who can help move the club forward.
I like this site but think ‘ hemorrhage’ is a bit strong and I don’t think things need to be reported this ‘hack’ way.
I think maybe its just a chabge of approach. As i understand Wenger has overall control over a all club structures maybe he believes its time for a change.
Regarding the management, I think that having a good management team is essential to marketing Arsenal and bringing in revenue. This is evident when you consider that a few years ago Barcalona also beefed up their management team, at the time I think the clubs had the same amount of turnover, maybe us a little more, since then they have almost qaudrupled their revenues while we have (only) doubled ours.
Sooth,
Well said. Change (as with s**t) happens. Internal politics only really count when the impact on the field. Let’s hope these changes have a positive impact in that sense.
I’m not sure about their names, (so I realise my story will lack some credibility as a result) but apparently the (new?) owner of Brentford has bought the club purely as a business decision, in order to sell it off in a few years, for a tidy profit.
His strategy is to build the best youth set-up by recruiting the best youth coaches around, and then instead of buying players for a (relatively ) large amount, he wants to develop some really good young players and win promotion that way. Then, when the value of the club is worth more – sell.
That is possibly why some of our best Arsenal youth coaches are choosing to go to Brentford. They are presumably being paid better, and/or have been given shares in the club.
Everyone should butt out. Management structures change at every club and every business all of the time in particular when strategies need to be changed or there are new people drafted in at the top. I mean on the one hand we are all moaning that we have won sweet FA for the last 5 years and here we are moaning that “Arsenal” people are leaving, ok we may be winning the league and cups at youth level and ladies levels,but so we should be when you consider our investments in these areas over the last 5 years compared to our competitors. The strategy for the last 5-7 years has been to build the finest stadium, the finest academy and ladies teams and have the best possible chance to attract the top talent at a young age. We have managed all this without once failing to qualify for the Champions League, thus continuing to provide the income to keep the strategy on course whilst remaining financially stable. Over the next 5-7 years we will hopefully reap the rewards of that previous strategy as our young talent continues to save the club millions of pounds, as we enter a new period it is obvious certain employees will no longer be required, that is totally normal. If we sit here in 5 years time and have not won anything for 10 years then we should be really concerned because obviously the strategies failed, from where i sit we are far from failing, we just dont have a bit of tin in the trophy cupboard of late but i am sure that will change over the next 5 years. You look at our youngsters, many of them are houshold names and some are being touted by the england manager as the next generation, they are barely out of short trousers but arte being mentioned in the same breath as players 5 years their junior and there are many more to come.
Daily mirror a reliable source especially when dealing with arsenal say we have made a bid of 7 million for conor wickham.
If we do buy him i think we can say Goodbye to Benik afobe. Like i said before wickham is a better striker than afobe hes got everything would be a great signing for arsenal.
Seen him a couple of times for Ipswhich looks superb reminds me of a young nicklas bendtner
John,
You are a complete wind up merchant!
John why do you even bother to post when you know that basically every time you do, you just piss people off?? No one really wants to hear what you have to say about Afobe or even that over-rated lump of a player Wickham. He cannot, and I mean he really cannot be worth 6 million pounds. I wouldn’t buy him for that. Maybe 4 at the very most. He’s just as raw as Afobe.
Oh yeah and John, what has Nicklas Bendtner done in the past few years to get you so excited?? I know he is a massive prospect still, but you go around sucking his cock like he’s the next Drogba or Shearer.
Bendtner is the bench mark because so far he is the only youth striker to make it into the first team squad.
Whether people rate him or not is irrelevant. He has done what NO OTHER YOUTH STRIKER AT A TOP FOUR CLUB has done and that is and that is to establish himself in the first team.
He is the benchmark for youth players, because they have to be AT LEAST as good as Bendtner to make it at club. Otherwise they may as well be Aliadiere or Simpson
I have nothing against Bendtner. I really like him and he will be a great player, but you’d have thought he’d scored 50 goals by now, the way you wax poetic about him. For God’s sake shut the fuck up John.
I have been frustrated with bendtner but recently hes starting to score goals and i think hes taking a bit of time to adapt to the premiership.
How can anyone say Afobe is better than Conor wickham lol. Sorry but i have seen Wickham play for Ipswhich at 17 hes destroying championship defences. He kind of reminds me of wayne rooney breaking through big, powerful but technically excellent.
Wickham has got two great feet, hes got great skills, can go past players, can hold the ball up and hes looks a natural goal scorer.
We have bought ramsey, walcott from the championship and they arent bad players at a young age i dont see why Conor wickham wouldnt be able to break through.
Would be a brilliant signing in my opinion.
I could see Wenger really developing him
Look Bendtner is the bench mark for strikers they have got to be better than him or at least as good as he was at 16 or you got no chance of making it in the first team squad.
Afobe doesnt have it technically conor wickham not only has it technically hes got the physical side as well and tactical side.
Wenger rates bendtner highly so do i so basically you have got to be better than bendtner or as good if your going to make it through the first team. And conor wickham could be better than bendtner
J.
Can you please add a button or something similar to the comments section so that I dont have to read or even see any of Johns comments.
I know certain other sites have this ability.
We should send some youngsters on loan to pompey they are going to have a problem putting a squad togehter.
How about Chesney, Watt, JET and Eastmond (Bring in Gilberto as backup for free) and. Is it possible to send out so many players to a Championship side?
As the turds at FIFA & UEFA won’t take action against Barcelona for their blatant tapping up of Cesc Fabregas ( behaviour that breaks their rules ) then Arsenal fans in their thousands should write letters of complaint about this posting one each to UEFA & FIFA.
If both bodies are too gutless to take action against Barcelona, then if thousands of Arsenal fans post letters it will hopefully cause the 2 bodies a huge administrative headache. I would go so far as suggesting repeatedly posting letters once a week.
Addresses as follows ………….
UEFA
Route de Genève 46
Case postale
CH-1260 Nyon 2
Switzerland
FIFA
Strasse 20,
P.O. Box 8044
Zurich
Switzerland
WELL WELL WELL,,,, WE HAVE LOST LOTS OF STAFF AT THE CLUB SINCE SHAUN O’CONNER LEFT, BUT WE STILL HAVE ONE OF THE BEST SCOUTS IN LONDON , HE WORKED UNDER SHAUN WHEN SHAUN WAS THERE AND IS STILL IN MY EYES THE BEST SCOUT AT THE CLUB ,
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK ALAN KNOWLES THE CLUB NEEDS YOU,
REGARDS A PARENT
i have to agree with , ” in the know ” alan knowles is a very good scout and prob is the best at the club , i know he has been with arsenal for about 4 years and has some top players in the system including , martin angha u16, ben glasglow u16 and a very talented u11 reice nelson , we need to keep people like this at the club at what ever cost.
muzzy
The problem at the Youth academy is Carl Laraman, ever since he joined he has managed to disrupt the apple cart which USE to produce players, now its full of his Charlton cronies and look where they are.
Youth set up falls under Brady and his right hand David Court.
How long before Laraman takes over Roy Masseys post, its common knowledge that is what he ultimately wants. He was the cause , forcing a number of coaches to leave and wanting to bring in his own people. O’Connor was fed up with being undermined by Laraman and when it came to a head Liam had to choose between O’Connor and Laraman and as he bought him backed Laraman. Big mistake. He will be the death of the arsenal youth academy.
Alan Knowles a top scout, how can he be when Chelsea beat Arsenal at all age groups now, so if he was Londons top scout why are chelsea getting all the best players. It looks like Alan knowles likes to write about himself and then make it look like parents will write in and say oh yes Alan knowles is a great scout ( shock!!! ) -There’s also someone else at the club who likes writing in about himself on a regular basis, now they have two!!!!. The problem at the club is having to many below average staff and massive ego’s and idiot’s fighting amongst themselves all trying to prove they are the best, what a load of tosh.
I hope the top people at the club look into this shambles and clear the lot of them out of it,
because the club does not deserve any of this.
jay
in response, i think your facts are wrong ,i thought alan knowles was the scout for east london and essex, not south london where most of chelsea do there work, ( so blame the south london scouts), and i must say from your remarks you sound like a past member of staff that didnt acheive much , , IS THAT YOU ?
Who are the people from Charlton.Are the y scouts or coaches?
Alan Knowles is a fantastic scout and has some of the brightest young talent in the system at the moment, i agree with (know your fact) in saying that Jay seem like he’s a bitter past member of staff that hasn’t progressed anywhere. I am talking as a true supporter in saying that Mr. Knowles is part of the clubs future
I feel that the comments about Nicklas Bendtner is not a good player and should have been released from Arsenal FC a long time ago… Carlos Vela is a much better player and has a great football brain…