Michael Emenalo has spoken with the official Chelsea website having been appointed as the club's new technical director today.

The Nigerian had previously worked in both the scouting and coaching departments at Stamford Bridge, but now takes on a wide-ranging, more senior role that oversees the club's scouting networks, assists in driving the Academy's technical programmes and supports the work of first team manager Andre Villas-Boas.

'Without delving too deeply into it, the first thing is that I'm going to be supporting the manager and working with him in making sure that things run smoothly,' explained the 46-year-old former international. 'I have the responsibility to direct and manage our scouting structure internationally and domestically, and to keep an eye on and assist the progress of the Academy. That's the simple summation.

'Over the next weeks and months I will be getting the scouts in place, finding the people that will lead the scouts along with me, and integrating the agendas and ideas of the different areas from the first team to the Academy. After that it will hopefully be a question of reviewing our efforts and making sure it is bearing the fruits that we expect.

'We have been gradually reducing the quantity of our scouts and also trying to improve the efficiency of the system. Our scouts have done incredibly positive work until now and we thank them for it but we want to see if there is a way to optimise the work they do and make it more efficient, so we will look at different ideas on the identification of talent, interaction with the management and so on.

'The final decisions about who comes in and who doesn't will be the manager's to make but to arrive at that stage there will be a lot of working together and I would imagine I will be part of that process of working together to make that happen.'

With an FA Youth Cup victory in 2010 and three semi-finals in four years, the Academy has made impressive progress in recent years, with a multitude of talent now progressing towards first-team status.

'The Academy is in good shape. Neil Bath is doing a very good job there, and he is someone I know and respect and will make things it easy to work with him,' Emenalo said. 'If there is anything that needs to change structurally we will take our time, we are not going to rush into anything. I am fortunate that some of the things that needed to take place already have done.

'One of the things I want to get away from is setting unreasonable targets, with five or 10-year plans. There are a lot of variables that affect what you do.

'I believe the short-term goal of the first team doing well affects the long-term plan. As you can imagine, doing well means young players want to come here, to see it as an opportunity to improve, so that helps, and we have to have a single-minded policy of trying to make sure that we stay ahead of the competition, whether it is recruiting, scouting or supporting the first team to do well.

'We have to stay focused and make sure we are ready whenever we need to do something, to anticipate things rather than finding ourselves in a situation where we have to react to events.'

Emenalo has already been impressed with the work of Villas-Boas, who is just three days into his task of preparing the players for the forthcoming season.

'We have always known that he is a very organised individual, and also that he is a hard-working individual, but for me more than that he works efficiently,' Emenalo said.

'I have been impressed with his efforts to bring everyone together and to work together, including people in the process and long may that continue. Out on the pitch he has had success in his managerial career that should leave nobody in any doubt he will be successful here.'

Chelseafc.com