FOR a man recruited as the most expensive talent scout in history, Frank Arnesen is hardly turning the football world on its head.

Ten months after he was poached from Tottenham in a move that was rumoured to involve a compensation package of almost £8m, Chelsea's head of development and scouting finally delivered the first return on Roman Abramovich's considerable investment yesterday.

Hardly revelatory was it? It must have taken months of research and investigation to decide that four-time German champion, two-time German Player of the Year, one-time UEFA Midfielder of the Year and World Cup runner-up Michael Ballack was a useful addition to the Chelsea midfield.

But wait, it gets even better than that. Apparently, Arnesen has looked at Chelsea's struggles in front of goal last season and come up with the name of Andriy Shevchenko. Goodness only knows where he plucked that one from.

Need another striker as well? What about Samuel Eto'o or Carlos Tevez? Need a left-back? By all accounts, Ashley Cole and Roberto Carlos aren't that bad.

Arnesen is basically the best paid fantasy football manager in the land. Pick a world-class star, pass his name on to Abramovich and Peter Kenyon, and no doubt earn a nice little bonus into the bargain. If Carlsberg did jobs, they'd probably be Arnesen's.

Yet Ballack's arrival at Stamford Bridge might not be such good news for another well-paid employee of the champions.

Jose Mourinho has done nothing to suggest he is anything other than wholly supportive of this summer's rebuilding project.

But scratch below the surface and cracks are beginning to appear. If Chelsea continue assembling an English rival to Real Madrid's 'Galacticos', they may find themselves without the one person they can ill afford to lose.

First at Porto and now at Chelsea, Mourinho has built his success on assembling a closely-knit squad of hard-working professionals rather than big-name superstars prone to putting self-interest before the good of the team.

Ask the Portuguese who was his most important signing, and he will identify Claude Makelele, a defensive midfielder deemed too dull and too old to stay at the Bernabeu.

This summer, the self-styled Special One looks to be mining from a different seam. As yet, though, it remains unclear whether he is the one making the decisions or not.

Given some of his comments last weekend - "The Premiership feels like it is the most difficult achievement because of everything I have to work with" - it is quite conceivable he is losing a grip on everything that is going on around him.

Ballack, for all of his undoubted qualities, provides the perfect example. The German international is a goalscoring midfielder par excellence, boasting 74 goals in 231 matches in the Bundesliga.

His forte is a perfectly-timed burst ahead of his strikers. The only problem is that the same description applies to Frank Lampard. The Englishman has been the heartbeat of Chelsea for the last two seasons. He is unlikely to be as effective with Ballack making identical runs alongside him.

Surely Mourinho knows as much, and that is before we even get the thornier issue of what to do with £24.4m man Michael Essien.

Mourinho has always claimed Chelsea would remain a football club in the real sense of the term rather than a hastily-assembled collection of trophy players. Increasingly, his words are beginning to ring hollow.

Similarly, Kenyon's claim that Chelsea would be self-sufficient in three of four seasons time is looking increasingly ridiculous, although Abramovich's largesse will continue to provide the kind of cushion all their leading rivals can only dream of.

It will not inoculate against Mourinho's restlessness however. The unease he displayed in the final months of the season could yet boil over into outright anger if the rug is pulled from under him this summer and Chelsea, not their opponents, would stand to suffer.

Even Arnesen would struggle to scout a like-for-like replacement for the Special One.