Jan Ricka is an expert for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Sebastian Arnesen (son of Frank Arnesen) for the Benelux countries.

Frank Arnesen's son joins Manchester City scouting team
The offspring of Spurs' ex-head scout has left the Bundesliga side to join up with Roberto Mancini and the rest of the Etihad Stadium backroom staff, with his father's blessing

Manchester City have acquired the services of Sebastian Arnesen, the son of former Tottenham and Chelsea head talent scout Frank Arnesen, to bolster their scouting team.

After working for his father as sports chief of Hamburg, the Premier League holders' new employee signed a contract at the Etihad Stadium despite having two years remaning on his deal with the Bundesliga side.

Arnesen senior - the current sporting director of the German club - told mopo.de: "For him and his development this is a huge step. One step that I am so glad he is taking.

"It's great for him. But bad for HSV."

Hamburg have also lost another scout to City, Jan Ricka, after being headhunted by Roberto Mancini.

His speciality is finding talent in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Both scouting jobs took effect from July 1.

dan_bu ‏@dan_bu
@lMattHurst Ricka most recently discovered Kalas & Masek. Arnesen jr. discovered Lukaku before others & Bruma etc., according to his father.

dan_bu ‏@dan_bu
@lMattHurst Discovered many young talents, HSV are unable to sign because of financial problems. Frustrated then.

Interesting development (if true, of course!). There's clearly some level of shakeup going on behind the scenes - Rigg has left (though of his own volition, apparently), and Welsh has been sacked (hurrah!).

I've felt for a while that scouting is the highest ROI part of the football operations of a top club. If you get good people and systems in place, you can really exploit the inefficiencies of the player trading market (and potentially actually make money doing it - just look at Porto). I think it's much easier, cheaper and more beneficial to get the scouting side sorted than the youth development side - though of course they do go hand in hand to some extent.