Leeds United have reported Chelsea to the Football Authorities.

Chairman Ken Bates announced the club's intention to take firm action at a Press Conference on Wednesday morning.

In addition, the club will take seperate legal action against former employee Gary Worthington for breaches of his severance agreement. Worthington was employed by Leeds from July 2000 until July 2005. He joined Chelsea shortly afterwards.

The announcement comes in relation to the alleged tapping up of three young players Tom Taiwo, Michael Woods, and Danny Rose.

Woods and Taiwo are now registered as scholars at Chelsea with Danny opting to stay at Leeds.

Taiwo signed for Leeds in October 1999 as a nine-year-old while Woods signed 11 months later at the age of ten.

All three players have represented England at under-16 level and played under-18s football for Leeds during the 2005-06 season.

United offered the players scholarship terms, commencing on September 29 2005, and those discussions continued into January 2006 with the offers being extended to include professional terms from their 17th birthday.

Woods and Taiwo, now represented by the PFA, turned down the offers on January 12 2006, but confirmed during the negotiations that the offers being made "will be up there with the best offers made to new scholars across the country this season".

At the request of their respective fathers, Woods and Taiwo were de-registered at Leeds in February 2006 with compensation rights being retained. The duo were taken on trial by Chelsea the next day and agreed terms to become scholars and subsequently professionals on April 10 2006.

United chairman Ken Bates said: "Leeds United want to be compensated not only for the work done in developing the players, but also the loss of opportunity to develop them further into professional players which would have increased their value both to the club as players and in transfer value.

"We feel we have been deprived of this opportunity by the actions of Chelsea.

"Football development will not be viewed in the same manner again unless the financial award payable to compensate Leeds United is such that it makes clubs think twice about such actions. Many other clubs with talented youngsters are looking on knowing they could be next.

"Football development schemes as currently operated will fold if clubs no longer have the opportunity to hold on to the best players they develop or make the conscious decision to sell them rather than having that opportunity taken away from them as in this case.

"In reality financial penalties will have little impact on Chelsea and we feel it is time for the Football Authorities to make a stand for those things that should be sacrosanct in the game to protect everybody by imposing penalties on them that will affect them and deter others, namely; points deduction from the Premier League, additional suspended points deduction from the Premier League, prevention of entering European competitions, and a transfer embargo.

"The simple question is - why would two young players still in full-time education turn down offers from the club that had assisted in their development from nine and ten that had been described as 'among the best that would be made to any players of that age' if they or their representative did not know that they could do better elsewhere?"

The chairman also made it clear during his statement that there was no question of a personal vendetta against Chelsea and he apologised to the Stamford Bridge fans who he said he had "a lot of respect for."