Van Commenee, 50, will replace Dave Collins whose appointment as performance director has been scrapped as UKA return to having a coach heading up the bid to deliver athletics medals in London.

Collins, whose contract expires next March, has already vacated his position and an announcement of when van Commenee will take charge is also expected today.

UKA's Niels de Vos insisted Collins had not been sacked when the team won only four medals in China.

Collins was well aware that even if the British team won the five medals which were the pre-Games target his job was on the line as de Vos looked for a new strategy to take the sport forwards.

De Vos said: "Performance director is just too broad and wide a role in a sport as complex as athletics. Dave did a very good job at putting systems in place but, at the end of the day, systems do not win you medals.

"It's not about me saying, 'Dave was 100 per cent wrong' because 75 per cent was right. But I knew where we wanted to go. If we don't have coaches to develop younger ones, we won't have elite athletes to turn into world champions.

"There has been too much focus on athletes and not enough on the coaches of those athletes."

To rectify those shortcomings UKA have turned to van Commenee, who withdrew his application to become performance director four years ago to take up a similar role of technical director with the Dutch Olympic Committee.

Van Commenee's astute management skills saw Holland return from Beijing with its second biggest ever haul of medals and his return has in general been welcomed.

Because of his previous spell as multi-events director, when he coached Denise Lewis and Kelly Sotherton to Olympic gold and bronze medals, he can hit the ground running.

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