MOSCOW, Russia — Coach of the MVP track club Stephen Francis is sticking to his guns that embattled sprinters Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson sever ties with agent Paul Doyle or find another coach and club for the 2014 season.

He was speaking to journalists Friday night in Moscow.

The outspoken Francis has been openly critical of the role Doyle played in the circumstances leading to both athletes failing drug tests for the stimulant oxilofrine at the Jamaican National Senior Championships in June.

News of Powell and Simpson’s failed drug test, which came shortly after American Tyson Gay’s doping troubles rocked the track and field fraternity, angered Francis who said that the athletes went “behind his back and did things the club would never have sanctioned”.

On the heels of the news, Doyle told the Jamaica Observer that they suspected a Canadian trainer, Chris Xureb, he had hired to treat Powell who had suffered a series of injury setbacks since last year at the Olympic Games in London.

At the behest of Doyle, Xureb’s hotel room in Lignano, Italy, where he was with Powell and Simpson at their European training base was raided by the police. Xureb was also detained for about seven hours but subsequently released.

On Friday, Francis said the athletes were “asked to remove themselves from the people who in my opinion caused most of this and so far they have not done any such thing so I am assuming this is the path they want to travel.”

Francis cited an instance of how much “in the dark” he was about what was occurring.

“For example Asafa was very overweight, he was weighing 214lbs and we put him on a diet plan to lose weight but it wasn’t working only to discover now that he was taking 17 different supplements, which I knew nothing about,” he said.

“How can you coach somebody like that, and this is the type of behaviour that I want to ensure doesn’t continue because it makes no sense.”

He insisted that it was not the club that was taking the hard line against the athletes but rather it was the athletes who have not complied with “strict rules that the club has”.

“They chose after several repeated warnings,” he said, “that they were going to conspire with Doyle to get around my prescriptions for them; in other words if what I say to you is not important to you, if you don’t believe it is crucial to your career then why train with me,” he questioned.

“I believe it is my duty to say ‘look if you are not to be doing what I say to you then you need to go somewhere else as you are wasting your time and wasting my time.”

Athletes who test positive for banned substances are also a potential risk for their coaches, Francis charged.

“I believe it is a serious blot potentially on their (coach’s) reputation and the people’s perception of your honesty.

“We have very strict rules about what athletes should or should not take, and the lengths to which these athletes went to hide this kind of stuff from me and to use other people … now I can’t operate that way and if that’s the way they are going to behave then they have to go somewhere else.”

He said he has, so far, not heard anything from either Powell or Simpson on whether they plan to cut ties with Doyle, so this could be the end of the relationship between the club and two of their most senior members.

Both Powell and Simpson are awaiting a hearing of the disciplinary committee of the Jamaica Anti-doping Agency after the B samples confirmed the positive test.

“It is my opinion that the problems they are in stems from one, the kind of company they keep; two, the people they listen to and three, their willingness to ignore the things I have to say to them and the recommendations that I have to make to them.

“In my opinion they are adults and they chose to do certain things.”

Francis whose MVP club is based at the University of Technology in Kingston, Jamaica said the door was not closed on the athletes but they held the key.

“I cannot have a reputation of this kind of thing happening and they have gone their own way done these kind of things and are about to pay the consequences; now I have said if they are willing to revert to how it was before and are willing to take the advice from me as their coach then I am perfectly willing to have them back.”