Scouting, or lack thereof

[cannable]

1 hour ago, Van der MoodHoover said:

We did. FloJo.....

And make sure they’re good… 

[RamNut]

Two good wingers would transform this team. 

I wanted Mahoney and Crowley in pre-season and i’d have kept Luke Thomas .

Mahoney was just about the only left winger available, and has received some good reviews for Millwall.

Crowley ran the show for half an hour v brum at PP.

we’ve missed them, so who should we target next?

Cocu should focus on that. It would give us a focus and an attacking strategy. 

So calling all scouts, find us two realistic targets. A left footer for the left wing, and a right footer for the right wing. Dutch, Irish, Portuguese, English, Scottish....whatever. Two affordable realistic options. 

 

[therealhantsram]

On 21/10/2019 at 13:55, ramsbottom said:

That's the problem with transfer fees and how they've ballooned over the past few years.  5 years ago, both Bielik and Lawrence would've been £2-3m max.  Lower fee, lower expectations.  I think the issue is, we're still small fry when it comes to these types of investments, £10m to any Prem side, even the newly promoted teams, is a drop in a bucket.  £10m to us is a huge amount to spend on one player

Never should've sold Dawkins, massively underrated player, just because he was signed as a striker/winger/inside forward fans expected/demanded goals & assists galore.  But if anything he was a right mid who would keep the ball all day long and keep the rest of the team ticking over.  Cocu would love him...

I think he is still without a club at the moment after being released by Ipswich in the Summer.  Only 31. Never relied on pace so should still be able to cope in this league. 

[Ambitious]

On 21/10/2019 at 13:47, King Kevin said:

So Jono was definitely not worth £6m ,but we had some of our best spells last year with him in the side and we could badly do with him in this light weight team .

I wouldn't say this team was lightweight, and on further inspection we're certainly amongst the top 'tacklers' in the league as a collective. I'd personally say that Johnson doesn't solve anything in this team, in my opinion, because what we lack is what would be even more apparent with him in the team - quality. 

We're the least creative team in the entire division. In terms of chances created, we've managed 87 which is roughly half what Leeds have created in the same amount of games - the knock on effect is that we're also in the bottom three for shots on goal, bottom four for both shots within the six yard box and shots in the box. This is the major problem we face as a club, unfortunately I feel now that Keogh is injured we face equally bigger challenges at CB. 

I don't know what our wage budget is this season, but we are without a doubt getting the least 'bang for our buck' in the Championship when you focus purely on the quality of the players. This is down to absolutely nothing other than horrific scouting and poor planning. Johnson to me stands out as the biggest highlight in our failure to scout efficiently, not because he's the worst player to pull on the shirt, far from it, but because we definitely didn't do our due diligence. We were labelled as a lightweight side, he had a reputation as a bit of bruiser and was coming off a career high goalscoring season in a promoted side. My problem is that he had that career high goalscoring season at LM, in which he played a very niche position in a well organised system. We quickly put him back in CM, because our system used quick inside forwards rather than wide midfielders. We should've known what he was, he didn't suddenly change overnight. It's okay for fans whose full time job isn't watching football as often as possible and detailing scout reports on multi-million pound signings, because they just see the numbers, get excited and then find out at a later date what the scout who is paid to do this job should've been able to pick up before pen was even put to paper. Unfortunately, Johnson wasn't the only one. It's enough to make me think that even with all the investment in the world, we simply don't have the quality behind the scenes at selecting players to make it worthwhile. It's arguably my biggest frustration with the club at the moment. 

[Jourdan]

I think our three major problems are:

Timing - we have a habit of buying players when they are a known quantity throughout the EFL and typically when they are at or near the peak of their value. It's very rare for us these days to buy a player still on the rise and add value to them and develop them. Look at any of our significant signings in the last 2-3 years - if they went on the market now, very few would be worth the same or more than we paid for them.

Suitability - there is no real strategy or thinking as to where the players we sign will fit in to the side and whether they are a suitable replacement for the outgoing player. How many players do we sign and you immediately wonder where they'll fit in, what their best position is, whether they actually fit the system, and whether they are an actual improvement on what we have?

Range - we don't really branch out enough. Our pool seems rather shallow. We seem to look in the EFL and in Scotland, and that's it. Why aren't we looking in Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands or Belgium, for example? Why aren't we developing relationships with big clubs in Europe?

I think probably we feel like we have had our fingers burnt too often - Camara, Albentosa et al - in recent years and that's probably why we don't make the most adventurous signings.

Personally I think you have to be brave and stick to your strategy. Not every signing works out for Brentford, Bristol City, Preston and the likes, but it's about having a strategy and staying faithful to it.

We seem to be caught between 3-4 different strategies, without really committing to one.

 

[RamNut]

Recruitment strategy has varied over time with different managers.

All of nigel clough's signings were nigel clough's choices, and the manager was accountable and responsible for all of them. There was sometimes some funny stuff going on. Remember the strange treatment of Dave Martin, tomasz cywka, Or chris maguire? But that was nigel's strange foible. At least the players were signed to suit the managers vision and we ended up with the basis of  the 13-14 side - albeit that it took 5 years to build. 

The recruitment problems really began when sam rush split the managers role so that the manager was no longer responsible for recruitment. Rush wanted to take control for recruitment away from the manager who then was renamed as coach. We might now suspect the motives for that, because we then signed numerous players from wasserman group, and so began the strange payments for scouting etc.  Once chris Evans was appointed the number of signings increased and the wage bill eventually mushroomed.  Lots of reserve players were signed who belonged to the First Contact agents. This is where the lack of a coherent strategy begins. mac1 ckearly didn't want albentosa. Evans apointed a team of scouts none of whom stayed very long, and the group included joe McClaren. From the outside there was an impression that responsibility for recruitment was now a team event with several parties having an input and agents having an increasing influence.

Under PC, Mel famously responded that the manager / coach had final say, which hardly inspired confidence. We went on a spending spree bringing in weimann, ince, johnson, butterfield etc and this was the root cause of our subsequent financial struggles.Some of Chris evans' signings were senior players who were never going to have resale value - baird, warnock etc. 

Clement seemed hostile to the role of chris evans, who left, and for one window the next three main signings seemed to be his signings. From thereon the managers authority seemed to have increased even if total control was no longer within his grasp. That was the situation when Pearson came in. i would assume that - at that time - signings like anya and vydra were his choice.

With mac 2, chris evans returned and we re-appointed joe mcclaren. when mac2 departed it was mel's choice to retain joe mcclaren. Rowett was strong enough to take back control. No doubt wisdom, davies, huddlestone, ledley, lawrence and jerome were all his choices. Financial pressures meant we were now signing older cheaper players, and we ended up with ageing players with limited re-sale value. 

 Under Frank we can only assume that the majority were his choice. He seemed to have personally checked out marriott and holmes at the league 1 play off final. He spoke about having watched brentford and jozefzoon. Some signings were probably the result of us responding to the market and who was available - e.g. Waghorn and malone. I seem to remember from statements made by Pearce that malone wasn't first choice, and that we went for him when fulham won the race for joe bryan. we then apparently pipped villa to win the race for Malone. 

Now the situation is as confused as ever. Cocu seems less in control of incoming signings than any manager / coach since clough. We were told that on the continent this split between coaching and recruitment is normal and so maybe he is comfortable with that. As others have observed he cannot have known and targetted clarke, paterson, hamer etc . Presumably clarke was a rosenior suggestion. The rooney deal seemed to pre-date cocu and went back to franks time. What a mess.

I really hope that come january the signings are clearly cocu's personal choices. No-one can yet tell what his vision is. 

[SKRam]

On 21/10/2019 at 23:14, TommyPowel said:

maybe they saw and recommended  Watkins but once theyve done that its out of their hands.We just dont know the full picture.But what i do know is that its possible for the scout to highly rate a player but the manager doesnt for some reason.We have an example on here with the Martin saga some adoring him other thinking he was finished and should be  got rid off then there a Keogh fans and his knockers

Richard Keoghs knockers have nothing to do with it, for all you know he may have had implants to improve his vital statistics  ?

[ramsbottom]

10 hours ago, therealhantsram said:

I think he is still without a club at the moment after being released by Ipswich in the Summer.  Only 31. Never relied on pace so should still be able to cope in this league. 

Well if it were me he'd be snapped up...

[TommyPowell]

9 hours ago, SKRam said:

Richard Keoghs knockers have nothing to do with it, for all you know he may have had implants to improve his vital statistics  ?

how dare you they are real i have seen them