Scouting combines

[Makom 0]

No, this is not some CT gen chat topic gone awry. I heard some numpty on Talksport today claiming that *all* PL clubs these days have a vast scouting network looking at thousands of players around the world, and my bullshit detector went off. Sure, the top clubs might have a few, but come on. And we definitely don't.

 

It reminded me of the curious practice I only heard about recently in the NFL, where small groups of teams club together to share scouting resources in the early stages of the season to uncover as many prospects as possible as efficiently as possible, before each going their own ways in the later stages once they've narrowed down the list of potential targets.

 

I wondered if it would work here. Obviously the natural reaction is what a crazy idea, helping your competitors identify targets, but clearly, even the rampant capitalist individualists in the richest league in the US have realised that due to the sheer size of the task it becomes if you want to do scouting properly, a bit of communist mutual co-operation does wonders.

[Makom 0]

I'm aware obviously that some clubs have partnerships with lower league scouts who will often tip them off if a great prospect is noticed in their patch, and there's obviously a good few independent scouts who likely have ties with a number of PL clubs, but that's obviously not the same thing as this combine concept. This would basically see us sending a scout to one part of Europe to bring back reports which say, West Brom, Stoke and Swansea would then read, and we in turn would get to read all the reports from their scouts, who all cover different parts of Europe. The clubs all then proceed independently on the targets we each liked best. It's all done on trust, with scouts expected to share all information equally and honestly with the combine clubs, on the principle that you'll end up signing more decent players this way even if you risk losing a few to rivals, than you ever could by working alone.

[Makom 0]

And not that a chump like Charnley would realise it, but a model like this would actually be more beneficial to clubs like us with miserly greedy chairman with only resale values on their mind. But that's probably why we would never get invited into one, since it relies on mutual trust between chairmen.

[Howay 12496]

I'm canny sure the American system has been brought up once or twice on here, it's a good enough idea in that it fits their system but it could only fit a system like theirs.

 

The NFL teams don't share their scouts as far as I know, most pay for an independent scouting company and read their reports (iirc a lot of teams use the same company) and then their own scouts go and take a closer look at the College players they think interest them. This has started to happen a little in footy as I think it's the Football Manager database is bought by teams like Everton so they get a general idea about tonnes of players before taking a closer look (I highly doubt Newcastle pay for this database mind).

 

The Combine is just a set of drills they put a select group of 250 or so college kids through (that have declared they are entering the draft) and NFL teams send their scouts to get further evidence to back or reassess the players they were going to pick, they definitely don't share their opinions by this point and there is even a lot of bluffing and mind games involved trying to put other teams off players they're interested in (the book Moneyball covers this a little when talking about the Baseball draft).

 

If you're meaning more the Football manager database type of thing then I fully agree Newcastle should be involved in it but I highly doubt those in charge are forward thinking enough to consider it.

Edited June 9, 2015 by Howay

[Makom 0]

It's definitely the scout system. You might be right about them being independents though. No databases involved, except to identify the targets being looked at first, which is obviously easier in NFL than real football, but you could just substitute that stage with whatever method is used at the moment to identify prospects (which is probably still the local networks with contacts to bigger clubs). The combine is about efficiently organising the scout's time in how they go and look at the prospects, and then yes, in the later stages it's each club for themselves. But I wasn't thinking about the gym test combine, that's just odd all round, I can't even begin to contemplate if that has a place in real football.

[Makom 0]

Wikipedia is no help, as usual.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_scouting_combine

 

It appears the gym based test is the "Scouting Combine", but the thing I'm on about is what that page calls the Scouting Organisations. The programme I saw was about BLESTO - Bears, Lions, Eagles & Steelers Talent Organisation - and it definitely gave the impression that the scouts even at the early stages were still attached to a club, but were scouting on behalf of all of them. That may have simply been that they were assigned that particular club's patch (they divided up the US into areas).

 

It was all quite complicated actually - the scouts all went out and looked at the initial prospects, sometimes several in one day driving hundreds of miles, then there was a second round where the scout covering the neighbouring area might come across and give a second look to some of the initial prospects. I think they even had a protocol where they'd make sure they looked at the best prospects at the start, middle and end of a season. They gave feedback to clubs using both scoring system and the face to face reports of all the scouts who saw him, so they could decide whether or not to go for him (and I think that's the stage where they get invited to the gym test), and then it's dog eat dog.

[Gemmill 44972]

Ahhh blesto!

[toonotl 2988]

I know what you mean about the blowhards that call into talkback radio. Usually they're complete morons with too much time on their hands that think they have great ideas on how to fix things that aren't brok...... hmmm.

[The Fish 10872]

Interesting idea, that may work for clubs in lower leagues, but has no chance of success in the Premier League imo.

 

Clubs aren't afraid to hijack a deal when the guy in en route to another team, I can't imagine for a second that they'd honour a gentleman's agreement to share information.

 

The best route for a club like us is not too dissimilar from the current format. Just need to change the criteria for the players we eventually pursue though. Rather than only looking to pick up players we can sell on, we should build a squad fit to compete.

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with the current scouting model at all, just the recruitment model.

[toonotl 2988]

Would never work in football outside the US.

 

The path into elite US sport is well established and completely different from anywhere else in the world. It will never happen because the entire European system of player recruitment and development would have to be knocked down and rebuild from scratch.

 

Same reason a draft or a salary cap system wouldn't work in the PL (or Europe in general).

[David Kelly 1245]

I suspect there are a hell of a lot more people scouting for premier league clubs than Makom thinks. These people won't be on any sort of regularly paid contract but will get paid if they come up with someone a club takes on. My sisters fella has a brother living in Poland where he works doing somthing to do with sports coaching and he has an agreement with some team (might even be us) that he will introduce any players of promise. I'm pretty sure he doesn't pick up a monthly wage for this. This will be type of scouting most teams do (even within the UK where they have links to people at amateur clubs) and then if they bring up someone interesting the full time scouts (which will be far fewer in number) will be sent to look at them.

The caller on Talkshite probably is closer to being right than you think.

[Makom 0]

I'm aware of that, but the combine model is not about better identifying the propsect (which would still likely be done through informal networks of scouts), it's about more effectively organising the time of the full time scouts whose job it is to actually go and look at the prospects and report back to clubs. it's precisely because there are so few of them, that it exists. Imagine if the only thing our full time scouts had to do was look at players in two European countries, safe in the knowledge the the rest of Europe was covered by the others? I don't see why it wouldn't work, the instinct to screw over another club is hardly going to be any stronger in the PL than the NFL, yet they make it work.

[Monroe Transfer 0]

Yeah, about that...

 

[toonotl 2988]

Makom obviously you feel you were robbed of the chance at a professional football career. Tell us about that.

 

Briefly.