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grefstad

NCFC scouting setup - outside England

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We have a fairly good setup for scouting English/British players, I think, but what about the scouting on the Continent, or even in other parts of the world?

I dont know, but it sure looks like it is close to non-existent.

That raises questions about how much it would cost the club to set up a decent scouting network to at least do scouting in Europe.

Guessing we could do with 4-5 persons covering various parts of Europe. Should not cost more than 1 mill or so per year, and if this brings us a gem every 2nd year or so, which can be sold with a profit, it more than makes up for it.

If we are looking to establish ourselves in the Premier, we need to look outside Britain for players, sooner or later. Core to be British, yes, makes sense, but we definitively need other types of players sooner or later.

Having a non-existing scouting network outside Britain (assumed), does not help.

Before Henning Berg took up the manager position in Legia Warsaw, he was doing some scouting for Norwich, so we may have some contacts here and there, guessing on ex-players in the Premier, and likely based on their home lands, but I have a feeling this is not a "set-up", more a convenient arrangement now and then as seen fit.

I´m hoping for a more professional setup for scouting going forward.

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We must have scouts around the world, we were told we ''scouted Europe and the Continent to find a replacement for Chris Hughton'' and they came up with Neil Adams.

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[quote user="grefstad"]We have a fairly good setup for scouting English/British players, I think, but what about the scouting on the Continent, or even in other parts of the world? I dont know, but it sure looks like it is close to non-existent. That raises questions about how much it would cost the club to set up a decent scouting network to at least do scouting in Europe. Guessing we could do with 4-5 persons covering various parts of Europe. Should not cost more than 1 mill or so per year, and if this brings us a gem every 2nd year or so, which can be sold with a profit, it more than makes up for it. If we are looking to establish ourselves in the Premier, we need to look outside Britain for players, sooner or later. Core to be British, yes, makes sense, but we definitively need other types of players sooner or later. Having a non-existing scouting network outside Britain (assumed), does not help. Before Henning Berg took up the manager position in Legia Warsaw, he was doing some scouting for Norwich, so we may have some contacts here and there, guessing on ex-players in the Premier, and likely based on their home lands, but I have a feeling this is not a "set-up", more a convenient arrangement now and then as seen fit. I´m hoping for a more professional setup for scouting going forward.[/quote]

 

For someone who doesn''t know you''ve certainly managed to draw lots of conclusions.

 

 

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Well...were do I conclude?

And, btw, oneliner responses claiming to be smarta** is not helpful in getting a proper discussion going.

I am writing that I assume, and that I dont know, "looks like", etc.

Thats not concluding. Thats putting forward an opinion.

But I guess that should not be done on an open fan forum?

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Well who scouted wolfswinkel ? No one.

I remember when we signed Tettey he had been recommended by our then head scout ewan Chester. But he had watched him when working at rangers.

We don''t tend to do much business outside of the uk so we can''t have many scouts looking in Europe.

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Our scouting set up is clearly lacking in every department. Anyone who watched Match of the Day a couple of times last season could come up with the list of rejects, serial failures and 30-something journeyman we have signed or are reported to be pursuing this summer. Our approach to squad development is as unimaginative as our manager recruitment policy - i.e., find someone British and cheap. It seems we can''t even land Robbie Brady

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Waveney you do know we haven''t signed or been linked with any thirty somethings. All under 30 in fact.

Also to describe our manager recruitment policy as unimaginative is just foolish. You had never heard of Alex Neil like the majority of us before we employed him. I would say that the choice of Alex most certainly was imaginative. What about your hero Lambert. Surely even you an concede that was imaginative? If we were being unimaginative we would have had Warnock or Holloway in charge.

As for describing the likes of Dorrans, Mulumbu and Brady as rejects you couldn''t be further from the truth. Pulis is now in charge of Brom and he prefers his midfield to be bypassed so why have footballers the calibre of Mulumbu and Dorrans when you can fill it with 6ft cloggers. Ask Steve Bruce if Brady is a reject. He wants to keep that reject pretty badly judging by his little outburst.

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Most clubs Norwich''s size don''t have an extensive network of scouts working for them across Europe. Some will get the thoughts of local scouts, others will use the knowledge of coaches/managers, many will just wait for agents to suggest their players and then scope them out.

Increasingly clubs use data to get a quick impression and systems such as Wyscout for an overview before sending someone for a closer look at the player.

Norwich obviously had someone based in Holland/Belgium recently but I guess relegation meant they cut back spending on that aspect.

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You have concluded our approach to scouting foreign players, or players who play overseas, could be more professional. You have implied we don''t spend any money on it. But you don''t know, as you yourself say.

We have no overseas signings at present. True.

We have no understanding of our overseas scouting network. True.

Correlation does not equal causation. Just because you don''t have sight of it doesn''t mean that it doesn''t exist.

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Fair enough, BorBor, but without indulging into too much political correctness, and avoid too many frank words, what do you believe IS the current setup at Norwich for scouting overseas?

As I mentioned in my OP, I dont believe we have much of a "set-up" at all for overseas scouting, at least not compared to most of our peers, being teams of similar stature and divisional status/pedigree.

If we assume this is correct, it would be surprising, disappointing, and IMHO somewhat shocking given our well-published goal of becoming an established EPL side.

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[quote user="grefstad"]Fair enough, BorBor, but without indulging into too much political correctness, and avoid too many frank words, what do you believe IS the current setup at Norwich for scouting overseas? As I mentioned in my OP, I dont believe we have much of a "set-up" at all for overseas scouting, at least not compared to most of our peers, being teams of similar stature and divisional status/pedigree. If we assume this is correct, it would be surprising, disappointing, and IMHO somewhat shocking given our well-published goal of becoming an established EPL side.[/quote]

 

Why should we assume that this is correct, you''ve already stated that you don''t know what the set up is?

Do you know what the set up is at established Premier League clubs is?

 

 

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No, I dont know for a fact what the exact setup at other established Premiership clubs is. But it is fair to assume it is vastly better than what we are currently doing.

If we are going to establish ourselves, we will have to scout and bring in overseas players sooner or later, because the pond that is British homegrown players, good enough to play in the EPL, is getting smaller and smaller by the day.

Look at how Chelsea and Man C are throwing monwy at homegrown players like Delph and Stones.

Because of the homegrown rule, which comes into contention next season.

This will inflate prices on decent English players a lot, so, for NCFC, value for money will either be:

1. Buy very young, untried, English players and hope they come good.

2. Fish in a bigger pond, i.e Europe at least, for players.

This is where our scout setup becomes interesting. If we are not setup to do the job in the future, how are we ging to find, and attract good players overseas?

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[quote user="grefstad"]No, I dont know for a fact what the exact setup at other established Premiership clubs is. But it is fair to assume it is vastly better than what we are currently doing. If we are going to establish ourselves, we will have to scout and bring in overseas players sooner or later, because the pond that is British homegrown players, good enough to play in the EPL, is getting smaller and smaller by the day. Look at how Chelsea and Man C are throwing monwy at homegrown players like Delph and Stones. Because of the homegrown rule, which comes into contention next season. This will inflate prices on decent English players a lot, so, for NCFC, value for money will either be: 1. Buy very young, untried, English players and hope they come good. 2. Fish in a bigger pond, i.e Europe at least, for players. This is where our scout setup becomes interesting. If we are not setup to do the job in the future, how are we ging to find, and attract good players overseas?[/quote]

 

Is it ''fair'' to assume something that''s based on your imagination? Your entire post isn''t based on anything apart from what you''re making up and then you think it''s OK to pass judgement on what you think is happening, if you don''t know anything why would you comment on it?

It''s just a load of hypothetical nonsense.

 

 

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One of the best teams with history of picking up young bargain players and developing them has to be Arsenal. They must have a strong scouting network.

For what it''s worth we have Cat 1 status so surely to spend a couple hundred thousand on a couple decent scouts to go and watch youngsters in the likes of Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic etc could be a way increase the quality of the youth development?

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I will be tempted to search through this forum for earlier post made by this TCCANARY fellow, to see if he/she has actually contributed to something of any use in this forum in the last 4 years, or if he/she has only posted useless oneliners, off-topics, and twaddle about this and that.

How about flagging an opinion for once, or is it too much to ask from your royal political correctness?

Amazing how this forum feeds trolls never interested in discussing anything, apart from brushing their own silly ego.

Almost everything in a forum like this is based on subjective opinions. This won''t change, even though the boring stiffness, sometimes known as TCCANARY, does his best to destroy any possible sensible discussion.

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Why nitpick grefsted''s wording? It''s a legitimate concern, he admits he doesn''t know, and is asking if anyone does know. Why dump all over minutiae and not simply offer some input to the intended topic? Is it a slower than usual day in East Anglia and this is all you have to brighten your sad day?

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[quote user="grefstad"]I will be tempted to search through this forum for earlier post made by this TCCANARY fellow, to see if he/she has actually contributed to something of any use in this forum in the last 4 years, or if he/she has only posted useless oneliners, off-topics, and twaddle about this and that. How about flagging an opinion for once, or is it too much to ask from your royal political correctness? Amazing how this forum feeds trolls never interested in discussing anything, apart from brushing their own silly ego. Almost everything in a forum like this is based on subjective opinions. This won''t change, even though the boring stiffness, sometimes known as TCCANARY, does his best to destroy any possible sensible discussion.[/quote]

 

My twaddle is the finest, enjoy your search. [:)]

 

 

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You''ve been a naughty boy grefstad - you''ve deviated from the agenda of those who spend their days patrolling this site attempting to discredit any posters whose view they do not share or who dare to differ from the plastic clappers'' script.

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Perhaps the solution is to set up links with clubs in different countries, whereby they share their scouting knowledge with us? Saves us employing extra staff directly; in exchange obviously we can share our knowledge of the UK market and/or loan them youth players for a season or so. Benefits everybody.

Did we not set up something like this with Ferencvaros or someone in Hungary a couple of seasons back? Did that go anywhere?

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I''d suggest at the minimum we need contacts covering Scandinavia, Holland/Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. That''s a minimum of 8 - expensive to employ, much easier to crowdsource the knowledge from working together with a network of allied clubs in these countries.

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A bit of stability in the backroom staff would help. Darnbrough coming in is a start so long as he is given time to accrue a good level of contacts. Maybe it needs someone  like McNally to do what Andy says and start links with other like sized clubs through Europe.As to Ferencvaros. February 2014 that was announced. Have there been any link up?

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I wonder if scouts, especially the ex-player type of scouts, like Henning Berg was when working briefly for us, works exclusively for a club when scouting, of if he is carrying orders from several clubs.

If so, it is less interesting.

As for the crowdsourcing, yes, could be a clever way to do it, on a lower level. Sooner or later it must be more professional anyway, but could be a good way to tout names on low levels, for more professional people to come and have a look later on.

The drawback is ofcourse that any potential business will not be done in a way McNally likes it, since too many people would have been "in the know"...

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Rather timely an ex head of receuitment for a Premier League club was on the radio this morning explaining how most clubs do thier scouting, having people employed to scout for players is (his words) the ''old fashion'' way. What happens now is that (as Bethnal said previously) most of the work is done on-line using player databases, video clips etc. Once a player is identified clubs will send thier recruitment people to see the player on the flesh and then if thier report is a good one the manager will also look at the player before deciding whether to proceed, if there is a big tournament happening the head of recruitment and/or the manager will go and look at players in that tournament, he said in some cases the whole process could take up to 6 months.What he was describing sounded a lot like what we''ve been doing recently.

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We must have a scouting setup around Europe, that has to be a given. I think we''re just playing it safe this year and looking closer to home.

So many other clubs have spent huge money on exciting sounding foreign signings (That i remember seeing threads on here of people getting jealous about) that have flopped like Giaccherini, Osvaldo, Esteban Granero, Gaston Ramirez, Cornelius etc just off the top of my head.

We know for a fact that Dorrans, Brady and Mulumbu are very capable PL players and we know we have a very good manager AND the nucleus of a team that has finished mid-table twice with inferior managers/peripheral team mates.

For our first year this approach seems very sensible to me

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