Scouting - why exactly are we so good at it?

[An Away Move]

Does anyone actually know what systems we have in place and why we seem to better at it than most others?

[An Away Move]

And.... anything to fear here?

 

Arsenal have employed a team of headhunters to get better at it. They must surely be looking at what we’re doing quite closely. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/may/10/arsenal-move-to-strengthen-scouting-network-in-latest-recruitment-reshuffle

[Kilworthfox]

1 minute ago, SydenhamFox said:

Does anyone actually know what systems we have in place and why we seem to better at it than most others?

 

 

Leicester use Hudl, but its just a platform used by many clubs, but its an extremely powerful tool.

[Kilworthfox]

1 minute ago, SydenhamFox said:

And.... anything to fear here?

 

Arsenal have employed a team of headhunters to get better at it. They must surely be looking at what we’re doing quite closely. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/may/10/arsenal-move-to-strengthen-scouting-network-in-latest-recruitment-reshuffle

Jesus Christ, and there shows why they are struggling 

[Ashley]

Steve Walsh set us up for it and we've just ifldentified people then onwards when others have moved roles. 

 

Southampton are/were good at it due to the 'black box'.... 

[Spudulike]

13 minutes ago, SydenhamFox said:

Does anyone actually know what systems we have in place and why we seem to better at it than most others?

Not sure that we are much better at identifying targets these days despite what the pundits say. Seems to me that our success has been how players are integrated into the squad. 

[Babylon]

17 minutes ago, SydenhamFox said:

And.... anything to fear here?

 

Arsenal have employed a team of headhunters to get better at it. They must surely be looking at what we’re doing quite closely. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/may/10/arsenal-move-to-strengthen-scouting-network-in-latest-recruitment-reshuffle

They tried that when they got Ben Wrigglesworth from us (now at Wolves), and like Spurs taking Rob Mackenzie (Now at Villa, Via Derby and Leuven). It's not so much about spotting players, they are generally well known in the scouting circles. Anyone with the scouting software can pick a Kante and Ndidi to keep their eye on as they are top of tackle stats. 

 

I think it's more to do with building relationships with players, moving early to get them, and taking a risk on players before others are 100% sold on them. We paid big money for Fofana after about 20 starts, it's risk / reward. 

Edited 11 May 2021 by Babylon

[Babylon]

1 minute ago, Spudulike said:

Not sure that we are much better at identifying targets these days despite what the pundits say. Seems to me that our success has been how players are integrated into the squad. 

Indeed, preplanning for player losses is another reason. Bed them in, early and it's easier for them when they eventually slip into the team. 

[UniFox21]

6 minutes ago, Ashley said:

Steve Walsh set us up for it and we've just ifldentified people then onwards when others have moved roles. 

 

Southampton are/were good at it due to the 'black box'.... 

What was the black box? 

 

 

That is certainly one area we've excelled at, one moves on and we have another person or two identified to continue our progress. 

[UniFox21]

7 minutes ago, Babylon said:

They tried that when they got Ben Wrigglesworth from us (now at Wolves), and like Spurs taking Rob Mackenzie (Now at Villa, Via Derby and Leuven). It's not so much about spotting players, they are generally well known in the scouting circles. Anyone with the scouting software can pick a Kante and Ndidi to keep their eye on as they are top of tackle stats. 

 

I think it's more to do with building relationships with players, moving early to get them, and taking a risk on players before others are 100% sold on them. We paid big money for Fofana after about 20 starts, it's risk / reward. 

And we've been burnt a few times, look at Hernandez, he had the most interceptions etc but flopped here. 

 

Each mistake we've made has helped us then modify our strategy that bit to make us what we are. 

[Rusko187]

29 minutes ago, SydenhamFox said:

Does anyone actually know what systems we have in place and why we seem to better at it than most others?

They use FIFA Ultimate Team and Football Manager, they employ the top players of these games to scout best players.

[Aus Fox]

10 minutes ago, UniFox21 said:

And we've been burnt a few times, look at Hernandez, he had the most interceptions etc but flopped here. 

 

Each mistake we've made has helped us then modify our strategy that bit to make us what we are. 

We got Hernandez on a free and sold him for about 5 million quid - not a bad flop!

[Muzzy_Larsson]

The rest of the recruitment team have Congerton's number on their blocked list

 

[Merging Cultures]

Data data data.

 

We have a really good team crunching numbers. We also have a clear strategy in terms of age, number of years left on contract etc. which helps us focus on targets at the right price.

[Muzzy_Larsson]

19 minutes ago, Babylon said:

Indeed, preplanning for player losses is another reason. Bed them in, early and it's easier for them when they eventually slip into the team. 

Was going to say exactly this, what Leicester seem to be very good at is succession planning and being proactive rather than reactive with respect to transfers.

 

This is always something that has caused me a lot of frustration at Celtic and we, latterly anyway, have been terrible at it.

 

Guys like Dembele, Edouard, etc we should be identifying a replacement for as soon as they come in the door and whoever that replacement may be should be signed before they leave. Firstly it eases the transition and gives the replacement time to settle and secondly selling clubs don't have your pants down knowning you have £20-30m burning a hole in your pocket.

 

Sorry I went off on a tangent a bit there but Leicester are a fantastic blue print of how effective scouting and recruitment should work.

[jeffschlupp]

Our best asset, from what I know, is in technical scouting - you are looking for standout statistical attributes, which are becoming more and more sophisticated. 

 

The club have pretty much always promoted from in-house in this position - head of technical scouting was Rob MacKenzie (left for Spurs under Paul Mitchell), then Ben Wrigglesworth (went to Arsenal now deputy chief scout at Wolves), then Ollie Waldron (left for Bordeaux with Macia) and now Callum Smithson, who was an intern way back in 2015-16. You can headhunt any particular man but the club's systems remain in place. On top of 'analysis' comes 'analytics' which is more science-driven and even experimental - Mladen Sormaz is very highly rated in that field and you will see data science in general grow in sport in the coming years.

 

What the heads of recruitment at City have done well is let that side get on with it, but be a good judge in-person. With Fofana, one of Congertons' men Philippe Pelluault was the man who took credit for that one - given his lack of games, you still need to go and watch football live to pick out those kind of gems. Scouting has never and will never be by one method - everyone raved about the Oakland Athletics' Moneyball success in baseball, but it was shortlived and actually not 100% foolproof when you are solely using stats rather than the human eye.

 

We've made errors, but that's football. You can see, though, that the club are very good at managing risk - in changing Under's deal from an obligation to buy to purely an option, you are saving yourself for the possibility he's not as good as you think he can be. And that was exactly what happened. So Whelan, Rudkin and everyone down each have their role to play, and they do it very well.

[yorkie1999]

I think the main reason is because we can't afford the upper end of the market, or a player at his peak that doesn't need scouting, so we look for the next up and coming young player who fits the position we need to fill. 7 times out of 10, that player will get better because of the resources and environment he's now in. The wealthy teams just go and buy the big name players and wouldn't really need to scout kante or mahrez or maguire, they just look on the tv.

[CosbehFox]

1 hour ago, SydenhamFox said:

And.... anything to fear here?

 

Arsenal have employed a team of headhunters to get better at it. They must surely be looking at what we’re doing quite closely. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/may/10/arsenal-move-to-strengthen-scouting-network-in-latest-recruitment-reshuffle

Gotta love em Arsenal - as Babs mentions they nabbed our chaps from the 15/16 success - their main issue at the moment is that all transfers are being conducted via certain agents. 

 

That's something after getting burned in the Mandaric era we've stayed away from - agent fees we pay but we are not running things through a number of agents like (quite incredibly) some clubs do. 

[Xen]

There's so many different factors and its evolved over the years.

• Exceptional forward planning, particularly with signing pre-replacements (Soyuncu for Maguire, Justin for Chilwell etc.). Less pressure on our scouting network, less pressure on Rudkin (easier to negotiate when its not pivotal you make the signing at that moment) and less pressure on the incoming player.
• Scouting personalities as well as just technical attributes, and signing players who contribute to squad morale. For instance, Slimani to keep Mahrez happy, or our tendency to go for multiple players from one nationality (the Nigerians, Belgians and Turks)
• Not always looking at the headline stats that Sky etc use; If I remember right, years back Rob Mackenzie mentioned that we signed Drinkwater (I think) partially because we were looking at his success rate particularly at playing passes which broke between lines of the defence (and thus helped Vardy/Nugent), rather than just pass accuracy or chances created. Obviously he passed the eye test and a whole host of other criteria, but shows the level of detail we went into (and how that would impact on the play style).
• Less pressure from fans for big-money signings and finished products. This ties in with the forward planning, but whereas Chelsea for instance pay huge sums for finished articles (Chilwell), we're a bit more patient with bringing in players with a view to establishing themselves (Justin). Equally, we've been able to take risks on technically good players in bad situations (Albrighton) who might have been too much of a risk for the top-tier clubs.

Then of course there's the self-fulfilling stuff. As @jeffschlupp mentioned we've often promoted from within so those same ideologies and structure have carried forward over time. We have the image of a club who recruits well and develops players (and looks after their even if they're not playing - James, Silva), so naturally future prospective talents view us as a good destination and we have a better pick of the players available (Maddison, Tielemans), which in turn makes us look even better etc. etc.

 

Obviously there are a lot of unsuccessful transfers as well, but even the very best scouting network can't guarantee a given player is going to hit the mark, so we're doing exceptionally. 

Edited 11 May 2021 by Xen

[Stadt]

We’re big on analytics, by now most clubs use a lot of data scouting but how much they trust it differs. Arsenal actually bought a football data company about a decade ago but they’ve never really utilised them properly.

We semi-regularly hold conferences on sports analytics too which shows we’re one of the leading lights in the field.

 

We recruited Mladen Sormaz as Head of Analytics who was formerly at Huddersfield and Statsbomb. We’ve since signed up with Statsbomb and they provide more insightful data than opta, generally.

 

Football hackers by Christoph Biermann is quite a revealing read if anybody is into analytics. It has a decent section on us, he’s a Bochum fan too incidentally.

[Kilworthfox]

1 hour ago, jeffschlupp said:

Our best asset, from what I know, is in technical scouting - you are looking for standout statistical attributes, which are becoming more and more sophisticated. 

 

The club have pretty much always promoted from in-house in this position - head of technical scouting was Rob MacKenzie (left for Spurs under Paul Mitchell), then Ben Wrigglesworth (went to Arsenal now deputy chief scout at Wolves), then Ollie Waldron (left for Bordeaux with Macia) and now Callum Smithson, who was an intern way back in 2015-16. You can headhunt any particular man but the club's systems remain in place. On top of 'analysis' comes 'analytics' which is more science-driven and even experimental - Mladen Sormaz is very highly rated in that field and you will see data science in general grow in sport in the coming years.

 

What the heads of recruitment at City have done well is let that side get on with it, but be a good judge in-person. With Fofana, one of Congertons' men Philippe Pelluault was the man who took credit for that one - given his lack of games, you still need to go and watch football live to pick out those kind of gems. Scouting has never and will never be by one method - everyone raved about the Oakland Athletics' Moneyball success in baseball, but it was shortlived and actually not 100% foolproof when you are solely using stats rather than the human eye.

 

We've made errors, but that's football. You can see, though, that the club are very good at managing risk - in changing Under's deal from an obligation to buy to purely an option, you are saving yourself for the possibility he's not as good as you think he can be. And that was exactly what happened. So Whelan, Rudkin and everyone down each have their role to play, and they do it very well.

I've thought a lot about this issue. US sports use a lot more statistics to analyse their sports.

 

I feel this doesn't work as well in football, because football has far more variables than all of their popular pro sports.

[Sharpe's Fox]

think most of what we know is from the Pearson/Steve Walsh days. God knows how it has evolved since then. It's been 6 years with plenty of new faces through the door.

[FLAN]

So they don’t just read our reactions to YouTube videos 🤷🏻‍♂️

[StriderHiryu]

52 minutes ago, Xen said:

There's so many different factors and its evolved over the years.

• Not always looking at the headline stats that Sky etc use; If I remember right, years back Rob Mackenzie mentioned that we signed Drinkwater (I think) partially because we were looking at his success rate particularly at playing passes which broke between lines of the defence (and thus helped Vardy/Nugent), rather than just pass accuracy or chances created. Obviously he passed the eye test and a whole host of other criteria, but shows the level of detail we went into (and how that would impact on the play style).

Brilliant post! Just wanted to touch some more on this, and add to it. One of the reasons our signings are so good is that we look at problems in the team first, and then look for players to solve that problem second. Sounds obvious, but it's amazing how many teams don't do that, for example Everton signed James Rodriguez who we know is a great player, but what role does he do better (if any), than Gylfi Sigurdsson? Both creative players that drift but who don't have as much box to box energy as they did before. I'd argue that money could have been much better spent elsewhere.

 

Now look at us, last season we wanted a defensive player who had a strong aerial success rate to deal with a perceived weakness to high balls, so went and signed Wesley Fofana who can leap higher than the stadium itself. It looks like we are signing Soumare from Lille in the summer who has exceptional ball carrying / ball progression stats for his age and position, probably to solve issues in carrying the ball into the final third, etc. This means that when we sign a player, it is clear what role they will play in the team and why signings often hit the ground running; Castagne and Fofana this season being good examples.

 

To sum up Leicester as a club an organisation, there is a clear strategy and goal running from top to bottom at the club. E.g. we invested in the training academy to help us develop young players who we can buy through our excellent scouting, who are developed through an excellent coach with proven pedigree in improving young players to sell on to reinvest into the club and keeping the cycle going over and over again. When everyone is working together towards a common goal, things get done!

[gerrytaggart]

Our gaydar is finely tuned.