Player recruitment set-up

[fishhhandaricecake]

I think a lot of us on here have mentioned for a while and especially recently that our player recruitment is not up to scratch so I’m interested to discuss it in more detail especially with those more knowledgeable on the inside PL football set-up side of things.

Do any of you have an in depth understanding of how we are set-up with regards to scouting and player recruitment and how that’s changed for better or worse during Sugar & Levy’s tenures?

As far as I’m aware there is this ‘transfer committee’ which consists of :
Daniel Levy - Chairman
Jose Mouriniho - Manager
Steve Hitchen - Chief Scout
John McDermott - Player Development

Do we know how good Steve Hitchen is and how big his team of scouts are and what leagues and countries they focus on.

Areas for consideration:

• How good is our scouting set-up compared to our rivals, could it be improved?
• Would we benefit from a Director of Football, what exactly does that role entail that we are perhaps missing out from currently(do Liverpool or Man City or Leicester for example have a DofF and how do their set-ups compare to ours? I was interested when watching the Man City Amazon documentary to see their execs and pep outlining the current squad in a 4-3-3 analysing the areas they need to focus on for recruitment to fit in with the planned playing style.Who ultimately decides at Spurs how we want to shape the squad and why do we seemingly not ever have an aligned plan like the likes of Liverpool, Leicester and Man.City have? (Is this because we have to be ‘reactive’ and simply can’t obtain the quality and position of player we have identified or is it because we are not aligned internally?)
• Is our set-up perfectly up to scratch and it’s more that our lack of finances whilst building the stadium have held us back or is the blame more at Levy’s door for the manner that he negotiates and finalises transfers both ins and outs?

Overall I’d not say our player recruitment is the worst around, for all the N’Jie,N’Koudous and Janssens we have also made some very astute signings over the years such as: Llloris, Toby, Son, Bale, Eriksen, Vegthongen, but it’s this seemingly scattergun reactive approach especially more recently and the clear lack of squad management which is ultimately what is holding us back from going to the next level. The likes of Leicester more recently have shown what successes a solid recruitment strategy can lead to, then again clubs like Everton, West Ham and Man.U have shown that ‘throwing money at its also doesn’t work if the players aren’t the right profile of player for the club and for the way the manager wants to play.

How can we improve that, will it naturally improve now the stadium is up and running like we say this summer with the purse strings opening slightly more signing: Ndombele, GLC, Clarke and Sessengon or is the finance side of it not the key factor and ultimately our player recruitment set-up isn’t as good and as aligned as it could be and if so what can we do to improve that and move to the next level, is a DofF such as Luis Campos the answer?

Great to get peoples views on this.

COYS

 

[gaffer]

It's a good post and something we don't know about in very much detail. I don't know any more than you have already detailed.

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere (possibly Soccernomics or similar) that explored transfers and concluded that only about 50% of incoming transfers at best work out to be successful (which of course is largely a very subjective cal anyway).

The same book quoted Lyon in the 90's/00's as being the exemplar club - they had a transfer committee which sounded similar to the group you listed above. i.e. HEad of Academy, Club Executive, a Lead Scout etc.

 

[danielneeds]

It probably doesn’t really matter if we get the bestest director of football around with Levy there because he’ll always view the market the way he does - that all the matters is getting players in at under what you value them and selling them at over what you value them and not what they mean to the chemistry of a successful team.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

It's a good post and something we don't know about in very much detail. I don't know any more than you have already detailed.

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere (possibly Soccernomics or similar) that explored transfers and concluded that only about 50% of incoming transfers at best work out to be successful (which of course is largely a very subjective cal anyway).

The same book quoted Lyon in the 90's/00's as being the exemplar club - they had a transfer committee which sounded similar to the group you listed above. i.e. HEad of Academy, Club Executive, a Lead Scout etc.

That’s interesting to know re.Lyon.
Would be great if anyone knows anymore about this to get their opinion.

I just find it strange that Levy is clearly a very clever guy that even if he’s not a clever ‘football man’ that he would set us up poorly with regards to player recruitment and alignment with the manager, it goes against what he’s like just look at the training ground and stadium. Whatever he does he wants it to be top notch and he clearly analyses every fine detail so if our set-up has failed in the past surely he’d have learnt to improve it.

would be good to know how football analysts perceive our set-up for example and is it the timing and speed of deals that holds us back or the lack of a clear aligned plan between manager and transfer committee?

I HOPE under Jose he will have a clear plan and we can support him with that. As much as I loved poch I was never 100% he had a clear plan and vision how to develop us and get us to win things which is also understandable as he was a young fairly inexperienced manager learning on the job and did his lack of a plan and clarity for the squad cause our mess now or is that due to poor recruitment and squad management.

either way onwards and upwards
COYS

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

It probably doesn’t really matter if we get the bestest director of football around with Levy there because he’ll always view the market the way he does - that all the matters is getting players in at under what you value them and selling them at over what you value them and not what they mean to the chemistry of a successful team.

Interesting so simple as that then he’s the one holding us back in that regard?
I wonder and hope if that can / will change now we have stadium etc built.

fingers crossed

 

[RichieS]

It probably doesn’t really matter if we get the bestest director of football around with Levy there because he’ll always view the market the way he does - that all the matters is getting players in at under what you value them and selling them at over what you value them and not what they mean to the chemistry of a successful team.

Literally every time we've had a DoF they have been allocated a pot of money and left to get on with it. It's on record that the reason we haven't had a DoF for the last few years is that Pochettino didn't want one.

 

[double0]

The problem I have is the inactivity. We seemed to get caught up at one point believing there wasn’t much out there to improve our starting 11 without shelling big we often heard what striker will come to be second fiddle to Harry Kane.
Once we decide to venture into the market our signing ain’t that bad but can be much better case being Liverpool. Klopp has been backed 100 most casual football followers could name Liverpool strongest 11bar Trent- Alex Henderson/Milner Klopp has identified players and bought that team.

I think we can learn a little from that as well understanding we need to do things slightly different

 

[Kiedis]

I hope just hope there's a sane process behind it. Lo Celso, Ndombele and Sessegnon gave me hope.

All this Jorge Mendes stuff makes me more sceptical.

 

[gaffer]

Going back to the Soccernomics (if thats the one I read) theory....they did a whole chapter on how to play the transfer market. The interesting lessons were:

1. Whenever bids for one of your players at a price exceeding your valuation you should sell.
2. 19-22 year olds are the best ages to buy

As academics they're big advocates of the Moneyball system but its well worth a read to gain some great theory on football.

 

[SugarRay]

Whilst the moneyball approach can work, there’s no such thing as a surefire approach to football transfers, despite various “forward thinking minds” ( money ball etc has been around for yonks ) suggesting they have the answers.

It’s a combination of things. Sometimes, a proper football mind can spot something the stat obsessed types won’t ever see.

Back to us, as mentioned above, Tanguy, Sessegnon and Lo Celso gives me hope. They were all virtual no brainers though. The Mendes link, again as mentioned above, is a worry. I don’t want him planting loads of players at ours. The suggested fee for Gedson seems ridiculously high. The YouTube highlights of him against youth teams isn’t a great sell either!?

Before the summer just gone, We’d gone through a really poor spell of buying ( and of course not buying )
Son was probably the last proper bit of business we did. In that time we’ve seen many realistic targets join rivals ( ex-rivals in Liverpool’s case ) who have gone on to do well

 

[daryl hannah]

This article gives some insight into how Levy's mind works:

EXCLUSIVE: Spurs Chairman Daniel Levy Speaks With Varsity

Sports Editor Joseph Powell talks to the Sidney Alum about his time in Cambridge, the business of football and its future.

www.varsity.co.uk