Author Topic: Scouting  (Read 878 times)

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Standaman

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Scouting
« on: May 04, 2018, 08:51:45 PM »
The dismissal of 2 of Pulis' appointed scouts seems to have triggered a debate about scouting in general on the "new manager" thread.

Thought it is worthwhile spinning it off for a broader discussion.

Firstly the role of scouts is somewhat misunderstood and along with it there is a debate between desk based and live scouting. Scouts aren't generally talent spotters they are the eyes of the recruitment department but they are directed by the Head of Recruitment/DOF to watch potential targets. Although at youth level scouting is nearly all live because there is a limited library of video and competitive stats. 

The role of the scout is to answer questions that can't readily be answered by statistical analysis or via video which is the work the player does off the ball the positions he takes when not directly involved in the play. 

Secondly how many scouts we need? A scouting network is not just the full time scouts the employed by the club but also people that the club can call on to watch a player on a one off basis. That said for a Premier League club 5 is pretty much the minimum. If to get a decent understanding of a player I would guess it would need to see the player a minimum of 3 times if you want 10 deep lists of properly scouted players for each position that is probably 600 games plus a season.

I would also question how systematic our scouting and recruitment processes have been recently. Was Kychowiack scouted? If so when given that he didn't play for the 2nd half of the season.

The scouts get blamed but they aren't the problem but the processes behind them I suspect have been broken for a while.

 
Standaman - Born to be a Baggie.