Chief Scout

[INTERUNITED]

Needs sacking. How many more pups are we going to sign on his recommendations? Jesus you'd think we'd have learnt after the prem fiasco last year, but we allow this bloke to recommend Hourihane and Olsen, who are yet more expensive shit (to add to Brewster, Mcburnie, Berge etc). Absolute joke. Bettis can fuck off as well, this shit should fall on his shoulders as the Chief Exec.

 

[Bladezz]

If you don’t sign your number 1 targets and you end up with 4th/5th choice players this is the outcome. It happened in the PL and happening again now.

Slav was begging in interviews for players from the start. We didn’t get his #1 players hence we end up with Hourihane etc

 

[jon]

If you don’t sign your number 1 targets and you end up with 4th/5th choice players this is the outcome. It happened in the PL and happening again now.

Slav was begging in interviews for players from the start. We didn’t get his #1 players hence we end up with Hourihane etc

Ddiye was a good signing though

 

[Weasel]

We do seem to have gathered more than our fair share of expensive shit in the squad.

Questions really should be asked of our scouting team. NGE.

 

[stringer]

Ddiye was a good signing though

Ndiaye? He was already our player!

 

[JJBlade]

There isn't a scouting system

We've got something we call a scouting system, but it isn't a scouting system.

It's as cheap and chucked together a department as every single other department within the club.

And then an expensive manager to make it all look normal.

But normal it isn't

The startling numbers of supposed professional footballers that haven't got the most simple and basic football technique from the second they've arrived here over the last 50 years suggests the club is mentally retarded.

 

[mancunianblade]

If you don’t sign your number 1 targets and you end up with 4th/5th choice players this is the outcome. It happened in the PL and happening again now.

Slav was begging in interviews for players from the start. We didn’t get his #1 players hence we end up with Hourihane etc

Olsen was No1 choice

 

[Swinton Blade]

Ndiaye? He was already our player!

Was he signed with our current scouting system though?

 

[PurpleRain]

Recruitment in the entire United World group is shockingly poor and the reason why the 3 main clubs in the group are massively underperforming, even to an unprecedented embarrassing degree. Beerschot has the honor of having the worst point tally in last 60 years of Belgian football. United had something similar last season or close and this year with 100 million parachute payment and sale of Ramadan you are again heavily underperforming. Not much better at chateauroux either lying mid table with the highest budget in third division. And in all clubs the manager is replaced every so many months. Some serious questions should be asked about the owners and how they run clubs.

 

[LJBlade]

Ndiaye? He was already our player!

Signed in 2019 wasn’t he? So I assume the current scouting team had something to do with it.

 

[stringer]

Signed in 2019 wasn’t he? So I assume the current scouting team had something to do with it.

Aye, I wondered if the poster meant when he came in from the cold earlier this season after signing his new deal...

 

[Blacksea]

What we can do while the January window comes is make some canny upgrade appointments to our recruitment and scouting staff.Recruitment has become key in the fortunes fared by almost every team,and ours is pretty rotten,not only in the selected targets but the speed of movement in getting them or trying to get them.Many clubs nowhere near a club of our size are putting us to shame.Watched Swansea beat Cardiff on Sunday,and they look like a team getting into their stride now,let some decent players go in summer but replaced them with some astute recruitment,Paterson on a free is looking like one of the best bit of business of the season already in the Championship.

 

[Weasel]

An example off the top of my head would be Olsen. Now I will readily admit that I know nothing about the deal or the contract that he is on with us, but I'm willing to bet that he's on a very very good wage, and there was a substantial loan fee involved with us paying his current club (Roma?). Is anyone seriously telling me that he is (on current form) worth that outlay compared to what we could have had for a damned sight cheaper instead? Fuckin hell, give me a couple of days and I could have serious portfolio on most of the keepers in the lower league. What about the Plymouth keeper who has had a great start, or the keeper Amos at Wigan, or Johannson at Millers who they rave about. Every one would be better than the lad we are paying a lot of money for right now. There are serious failings and its hard to look further than the 'scouting' team who seemingly dont look further than the end of their noses.

 

[Jon Bon II]

United had something similar last season or close and this year with 100 million parachute payment and sale of Ramadan...

Damn. There goes our EFL diversity quota right there.

 

[1889]

An example off the top of my head would be Olsen. Now I will readily admit that I know nothing about the deal or the contract that he is on with us, but I'm willing to bet that he's on a very very good wage, and there was a substantial loan fee involved with us paying his current club (Roma?). Is anyone seriously telling me that he is (on current form) worth that outlay compared to what we could have had for a damned sight cheaper instead? Fuckin hell, give me a couple of days and I could have serious portfolio on most of the keepers in the lower league. What about the Plymouth keeper who has had a great start, or the keeper Amos at Wigan, or Johannson at Millers who they rave about. Every one would be better than the lad we are paying a lot of money for right now. There are serious failings and its hard to look further than the 'scouting' team who seemingly dont look further than the end of their noses.

Yeah, what about that Moore lad at Coventry who’s getting rave reviews ?

 

[Lowen]

All of the players we’ve signed will have been touted around by their club/agent as they wanted rid. Including players we didn’t sign like Vieira, Karamoh and Collado. We aren’t finding players they’re finding us and maybe that’s the problem. I actually liked our signings though at the time including Hourihane and Olsen so I can’t criticise too much.

 

[Dkc]

In many cases in wasn't because they were shit at their previous clubs. Most new signings have looked good on paper, but for one reason or another have underperformed at the Lane.

 

[jono_t2000]

Yeah, what about that Moore lad at Coventry who’s getting rave reviews ?

That kid Lowe at Forest ain't doing too bad either..

Maybe it's not the players, but us as a club

 

[Houso]

That kid Lowe at Forest ain't doing too bad either..

Maybe it's not the players, but us as a club

Moore at Cardiff was backup rarely getting a game.

Lowe at Derby was not first choice and had tepid reviews.

Sometimes a player needs a change of scenery to flourish. Pity we don't always remember that when we sign a player who is less than palatable and throw dog's abuse at him straight away.

 

[Youngand70]

An example off the top of my head would be Olsen. Now I will readily admit that I know nothing about the deal or the contract that he is on with us, but I'm willing to bet that he's on a very very good wage, and there was a substantial loan fee involved with us paying his current club (Roma?). Is anyone seriously telling me that he is (on current form) worth that outlay compared to what we could have had for a damned sight cheaper instead? Fuckin hell, give me a couple of days and I could have serious portfolio on most of the keepers in the lower league. What about the Plymouth keeper who has had a great start, or the keeper Amos at Wigan, or Johannson at Millers who they rave about. Every one would be better than the lad we are paying a lot of money for right now. There are serious failings and its hard to look further than the 'scouting' team who seemingly dont look further than the end of their noses.

Dead right with Olsen, an over paid bench warmer. 231 appearances in 14 years not including Sweden games so an average of just over 16 appearances a year and how many of them were off the bench?

 

[SwissBlade]

With Sheffield United FC in mind:
Does anyone on this forum know with any certainty how the scouting process works?
Does anyone also know how that then translates into recruitment?
Does anyone know what our budget and constraints are?

I'd take a wild guess to suggest that the answer is that nobody knows the insider details.

We operate as a club and seemingly as 'United World' within a budget which is either not competitive in the league we're in regarding fees, not competitive regarding wages and add ons and certainly none of the United World clubs are what you'd class as a big pull.

In the case of United, we're constrained now by having a manager (and his team) come in late in the summer, he has inherited a large playing squad and not all of that squad fit his style of play. Many didn't fit the previous regimes either, but not all were purchased by the previous manager.

There is no doubt that much of the recruitment hasn't worked out or has had problems that weren't foreseen (injuries for example). We don't know how this has been analysed within the club and how its been or being reformed.

It doesn't mean that the system of scouting and subsequent recruitment is broken. In fact the scouting network will most probably be more of a tool which the recruitment team utilise and i would imagine that this Recruitment team has a much more crucial role as they will provide the info to the scouts and review the information being provided by the scouts as part of the overall process.

The OP refers to Bettis needing to go as CEO. However, there is no indication other than "scouting" as the justification for INTERUNITED wanting to remove Bettis as CEO. Its a bit of a bizarre statement to throw in this context as the role of CEO is far more than recruitment and the CEO has other commercial responsibilities. Briefly, looking at the 2020 Accounts, there are a number of Non-financial and Financial Key Performance Indicators, which i would assume that the CEO has responsibility to deliver. Whilst we don't know what these KPI's are set at, they will be adjusted by the directors based on the league were in and budgets we will have as a club.

What we can also say with confidence at United is that when Wilder was at the club, he built up a team of backroom staff over several years and most of them were unknown to us - we knew the roles of Wilder, Knill & Prestridge, but there was a huge team in behind this, i remember the 'squad of staff" introduced to the fans at the end of the Chesterfield game when we won League 1, there was a raft of data and performance analysts as well as the usual coaches and medical staff. Sports science and Data is something which quietly goes on in the background, but we see more of it on analysis on TV and social media.

So there is no doubt that losing Matt Prestridge as head of sports science will have had an impact further down the chain in Data and performance analysis as we also lost Josh Kirk to Brentford, replacing him with Pablo Perez as Head of Analysis in September (and Mike Allen, one of the long term Analysts also left in March with Wilder). Jokanovic brought in a new Head of Performance, Rafa Cristobal (July). These are the changes that we know about, there may have been others and there may be others to come.

Whats abundantly clear is that we've changed a lot of the the personnel who will have had an influence on providing:

• Information and Data to the management team on current players
• Information and players to be Scouted
• Review of the data which comes back from Scouts.
• Information and Data to Management team on recruitment targets.

That in itself will not just delay the recruitment process but will also restrict the talent we can go for as we may have missed out on many targets because of our slow rebuilding of the backroom staff.

 

[Wards]

Not gonna rip into Olsen as he may well prove me wrong. But, there may have been a case for prioritising other areas above his. Foderingham isn’t brilliant but he’s been just as competent as Olsen has been. Bit of a waste of resource (and a loan spot?) for me so far.

 

[Millhousesblade1889]

It's a fair argument that our recruitment team needs completely re-structuring from top to bottom BUT they can only work within the budget given, we clearly try and get players on the cheap & struggle to pay the best wages so while this is the case we're going to struggle to get our number 1 or 2 targets.

I think this summer will be worse than last, 5/6 players out of contract...that's something you need to start planning for now! It's likely we'll start planning in July and scrapping around for players' transfer deadline day paying over the odds.

 

[Pollingtonblade]

At least the fax machine works now.

 

[Blad]

There has been good signings but far more shockingly bad signings, a lot more, and the buck should stop at Paul Mitchell. CW gets some hammer for Brewster, McBurnie etc but a manager is an extremely busy man and he has a scouting team in place for this reason, he will then go on the scouting teams recommendations. PM is paid a very good wage to find players and tell the manager this is who he needs to sign, when they turn out to be duds its the manager who gets the blame but for me the head scout is every bit as much to blame and the money we have spunked up the wall PM has to carry the can. He will leave us soon as CW gets a job anyway as they are best mates and regardless of how poor he does CW will take him.

 

[Badger Blade]

Whats abundantly clear is that we've changed a lot of the the personnel who will have had an influence on providing:

• Information and Data to the management team on current players
• Information and players to be Scouted
• Review of the data which comes back from Scouts.
• Information and Data to Management team on recruitment targets.

That in itself will not just delay the recruitment process but will also restrict the talent we can go for as we may have missed out on many targets because of our slow rebuilding of the backroom staff.

I suppose what we don't know is how much of the data gets used or whether the people making the decisions on who we sign pay lip service to the data guys and just go on and do their own thing anyway, just because they have the power to do it and think they know best.

I worked in sports data albeit Rugby League for 10 years and the lack of understanding from coaches and club analysts in some cases about what it was telling them was startling, right down to simple stuff like working out an average. All the tools are there but if the people you're explaining it to don't get it, the first job is to dumb it down so they do and build it from there, when in the meantime, a club who has got someone who's sharp on the numbers with coaching staff who are equally sharp are quickest to the punch.

We were great at plucking players from League One/Championship and getting us to the Premier League. Building on that and trying to do something different at a higher level was where we were stumped and ended up back at our Championship comfort blanket where everyone is a known quantity, so much so that we're back there again!

 

[SwissBlade]

I suppose what we don't know is how much of the data gets used or whether the people making the decisions on who we sign pay lip service to the data guys and just go on and do their own thing anyway, just because they have the power to do it and think they know best.

I worked in sports data albeit Rugby League for 10 years and the lack of understanding from coaches and club analysts in some cases about what it was telling them was startling, right down to simple stuff like working out an average. All the tools are there but if the people you're explaining it to don't get it, the first job is to dumb it down so they do and build it from there, when in the meantime, a club who has got someone who's sharp on the numbers with coaching staff who are equally sharp are quickest to the punch.

We were great at plucking players from League One/Championship and getting us to the Premier League. Building on that and trying to do something different at a higher level was where we were stumped and ended up back at our Championship comfort blanket where everyone is a known quantity, so much so that we're back there again!

Interpreting and Utilising the data - Very good point, right back to Clough and Adkins we know that they were taking the data from our players as they were using the GPS vests and Adkins also highlighted the use of data during games and in training/ recovery (i think after the Man U cup game), Wilder then developed his back room adding the likes of Matt Prestridge for the Sports science side of things as well. So the fact that Slav has brought his own people in for this role is pretty much assured that we are using player data for both the players we have. As you say, whether this is interpretted and utilised both on the coaching side and also the recruitment is unknown. But you would expect that we have taken the data and fed this into the recruitment process in a simplified way - either by identifying players with attributes that we're lacking and getting the scouts to go and look at them or giving the scouts the freedom to find players that meet the attributes that we want/ need.

Recruitment - I suppose this is something which leans towards the sustainability side of things. I have no issue with the club remaining sustainable and keeping within our own financial constraints (something which is underplayed by the club). I think the problem under Wilder and also now is that the club (the prince) like to give the impression that we are big time, whereas in reality, signing the players we have done was just playing catch up on the likes of Norwich, to get ourselves a squad of young, top end Championship players. I guess the first season in the Prem disrupted this plan and played into the Princes hands... getting a Prem squad by buying championship players.

The budget will be a big factor, it will dictate the pot we're going to to select our players... That and many other reasons is why we got Brewster and not Ollie Watkins...

 

[Champagneblade]

Recruitment in the entire United World group is shockingly poor and the reason why the 3 main clubs in the group are massively underperforming, even to an unprecedented embarrassing degree. Beerschot has the honor of having the worst point tally in last 60 years of Belgian football. United had something similar last season or close and this year with 100 million parachute payment and sale of Ramadan you are again heavily underperforming. Not much better at chateauroux either lying mid table with the highest budget in third division. And in all clubs the manager is replaced every so many months. Some serious questions should be asked about the owners and how they run clubs.

So far the United World venture has been a bit of a failure with the only mitigating factors being Coulibaly and your welcome presence on here, PurpleRain

The Key Performance Indicators seem to be difficult to measure in terms of success because "swapping training and player development ideas" is very difficult to adjudge in terms of how well this is done and how much it contributes to each club's success.

The best way for United World to have success is effectively to have a pool of players who can be indiscriminately moved between clubs. Unfortunately to be fully successful this would need to border on people trafficking with little or no regard to the wish of the individual.

At the moment, it seems Beerschot are struggling to score whilst United can't accommodate a striker we paid 23m for whilst 3 others sit on the bench.

I dare say if one or two of these moved then some of those ineffectual Beerschot strikers could dona decent job over at Chateauroux.

It just not sure it is that simple though Watford and Udinese seem to make it work.

 

[INTERUNITED]

With Sheffield United FC in mind:
Does anyone on this forum know with any certainty how the scouting process works?
Does anyone also know how that then translates into recruitment?
Does anyone know what our budget and constraints are?

I'd take a wild guess to suggest that the answer is that nobody knows the insider details.

We operate as a club and seemingly as 'United World' within a budget which is either not competitive in the league we're in regarding fees, not competitive regarding wages and add ons and certainly none of the United World clubs are what you'd class as a big pull.

In the case of United, we're constrained now by having a manager (and his team) come in late in the summer, he has inherited a large playing squad and not all of that squad fit his style of play. Many didn't fit the previous regimes either, but not all were purchased by the previous manager.

There is no doubt that much of the recruitment hasn't worked out or has had problems that weren't foreseen (injuries for example). We don't know how this has been analysed within the club and how its been or being reformed.

It doesn't mean that the system of scouting and subsequent recruitment is broken. In fact the scouting network will most probably be more of a tool which the recruitment team utilise and i would imagine that this Recruitment team has a much more crucial role as they will provide the info to the scouts and review the information being provided by the scouts as part of the overall process.

The OP refers to Bettis needing to go as CEO. However, there is no indication other than "scouting" as the justification for INTERUNITED wanting to remove Bettis as CEO. Its a bit of a bizarre statement to throw in this context as the role of CEO is far more than recruitment and the CEO has other commercial responsibilities. Briefly, looking at the 2020 Accounts, there are a number of Non-financial and Financial Key Performance Indicators, which i would assume that the CEO has responsibility to deliver. Whilst we don't know what these KPI's are set at, they will be adjusted by the directors based on the league were in and budgets we will have as a club.

What we can also say with confidence at United is that when Wilder was at the club, he built up a team of backroom staff over several years and most of them were unknown to us - we knew the roles of Wilder, Knill & Prestridge, but there was a huge team in behind this, i remember the 'squad of staff" introduced to the fans at the end of the Chesterfield game when we won League 1, there was a raft of data and performance analysts as well as the usual coaches and medical staff. Sports science and Data is something which quietly goes on in the background, but we see more of it on analysis on TV and social media.

So there is no doubt that losing Matt Prestridge as head of sports science will have had an impact further down the chain in Data and performance analysis as we also lost Josh Kirk to Brentford, replacing him with Pablo Perez as Head of Analysis in September (and Mike Allen, one of the long term Analysts also left in March with Wilder). Jokanovic brought in a new Head of Performance, Rafa Cristobal (July). These are the changes that we know about, there may have been others and there may be others to come.

Whats abundantly clear is that we've changed a lot of the the personnel who will have had an influence on providing:

• Information and Data to the management team on current players
• Information and players to be Scouted
• Review of the data which comes back from Scouts.
• Information and Data to Management team on recruitment targets.

That in itself will not just delay the recruitment process but will also restrict the talent we can go for as we may have missed out on many targets because of our slow rebuilding of the backroom staff.

Bettis as CEO is responsible for the running of the club. Bearing in mind he will be in charge of how the finances are distributed, I'd say the fact we have a bloated, highly paid unbalanced squad, training facilities of a division one side (despite this being promised to be addressed by Bettis) and a summer transfer window where very few of the positions the manager wanted to strengthen where achieved, is enough to warrant the replacement of the CEO. We spent 2 seasons in the premier league, with an estimated 200/300 million income, and have somehow ended up in a worse position than when we were last in the championship. Bearing in mind the owner doesn't have large funds to invest in the club, we couldn't afford to make as many financial mistakes as we have done. If any other company has results like this, the CEO would be out.

 

[SwissBlade]

Bettis as CEO is responsible for the running of the club. Bearing in mind he will be in charge of how the finances are distributed, I'd say the fact we have a bloated, highly paid unbalanced squad, training facilities of a division one side (despite this being promised to be addressed by Bettis) and a summer transfer window where very few of the positions the manager wanted to strengthen where achieved, is enough to warrant the replacement of the CEO. We spent 2 seasons in the premier league, with an estimated 200/300 million income, and have somehow ended up in a worse position than when we were last in the championship. Bearing in mind the owner doesn't have large funds to invest in the club, we couldn't afford to make as many financial mistakes as we have done. If any other company has results like this, the CEO would be out.

Thanks for clarifying your earlier post. Seemed odd that you’d demand a CEO removed for Chief scout concerns that you have.

Given that the board sets a number of non-financial and financial targets, which target set by the board has Bettis failed to achieve?