Scouting infrastructure problems

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

FMBlade1 said:
So we don't have enough money for a decent abroad scouting system?

Or we do have the money but the board are refusing/can't get something sorted?

If either of those are the case its an absolute disgrace.
Click to expand...

We did have plenty of money,but it's all been spent on Ched Evans and his defence
 



If we're going to stay at this level, we will need a more developed scouting system. Brexit might change how all clubs work though. It's not cheap, but it can be done on the cheap with a bit of nous and the right connections. Brian Deane must have contacts in Scandinavia, for example.
 
With all that has been going on recently I thought to bring this up again.

Do we have any idea what Jan Van Winckel has done so far? He shouldn't be made a scapegoat yet for recruitment, but looking back the comments the board made back in August look worse and worse the longer time goes on. What the hell were they thinking not acting upon this?!

Its been established that this is something we need; the market is too heated here and taking punts on lower league players can only take us so far.

If we aren't willing/able to spend the necessary funds to take us forward a way around that is decent scouting (like Swansea and Watford did in the championship) yet we are woefully inadequate in this area.
 
FMBlade1 said:
.

This is something myself and a few others have been going on about for quite a while so I was glad someone brought this up at the fan's forum.

I am not glad however at the response which seems to be extremely shortsighted. The championship is full of players who have been brought in from overseas, they are able to do this because of the scouting infrastructure that they have. Why do we not have this as well?

Our strategy of lower league British players is all well and good but the market is getting more and more heated here, so now (which is why I bring this up) would have been a perfect time to look beyond into the foreign market to see what's available. Sadly it appears we can't do that because the board haven't got their act together.

Why aren't they acting on such scouting developments? We will need it eventually so what's stopping us going in anticipation of when we do? Most championship clubs have this yet as usual we are falling behind. I'm not usually one to criticize the board, but when we are struggling to bring in quality at the moment these sort of decisions will rightly get magnified.

Will be interested to interested to hear other's thoughts, and as usual would be delighted to be proved wrong on this

UTB
Click to expand...
. Just watching a young lad playing in midfield for Real Betis called Fabian. Looks like a good prospect. Only 21.
 
It's not even that expensive to set up a basic scouting infrastructure overseas. I mean all you need is 1 person who has footballknowledge and can delegate and 2/3 specialists from the countries where you wanna scout. You don't have to scout in whole Europe, just pick 2 maybe 3 leagues and you will be fine for now.

Dutch Eredivisie, Ligue 1/2 and the Danish Superliga are all full of talent and affordable.
 
It's not that difficult. I watched Viktoria Plzen tonight ont' web and was relatively impressed with a forward they have a forward called Michal Krmenčík. Tall, target man. I checked his stats he's 11 in 16 this season, 10 in 26 last. He's 24, and has 6 in 10 for the czech national side. I did a bit more digging and it turns out both Villa and Wolves have had a look at him and he's available for £2.5m. Obviously, i'm not suggesting we starting buying players off the internet, but it's not like we have to have 100 people out there in Europe every weekend.
 
Its an issue that needs resolving I feel, the January transfer signings overall haven't been great.

Leonard - Okay
Evans - Differing opinions from poor to good
Holmes - Hardly starts
Wilson - Poor

The Holmes transfer will have been pushed by CW from his days of having him at Northampton and with Injuries maybe he will come good. I remember Chris Wilder saying how he signs players that he knows, like between CW and AK they have had Enda Stevens, Maybe Baldock (was on loan at Oxford), John Lundstram, Ricky Holmes, Jake Wright, Mark Duffy, Leon Clarke all at one point of another.

The other signings have come from our scouting network, with a mixed variety of success. Wilson who I imagine is one of our most expensive loan signings has been truly awful.
 
McCabe said that Mr Winckel had been brought on board by the Prince with one eye on European scouting, but he said it in a very dismissive fashion. Then he went on to quote that we are a British / Irish centric club.
 
Nearly a year on and seemingly no developments on this front.

We also happen to appear to be struggling to attract players in the UK.

If only there was a way for us to find some good players below the going championship rate.....
 
Been saying it for years. It's a no-brainer. Costs a lot to set-up and run, but we're reaching the stage of no choice. We are never going to be able to compete against the wealthy clubs for the same pool of players. Carry on as we are and we're hoping for miracles. This time next year we're going to be in a far worse position in terms of players.
 



I agree we should be looking overseas for players but we’ve not done too badly on the domestic front so far. Perhaps we should start by looking at Anglesey, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight and Channel Islands, then branch out from there?
 
Cerberus Blade said:
I agree we should be looking overseas for players but we’ve not done too badly on the domestic front so far. Perhaps we should start by looking at Anglesey, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight and Channel Islands, then branch out from there?
Click to expand...

Interestingly (or not), Simon Moore is from the Isle of Wight.
 
I think we'd be willing to consider foreigners but unfortunately they aren't good enough drinkers.
 
Yesterday's game was a great experience, congratulations to the club for pulling it off I'm sure it took a significant amount of effort and skill. I would hope that Inter were impressed by us that they maybe would be willing to loan us a couple of their players, should we ask of course.

As we know, Waghorn has gone for £8 million. A staggering amount. So I wonder how much a 'foreign equivalent Martyn Waghorn' would cost?

Only using Wikipedia I've complied a list of players that performed well in the second division (I've got too much free-time I know) in their respective countries that we should be able to afford and would have resale value that I think could add us something.

Already I have seen one move to Norwich: https://www.canaries.co.uk/News/2018/june/buendia-signs/

Spain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Melero
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Santos_(footballer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucho_Hernández

Italy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Di_Carmine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristian_Galano

France:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florian_Martin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yannick_Gomis
 
The fact it's 2018, the English transfer market is fucked and we still don't shop abroad is embarrassing.
 
If Inter fancy sending someone over, i’d have George Puscas. 22 yr old Romanian forward, who went on loan to Serie B last season and scored 9/19.
 
'In my opinion it’s obvious we need to change our transfer strategy. We’ve already taken too many gambles on players from lower divisions that haven’t paid off (Leonard, Holmes) the players we have brought in from a similar level especially up front are not that much better than what we already have (Washington and even though McGoldrick is an improvement on Clarke we still need another striker). Even the players we’ve brought in from above, Henderson aside, have had little impact (Woodburn and Kean Bryan).

Looking abroad has to be on the agenda for us now. The extra scouting costs are covered by the fact we can pick up players with great ability for far less than we would pay for a similar standard English player.

If we want to buy quality British players we need more money than is currently available, that’s why some of the names mentioned on here Andy Carrol etc. are being considered as viable options.

We have an aging squad that if we keep adding more older heads to may get us up in the next couple of years but if they do, then what? They won’t be able to cut in the Prem anymore, so we then have the issue of trying to assemble a completely new squad and then try to stay up. Thats why Warnock can never stay in the Prem, he uses experienced players to get up there but then never has that extra bit of quality to stay there.

We have to start thinking longer term and investing in the future of our squad so that when we do get up we can sustain our position there. That doesn’t happen overnight.'

BettingBlade 100% THIS
 
By mid 2019, Post Brexit, players from EU countries may very well need a Work Permit to play in England. It would be very risky to have a transfer and recruitment strategy heavily reliant on overseas players with that uncertainty.
 
FMBlade1 said:
I've been looking more into this briefly and it just makes me even more annoyed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Maupay

This player had a decent scoring record in the French second division last season. The stats are all available on Wikipedia. It took me 30 seconds to find them.

He signs for Brentford for just £1.6 million and has already scored twice in three games. At the age of 21 and a former French youth international he is likely to only get better.

Could we have scouted him before Brentford got him?

If not, why not?
If we could, why didn't we?
Click to expand...

Maybe just as well we didn't sign him

On his way to be an honourable Blades legend? ;)
 
The signing of Michael Verrips, a non-English player signed from abroad for our first team squad, breaks with 9 years of transfer tradition since we signed Jean Calve in 2010.

I wonder to what extent Van Winkel was involved? No-one is suggesting signing these players for the sake of it, but it's refreshing that it proves that we do have some scouting infrastructure that extends beyond Dover! :)

UTB!
 
FMBlade1 said:
The signing of Michael Verrips, a non-English player signed from abroad for our first team squad, breaks with 9 years of transfer tradition since we signed Jean Calve in 2010.

I wonder to what extent Van Winkel was involved? No-one is suggesting signing these players for the sake of it, but it's refreshing that it proves that we do have some scouting infrastructure that extends beyond Dover! :)

UTB!
Click to expand...
Given he was playing in the same division as the Princes Belgian club I’d say that’s where the suggestion came from.
 
Now we've used our domestic loans, we have a good chance and a good reason to look into foreign loans for January.

We need to get Bettis speaking Spanish, German, French, Dutch and Italian.
 



FMBlade1 said:
The signing of Michael Verrips, a non-English player signed from abroad for our first team squad, breaks with 9 years of transfer tradition since we signed Jean Calve in 2010.

I wonder to what extent Van Winkel was involved? No-one is suggesting signing these players for the sake of it, but it's refreshing that it proves that we do have some scouting infrastructure that extends beyond Dover! :)

UTB!
Click to expand...

Didn't realise it'd been that long. That's actually pretty mad, isn't it?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

ThatJa
James Bord Bored of Blades?
Replies
22
Views
2K
MayorOJC
MayorOJC
FMBlade1
What is the long-term plan?
2
Replies
56
Views
4K
Dkc
Dkc
Slim Man
Putting teams under pressure
Replies
10
Views
770
Pedro's Winger
P
Tony Currie
Reality Check
Replies
6
Views
833
CarlMcBlade
CarlMcBlade
D
Next Season’s expectations
2
Replies
54
Views
2K
LBA_Blade
LBA_Blade

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

All advertisments are hidden for logged in members, why not log in/register?

Back
Top Bottom