Scouting Smarter, Not Harder: Data’s Role in Modern Player Evaluation
In today's episode we follow on from last weeks episode and talk about step two of our recruitment process.
In this step we're taking our sample of 250 players gained from step 1, and ranking them in respect to the Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) that would be selected as most important by the coaching staff.
Once we have our ranked list of 250 players it's handed over to the technical scouting team (or person) who can start to watch in game clips of the player using one of the many data providers available (one of which is WyScout). The technical scout will watch the clips and score the player in each of the KPI's highlighted by the coaching team as important for the role they would carry out in their formation and style of play.
If the technical scout decides this player is worthy of further investigation only then is the player passed over to the conventional scouting network, who will then watch them in person.
This makes the in person scouting process so much more efficient in these ways;
1) The scouts are only asked to watch credible pre-evaluated players, no time wasted.
2) The scouts are provided with a clear and focused objective by providing them a score sheet of which KPI's are to be assessed during the match.
The key advantage in this process is that it gives the club time to be proactive and watch players a handful of times in different circumstances in order to rule them in, or rule them out as potential transfer targets.
Once the process has been up and running for some time there should be a board with all current squad members in their respective positions (or roles), and an identical board next to it with 3-5 names of players for each position (or role) who are being actively scouted for both on field performance. Just as important is the time it allows the club to investigate the player off the field in order to evaluate whether the player would fit the culture of the football club, and add to the togetherness of the current squad.
The transfer target board. could change weekly as the data will be constantly updated after every match played, every technical scout report filed, and each conventional scout report completed.
It must also be remembered that a process is never perfect, and we're certainly not claiming ours to be. However, having a process is a great start because without a process how can you hope to improve the process?
Each step is a chance to gain feedback and identify steps and stages where things could be improved in order to increase the likelihood of making a good decision regarding the recruitment of a player. If a club can record more transfer market hits than misses they will more than likely assemble an improved playing squad and increase the asset value of the players along the way.
Next week we're going to run through step 3 of the recruitment process, the player acquisition step. See you then, bye now!
X (formerly Twitter) - @champattack
