The Nowhere Men: The Unknown Story of Football's True Talent Spotters

by Michael Calvin

  It was a case study in short-termism, unexpected näivety and ruinous expedience. The underpinning five-year strategy was sound, the personnel were experienced, but there was a disastrous disconnect between basic philosophy and best practice. Mistakes multiplied and, when Mark Hughes was replaced by Harry Redknapp on 24 November 2012, they were repeated. Misjudgements of players’ character, and the perceived influence of agents who were paid £6,818,688 between 1 October 2011 and 30 September 2012, added to a toxic mix.

  When the transfer window closed, on 31 January 2013, QPR had signed 29 players in 17 months under the ownership of Tony Fernandes. Redknapp was raging at ‘gang warfare’ being conducted by unnamed agents. Christopher Samba, a club record £12.5 million signing from Anzhi Makhachkala, was on a four-and-a-half-year contract worth £100,000 a week. Unsustainable gambles were being taken at a club with minimal match-day revenue, and an atmospheric but limited ground which held only 18,000. The club’s culture was in tatters.

  QPR’s training ground, which lies under the flight path to Heathrow, has changed little in the 20 years or so since it was first rented by Chelsea. The offices, glorified portable buildings, are cramped. A small video room, with tiered seating, is one of the few concessions to modernity. But outside, there is a car showroom a petrol head would kill for. Bentley Continentals are parked haphazardly alongside Porsche Panameras with European plates. Customised Range Rovers flank a Ford Mustang. The place reeks of new money and Premier League pretensions.

  This was where Mike Rigg had to develop and implement the strategy in conjunction with Hughes, in the summer of 2012. His credentials were impeccable. He had left Manchester City a month before they won the League title, after four years overseeing a recruitment programme which depended on a global network of 35 scouts. His inheritance from QPR’s previous regime, under Neil Warnock, was non-existent:

  ‘I walked through the door here and thought Oh my God. This is a Premier League club. What’s happened? How can a club be like this? We’d spent money on scouts, but didn’t even have a scouting department. There were zero, and I mean zero, scouting reports and targets. Who are we looking at? Who is our target? Right, we need a right back, what’s our list of the top five right backs? Where is it? Nothing. There wasn’t even a filing cabinet, and that in itself is a system which is thirty years out of date. At least in other clubs I have been at there was some record of where everybody had been.

  ‘Everything we’ve done this summer has been catching up. We’ve had thousands of names thrown at us. “Go and get this kid from Belgium, Portugal, this lad from France.” I said to Mark, “We are doing this and we have no idea. We have done no due diligence. We have no idea who they are.” I guarantee you now the day I walk out of here the next person in will be able to click on a button and source information from all around the world. That’s exactly what I left at City. It’s an industry that’s like no other, and I know what it is like. When I do go it will be “thanks, Mike”. A week later it’ll be “who’s Mike?”’

  There was a terrible foresight in his words. It would be easy to use hindsight to score points, and denigrate certain individuals. That is football’s way, because it helps to dissipate the blame. No one sets out to fail, and events offer a perfect opportunity to reverse engineer the Rangers project. A lot of what Rigg said was uncomfortably close to the truth:

  ‘The problem with the football business is if it lurches from crisis to crisis, and you have no fundamental principle or philosophy, every time there is a change at the top of the organisation, the whole organisation changes. On my first day, I went to see Caroline our PA, and asked how long she had been here. In her fifteen years at the club she’s worked with thirty-three managers. I guarantee you that every time a new manager comes in there’s change.

  ‘They try to implement new methods and systems, but within two, three or six months people are saying “we have got to get him out”. Frenzy is generated. Everyone in football wants it and wants it now. No one is prepared to wait for anything, any more. If the club decides to make changes, there’s not an awful lot you can do about that, but surely there should be a consistent set of principles to work on.

  ‘At City it was like living in the most luxurious palatial mansion. From the outside everyone sees this wonderful building, but you open up the doors and inside are the most dysfunctional family you’ll ever come across. When I came here it was like someone said to me, “there’s a field, and a caravan for you to live in. For the next couple of years there’s going to be a bit of mud and shit and holes and dirt, but you can actually build something.” This, for me, is not just going through the motions of the job. It’s a passion, it’s my life, it’s what I spend seven days a week thinking about and doing.’

  He pushed his laptop across the desk, at an angle, and scrolled through a 56-page dossier he had compiled on Alexis Sanchez, when City considered signing him from Udinese. It was ultimately futile, because Barcelona did the deal, but it represented the sort of template he wanted to implement at QPR. Recruitment was a haphazard process, because football is a haphazard business. The intelligence operation he had carried out, in conjunction with Barry Hunter, who had subsequently moved to Liverpool, was revealingly indiscriminate:

  ‘Barry was my Italian scout. We went out and spent four or five days, on the back of two years’ worth of work, watching Alexis. We saw Udinese train, looked at his house, met family and friends. We went into town at one point, sat down and had a coffee, and we actually followed him walking around with a mate of his. We weren’t trying to be private investigators but it’s only a small place. We were noticing who he was with, what he was doing. At one point we went into a hotel and pretended to be fans. We asked for an autograph to see what the reaction was like.

  ‘We should be doing psychometric testing with people to find out what makes these players tick. But the rules state you’ve got to go and spend fifty million on someone on whom you are not allowed to do any due diligence, unless you get permission from his club. And if the club want to sell him, because there are problems, they are going to prevent you from doing that.’

  Rigg led me across to a whiteboard, on which players were split into first team and development groups. Their names were on magnetic strips. Those who were surplus to requirements and out on loan, like Joey Barton, were turned over to face the wall. The names of those who had left the club that week, like striker Tommy Smith, were removed and thrown in the bin. Rigg then drew an organisational flowchart, in which his function was linked to that of Hughes and Fernandes.

  ‘My role is to balance the football and the business. I need to pay attention to the here and now, but formalise the future. Succession planning should never stop. We have a four-tier system, in terms of recruitment. Number one is a top Premier League player, who can come and fit straight in. Number two is a senior squad player, who may be coming towards the end of his career. There’s minimal resale value but determinable risk. Number three is a development player aged between seventeen and twenty-one. Number four is a schoolboy. We have a global target list for each tier.

  ‘What you don’t want to do is throw the baby out with the bathwater. You don’t want to throw good people away, with good knowledge, but the whole concept of scouting has changed. Absolutely everybody is a scout. It’s not so much what you see, but how that information is communicated. If there’s a player out there, and he is seen by a parent, or the man on the street, it’s on Facebook and Twitter. The information is with an agent. It’s on the internet, on video, on DVD, on YouTube.

  ‘It’s on people’s phones; someone stands on the side of the pitch and sends a text to someone, which is shared. Technology means communication is no longer reliant on a scout on the touchline. That’s come about because a lot of people realise that there are vast sums of money to be made from players who have talent. That may be a Mum or Dad who sees their son as being the next Ryan Giggs, or it could be an agent who wants to snap up a player at the age of thirteen
or fourteen because they want him for life.

  ‘It’s not hard to come by who the best players are. I could literally pick up the phone now, and say to someone, “do me a favour. Just email me a list by one o’clock this afternoon of the best twelve-year-olds in and around London.” You can get that information very quickly, because there are so many people out there. Yes, you do need people who have good eyes, but you’ve got a new culture of people coming into the game.

  ‘They are hard working, enthusiastic. They are graduates, sports scientists. They are intelligent, articulate. There is also a new breed of professional footballer, who doesn’t have to think about what he is doing next because he is so well off, financially. He doesn’t have to stay in the game. That leaves the boys in the flat caps.’

  All are dependent on the men in the boardroom who are prepared to fund flights of fancy, but begin to panic when others lay the blame at their door. Hughes was sacked because QPR bought rashly, placed undue faith in experience, and failed to recognise the character flaws of players like Stéphane M’bia, Jose Boswinga and Esteban Granero. Injuries to such senior pros as Bobby Zamora, one of the few footballers with the honesty to admit he dislikes football, were disruptive.

  An embedded recruitment programme would have picked up the danger signs of indolence, complacency and culture shock. Rigg made the fatal mistake of believing ‘this group should be brilliant for us for one or two years’ and left Loftus Road just before Christmas 2012. Redknapp spoke archly of QPR’s owners having ‘their pants pulled down’, but proceeded to staple their underwear to their ankles by sanctioning another round of recruitment. Change meant a new batch of casualties.

  Stuart Webber, lured from Liverpool in August, quickly jumped ship, to become head of recruitment at Wolves. Hans Gillhaus, another senior figure appointed by Rigg, was sacked. Paul Dyer, who had watched Jack Butland at Southend with Mel Johnson and myself, was another victim of the dismantling of a scouting system that had only just been ratified. Redknapp’s long-time chief scout Ian Broomfield, gave Dyer the bad news that he was out, and asked how long he had been in the game.

  ‘Forty-five years.’

  18

  Smelling the Tulips

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY, football men and little boys, gathered at the Royal British Legion in the West London suburb of Parsons Green to commemorate the Golden Wedding of John and Gloria Griffin. It was a celebration of a life shared and of a flame which flickered and refused to die. The years melted away into a mist of remembrance, a reaffirmation of faith and fidelity.

  Parallel worlds collided gently. Football had obsessed John Griffin, Wycombe Wanderers’ chief scout, since he was a boy in post-war London, when he turned left out of the council estate on the fringes of the Fulham Road, and headed to Craven Cottage. Had he turned right, and taken an equidistant walk towards Stamford Bridge, he would have matched his twelve grandchildren, and supported Chelsea. The prospect amused and appalled him.

  ‘My whole family warned Gloria about me,’ he said, his face illuminated by soft, ruminative laughter. ‘She didn’t listen, thankfully. I know I am stupid about football, but there is nothing more important than family. I see the kids in their Chelsea kits and I shudder, because I was brought up to dislike that club, but I love each and every one of them to bits. They remind us of what is important, don’t they?’

  The temptation to take stock was irresistible. More than 100 guests had come to pay their respects. Griffin was surrounded by managers he had worked for, scouts he had worked with. The trade to which he had dedicated himself was supposed to be on its death bed. Everyone knew its vital signs were weak, but prayed they would remain viable. Too many good men were being sacrificed in the name of innovation, and their names were recited, like a lament for a lost legion.

  Steve Gritt, sacked as Bournemouth chief scout, and replaced by a video analyst. Russ Richardson, sacked as Bristol City chief scout, and effectively replaced by Jon Landsdown, the owner’s son. Brian Greenhalgh, surviving on mileage rates at Huddersfield after Watford’s new owners decimated their scouting department. Keith Burt, sacked as Nottingham Forest’s head of recruitment by Kuwaiti owners who also seemed set on operating a manager of the month policy. The list went on and the word went out. The Nowhere Men had a duty to help their own.

  Mel Johnson was the first to respond. He successfully recommended Mike Robbins to Gillingham manager Martin Allen, a fellow guest of the Griffins. Robbins was another victim of the cull at Queens Park Rangers, a former army cook who had also scouted for Exeter and Norwich. ‘He called me as soon as he was topped,’ said Johnson. ‘He didn’t know what to tell his missus. Mike’s a nice guy who wants to get on, and Martin told me he was looking. It’s good to get him fixed up.’

  Johnson’s empathy was understandable, because he had benefited similarly, by being offered a lifeline by Newcastle when released by Tottenham. Graham Carr gave him breathing space and a broad brief, working in France and England. He respected Johnson’s experience, liked him as a man, and appreciated why he eventually chose to move on to Liverpool. Newcastle’s chief scout offered the same respite to Greenhalgh, whom he asked to work the Northern circuit. They were of comparable vintage and character. Greenhalgh insisted: ‘I like a laugh, but I will not be compromised on integrity. The younger ones, with their numbers, don’t know what it is like to listen to that voice in your head when you see a special player.’

  Meanwhile, the analysts were taking stock. They gathered at a conference on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, on March 1 and 2, 2013, in which the keynote debate was entitled ‘The Revenge of the Nerds’. They were addressed by Nate Silver, the so-called ‘Dork Jesus’, who made his name in baseball sabermetrics before morphing into a political blogger who correctly called all 50 States and the District of Columbia in the 2012 US Presidential election.

  They weren’t having things all their own way. The NFL’s ‘anti-technology rule’ banned coaches from using any electronic devices – iPads, laptops, phones or calculators – during matches. Offensive co-ordinators were forced to use pen and paper to calculate in-game statistics. A forum bemoaned the short-termism of English football, the difficulty of proving a return on investment, and the challenge of creating trust. In the words of Chris Anderson, a behavioural political economist from Cornell University who was one of the pioneers in the field of football analytics, ‘going 0 to 100 in data is scary to lots of clubs’.

  Anderson reinforced his message at a Sports Analytics Innovation Summit, held in London three weeks later: ‘In many ways, I think football analytics has stalled. Inside football clubs, analytics has sort of ground to a halt. There was a lot of excitement about Moneyball but I don’t think we’ve got super far with that. That’s a truth we have to face. Football analytics is in danger of becoming another fad.’

  Little wonder, given the conservatism of the British game, and the flights of fancy undertaken by the likes of Daniel McCaffrey and Kevin Bickart. They were neuroscientists, who suggested future recruitment policies in sport would be shaped by analysis of heart rate synchronicity amongst teammates. In layman’s terms, they argued players who enjoyed playing together, played more effectively together. Their affinity could be measured through motion charts and biological data, assuming privacy issues could be overcome.

  It was, of course, tempting to dismiss this as rom-com drivel, in which the eyes of the protagonists, a hulking centre half and a demure second striker, met across a crowded dressing room. Yet McCaffrey and Bickart supported their case by citing an experiment involving married couples and their ability to co-operate to solve a puzzle. Partners whose heart rates were most in sync experienced lower levels of conflict, solved the puzzle faster and, perhaps with a nod to Griffin, were more likely to have long and happy marriages.

  The only interpersonal dynamics which concerned Griffin involved the relationship between the Supporters’ Trust, which ran Wycombe Wanderers, and the League Two club’s bank manager. The sale and lea
se back of their training ground, for a knock-down price of £350,000, promised to ease the immediate threat of administration, but the trust were still asking fans to donate £10 a month to a fighting fund. Griffin had been on the verge of retirement when Gary Waddock was sacked earlier in the season, yet remained to help Gareth Ainsworth mould a successful team out of veterans, loanees and teenagers. Fourteen first team players earned a total weekly wage of £3,000.

  ‘No one really knows how bad it is,’ said Griffin. ‘I was very, very down when Wadds left, and I thought about jacking it in. I’d known him since he was thirteen, when I tried to take him to Brentford on schoolboy forms. You build up relationships with your managers. I’ve known Gareth since he was a kid of seventeen. That was the reason I stayed. I did say to him that I wouldn’t have had a problem if he wanted to bring his own man in. But if he wanted me, I felt I owed it to him to stay.

  ‘You feel for young kids trying to make their way. I’m not going to lie to you. Sometimes I wonder what I am doing, still in the game. I ask myself, why? The problems here are serious. But then I look at the young players, and their eagerness to get a life. I look at Gareth, still playing at thirty-nine. He can be a hard man, because football is a hard business, but he is so bubbly and infectious. It’s a love affair. I think it helps that he comes into the team and does everything he asks the young lads to do. He tells them: “As long as you do it for me you will always be in my side.”’

  That sense of mutual trust and respect bred an affecting intimacy. Football was a strange fusion for Griffin, a surrogate family which included his own flesh and blood. His nephews Peter and Steve were scouts. Their brother Gary was renewing his managerial reputation at Yeovil. He revered his uncle’s knowledge, and had never forgotten his gesture, in leaving Crystal Palace to assist him when he secured his first managerial job at Cambridge United. Griffin, too, remembered: