‘I left Palace for eighteen months. Ron Noades let me go, and he promised to take me back. He knew what Gary meant to me, and was as good as his word, the day it went wrong for Gary at Cambridge. I enjoyed it there. I was never afraid to look for players at the lowest of the low. I went to watch a boy play for Christchurch. He was seventeen, ginger hair, a spotty college boy playing in the Wessex League in front of four men and a dog. The next day I said to Gary, “I’ve just found you your centre half for the next fifteen years. This kid might be out of the ordinary.”
‘And he was. It was Jody Craddock. I’ll always remember him coming to see Gary. He was very much the student. He had cut-down shorts and a pony-tail. After we’d signed him and all the formalities were done, he walked out of the room. Gary said, “What have you done to me? Are you sure this is right?” He was in our first team within four weeks. He’s had a great career in the Premier League with Sunderland and Wolves. He’s doing some coaching now, though they tell me he wants to paint for a living.
‘Gary always tells me, “You’re such a mug for not getting a percentage of everything.” PeopIe say I should go for the money, because everyone else makes money out of the deal, but I enjoy looking at a player progress and saying to myself: yeah, I started him off. Not too many of the players keep in touch, and they don’t realise the boost to your ego it is when you see them doing well. I follow every one of them really closely. If I bump into them, which I frequently do, they will always make a fuss.
‘I remember a few years ago I saw Stan Collymore at the football writers’ dinner. He was way across the hall. He saw me and walked through thirty or forty people to throw his arms around me. That was nice. I’ll always remember that. Things like that stick. I think they all spoil me if they see me. A couple of scouts I helped along the way do it, as well. One of them, Alan Watson, works for Manchester City. A very well educated man, who worked for me for about ten years. When he went to City he sent me a wonderful box of wine. He sent a note which said: “This is just to say thank you for everything you do. Other people don’t realise how I got this far in my career.” That was lovely. That was brilliant.’
Commercialism was continuing to accelerate change. Scout7 attempted to increase their market penetration by offering clubs free video scouting packages for the second half of the season. The major data companies, Prozone and Opta, were responding strategically to the needs of technical scouts like James Smith at Everton by offering statistics of greater depth, sophistication and relevance. These involved the timing of high-intensity sprints, the location and number of shots on goal, and the metrics of a killer counter attack. The pursuit of legitimate business aims threatened jobs and livelihoods of men who lacked an ability to fight back.
‘It is all anyone talks about at the moment,’ admitted Griffin. ‘It’s absolutely impossible for an analyst to do the same job as an experienced scout. You can’t see players on a screen, and have an appreciation of what’s going on thirty, twenty or even ten yards away. You couldn’t possibly take a player just from the internet. Someone’s eyes have to be involved. What happens to that trust you need between a chief scout and a manager? How can he go to him and say, “This one is worth a look, gaffer” if he is not certain himself?
‘Facts and figures have their limitations, but I know the world is changing. I had a phone call recently asking me to find a chief scout for Crystal Palace. They wanted a younger man, an IT specialist who could also go to games and scout. I helped them find Tim Coe, who is a good lad. He’s very bright and has been out on the circuit. They sent me a dozen bottles of red wine, which was nice, but it was worrying that they should insist IT skills were more of a priority for them than a scout’s eyes.’
The complexity and consequences of change were familiar to Ray Clarke. We had first met on Valentine’s Day, 2012, in a lounge on the 38th floor of the Gherkin, the iconic skyscraper based on the site of the former Baltic Exchange in London. He was off to West Ham with his wife Cindy, whose champagne lunch was an apology for an evening spent waiting in the car park, because someone had reneged on the promise to supply her with a match ticket.
She smiled indulgently, and would while away the game reading. He was on crutches, following a hip replacement operation, but when he talked football, with his glasses pushed backwards through a full head of grey hair, he was bright, youthful and expectant. The ball was out, the delicately presented beef and duck wraps were pushed to one side, and the capital, spread beneath us like an architectural and historical textbook, was reduced to a peripheral blur.
Clarke was a pioneering player, a striker whose career began at Tottenham and encompassed successful spells in Holland with Sparta Rotterdam and Ajax, and in Belgium with Club Brugge. He returned to England to play for Brighton and Newcastle, before moving into coaching, initially as reserve team manager at Southampton under Graeme Souness. He was one of the first scouts to work extensively in Europe, holding international roles at Coventry, Southampton, Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Celtic.
He had spent two years attempting to set up a Football Scouts Association, under the auspices of the League Managers’ Association. A constitution had been prepared. Clarke liaised with the Football Association, and supervised ticketing arrangements for scouts at the Olympic football tournament, before the dead hand of bureaucracy threatened to throttle the life out of the idea. It was an opportunity missed, because the welfare of scouts was regarded with increasing indifference.
‘Scouts are treated with no respect,’ said Clarke, more in sadness than in anger. ‘We don’t matter to too many people. There’s no security. No one knows what we do, and no one cares. There are a lot of people out there struggling. They’re doing it for the love and no money. The old school chief scouts are getting bombed out. I can see a lot of errors being made in recruitment because of that. You can’t just push numbers at people.
‘In Holland the scouts have a saying: “you have to smell the tulips”. Statistics are all very well, but they don’t give you what the traditional methods give you. You are out there, looking at everything from a player’s movement to his mentality. You sniff the good ones out. People might listen to that, and turn round and say “oh, you’re just one of those old farts” but we know what to look for in any given situation.
‘Sometimes it is a question of body language. Rio Ferdinand isn’t a natural defender, Nemanja Vidic is. He puts his head into a challenge, while Rio turns his away. The head is so important, because it determines body shape. Sometimes it is about gut feeling. You can see the pictures in a player’s brain when he receives the ball. It can take less than a minute to make your mind up about someone. Once you are sure about him, you get in there early. We did that at Newcastle with Tim Krul, the goalkeeper who cost us only two hundred and twenty thousand euros as a sixteen-year-old.
‘Sometimes it comes down to basic background work. Players work at certain clubs. Fernando Torres was successful at Liverpool because they were brilliant on the counter. Once Steven Gerrard had the ball, Torres was on his bike, hitting the channels. The ball invariably arrived. The reason why Torres is failing at Chelsea is that they do not play with a high enough tempo and the ball doesn’t come quickly enough.’
So much for logic, and the eternal verities of the scout’s trade. Clarke’s appointment as Blackburn Rovers’ head scout, in September 2012, was compromised by the arrival of a new head of recruitment, Luke Dowling, the following January. The apparently arbitrary usurpation was a response to the arrival of Blackburn’s third manager of the season, Michael Appleton, who called Dowling ‘my right arm’. It was, at the very least, a criminal waste of knowledge and experience, but it proved to be a temporary aberration. Appleton was sacked after 67 days in charge, together with Dowling, on March 19, 2013.
Dean Austin was utilising his knowledge and experience as assistant manager at Notts County. The break he had been seeking so persistently arrived suddenly and unpredictably. He was out with his young family in Radlett
, a large prosperous village in the Hertfordshire commuter belt, when his mobile rang. He saw it was Chris Kiwomya, realised that Keith Curle had just been sacked at County, and turned to his wife. ‘He’s got the job,’ he said, impulsively. The decision to abandon scouting duties at Bolton, who had lured Dougie Freedman as manager from Crystal Palace, was a foregone conclusion.
‘It was quite bizarre,’ admitted Austin. ‘Chris and I are not best mates. I played against him for Southend and Tottenham and we’d seen each other on the development circuit over the last couple of years. We’d talk about football, and how we’d want to do it properly, given the chance. He left a development job at Ipswich, and we hadn’t spoken for three or four months when he called. I waited until I’d got the kids in bed that night before calling him back.
‘To be honest I’d been really looking to get out of Bolton. I was not enjoying it, and people I respected there had been topped. I didn’t want people to say there was a problem between Dougie and me, because there wasn’t, but I knew if I took another scouting job I’d be accused of sour grapes. Coaching is different. When Chris asked me to work with him there were no guarantees. He was a caretaker, but I believed in what we could do. I just thought that, even if it got me out on the training field for only a week or two, it was worth it.
‘It’s been a bit of an eye-opener. I have never worked in an environment like this before. There’s no running water or changing facilities at the training ground. The lads come to Meadow Lane, get changed, drive five miles, train, and then drive another five miles back to the ground in soaking wet kit before they can have a shower. It is what it is, I suppose. It has got me back on the horse. Let’s see where it takes us.’
His deadpan delivery disguised his excitement. Austin is not an expressive man, but I had become attuned to his earnestness. We had talked about the alchemy of the appointment process, and how the force of his convictions could unnerve a potential employer. I admired his relentlessness, his determination to allow hope to triumph over experience, but doubted whether his diligence would find due reward. I was wrong. The discomforts defined and inspired him:
‘I’ve had a really good response from the lads to my sessions. Quite a few of them got on really well with Keith Curle, so there was some hangover from that, but this is what I do. I’ll do the scouting stuff, anyway, as part of this job. I have tried to take everything I have learned over the past twenty months in there with me. I’ve realised sometimes people don’t want intensity. They merely want to understand what they are doing, and why.
‘After the first week my wife asked how it was going. I told her Chris reminded me of myself six or seven years ago. Very keen, very professional, very passionate. If he had a fault perhaps he talked too much. I have learned a lot about footballers, and their attention spans. You lose them in any meeting which lasts longer than twelve to fifteen minutes. Preparation is everything. At half-time, if Chris asks me to contribute, I am short, sharp and concise. I want them to work off a few points.
‘I go round to a few individuals and talk about simple things, like passing with a purpose, or strikers running beyond the back four. When you are signing players in League One or Two it is about mentality. They have a different outlook. There’s not much money about, but the good ones put everything into it. Some will try to mug you off, but you can recognise that and deal with it. We’ve got two months to get as many good results as we can. I’ll just throw myself into it, and see what comes around in the summer.’
Steve Jones had reached yet another crossroads. He was working on a monthly consultancy contract at Bristol City, his seventh club in 15 months, and had been promised a place on the shortlist for the head of recruitment’s role in a department remodelled in response to debts of £41 million. The need to slash a wage bill which had spiralled beyond £18 million, ruinous in the lower reaches of the Championship, preoccupied owner Steve Lansdown. His dissatisfaction was expressed tersely and with revealing candour:
‘In the past we have been plagued by a football hierarchy who want you to believe there is some form of black art to finding players and those secrets should never be shared. I suspect it is a means of protecting their position and trying to show their importance, but I am pleased to say that our recruitment policy has now moved into the twenty-first century. We have two people working full time on compiling the statistics and information on players, while we are establishing a team of scouts around the country to watch these and report back.’
Jones had been alerted by Richard Shaw, who was scouting on an ad hoc basis after being dismissed by Coventry, following a short spell as caretaker manager. The strategy had been set by the owners’ son, Jon, the club’s managing director. It survived the almost immediate sacking of manager Derek McInnes, and his replacement by Sean O’Driscoll. He was an exceptional coach, but a dour, taciturn man. Jones had to read his moods, and relate to his ambitions, while meeting the demands of a club in transition.
‘I’ve got a clean sheet of paper, and first dibs at the job. It is a big opportunity for me to get back in full time. I’ve worked through the lists, and it is clear some players have been nicking a living. I’ve got to help the club make the most of their assets. Twelve are out of contract in the summer; only four will be staying. Five of the other eight have already been told they’re going. It is a simple brief, but a difficult one: slash the wage bill, and find young players with sell-on potential.’
Jones found time to observe tribal custom, and successfully eased Steve Gritt into his old job, on a retainer at Birmingham City. He also employed Brian Owen, the cabbie who had been let go by Hibernian during the implosion of Scottish football in the aftermath of the Rangers scandal, on a part-time basis in London. Gary Penrice gave him leads in Portugal, with Belenenses, in La Liga, with Las Palmas, and Holland, with Ajax. A throwaway line, delivered on our visit to Forest Green – ‘some of the best scouts I’ve seen are the forty-pence-a-milers who are struggling for their lives’ – acquired sudden clarity.
‘I don’t pretend to know it all,’ said Jones, who was putting 5,000 miles a month on the clock of his old Mercedes. ‘They might end up giving the job to someone else. I’ve spoken to the owners’ son, who has told me to stop worrying about it, but there’s no back-up. I talked to my wife about things, before I gave it a go. This is my last chance. I am not going to mug myself off. It can be a horrible game, and if I get rolled, I’d rather become a plumber, or go van driving.’
The tone was familiar, valiant. I hoped for the best, feared the worst, and decided my journey, started that night at Staines Town, was coming to a close. Just enough light had been directed on the nooks and crannies of a shadowy world for attitudes to be struck and conclusions to be reached. Football scouts are an imperfect breed, but their instincts are sound. They are unfashionable, encouraged to believe in the myth of their built-in obsolescence, but have cojones and credibility. The best work at their craft, but don’t take themselves too seriously. They are strong-willed and built for the long haul.
I had been primed to amplify whispers about financial impropriety. Though there was the occasional unsubstantiated rumour about the relationship between a manager and a scout who was known, acidly, as ‘The Bagman’, his story did not belong here. Tales of sweeteners, of shady practices involving nameless agents and faceless players were simple to concoct, and impossible to disseminate, without funding the winter tans of m’learned friends. Bogeymen doubtlessly lurk under the bed, but let us leave them to the darkness.
Scouts are not stereotypical scallywags; they have a rare generosity of spirit. Jamie Johnson, Mel’s son, took my son, a sports coaching science graduate who had worked within football for two years, under his wing when he expressed an interest in technical scouting. The first lesson was of the futility of hiding behind the computer console: ‘You don’t see people then, and people talk. You know what we are like; we’re a bunch of old ladies who like a natter. People can’t help themselves. They want to tell you what
they are up to. That is the essence of our game.’
Technology has its uses in recruitment, but was being implemented blindly, often for its own sake. There was little scrutiny of its benefits, an assumption that, in isolation, it was infallible. Analytics will evolve, and eventually justify the inordinate faith placed in it, but the link between a scout’s optic nerve and his brain will never lose its value. You can’t create a love letter out of numbers, or express beauty in an algorithm. There’s no sensuality in a sine curve, or warmth in a heat map. The neuron boogie, which causes tiny hairs to elevate on the back of a scout’s neck, is a timeless tune.
It’s time to ’fess up. Scouts remind me of my own tribe.
Journalists become inured to the absurdities of an insanely competitive profession, but remain vulnerable to perceptions of progress. As a breed, we are being assailed by accountants, who relate hi-tech methods to low cost bases. Too many good men have been stripped of security and self-esteem because of financial expedience. Too many mistakes have been excused by advances in technological expertise. Those of us who remain in the trenches tend to care, even though we disguise our commitment with gallows humour and guttural laments for what we once had.
I came to identify with Mel Johnson, my guide and tutor. I had feared for him as his, and our, story unfolded; the interregnum between the sacking of Damien Comolli and the bedding down of the Brendan Rodgers regime was ominous. Johnson would have been forgiven for losing his faith, but he retained his professional perspective , and continued to do his job to the best of his ability, in difficult circumstances. He was not blind to its cost, nor unappreciative of its eccentricity:
The Nowhere Men: The Unknown Story of Football's True Talent Spotters Page 27