Callum wrote:You need a balance between old-school scouting, data analysis, and a contacts-based approach. I don't think any club can go all in on one and be successful. Given that our scouting-led approach has resulted us singing the likes of Martinelli, and our agents-led one has resulted in Luiz and Cedric, I'm incredibly sceptical about this move. Especially when we seem to be buying Joorabchian's clients at a stupid rate.
At least now we know who to blame or credit if this fails or if it works. Ultimately we need to "outsmart the market", as Raul famously said, and that seems so much harder without a proper scouting network who can identify young talents before the bigger, richer clubs do. It seems instead that we'll just be taking on their cast offs who want one final big contract.
You can find young talent with statistics, and I don't mean just looking at numbers, I mean highly advanced algorithms that can predict certain things about a player. Like I said, it's being done in baseball. However, baseball is a very statistics driven sport, so it's possible it won't work as well in football.
But also like I said, I agree a healthy balance is needed.