UK Edition
Meet the sporting directors: the men transforming British football
It takes just a cursory glance at both the Premier League and Championship table to understand why Arsenal – once themselves a benchmark for best practice – are reviewing the whole model upon which past successes were founded.
The ability to regularly out-perform his wage spend has been the outstanding feature of Arsene Wenger’s 21-year tenure but, as Arsenal now actively explore candidates for a sporting director role, impetus has been provided by those clubs who operate quite differently and are themselves increasingly punching above their weight.
You could, for example, select an entire England team just now from players who have been developed through structures and principles that were influenced by Paul Mitchell – who has recently left his job as head of recruitment and analysis at Spurs – and then executed on the training ground by Mauricio Pochettino and his successors at Southampton.
Their successes are inspiring a change that is stretching through the entire English football pyramid, with the days of an old-school managerial figure largely extinct and whole departments now led by staff who provide the basis for off-field continuity.
One shining example in the Championship is Brighton and Hove Albion who, under the direction of chairman Tony Bloom and chief executive Paul Barber, stand on the brink of joining the Premier League.
While striking that a quarter of the 92 professional clubs have changed manager in the past 150 days, the paradox is that there might actually be more off-field stability than ever. Southampton, for example, are on their fourth manager in five years but disruptions have been minimal. Executive director Les Reed sets the wider culture and, working in close consultation with director of scouting and recruitment Ross Wilson, the clubs have seamlessly progressed thanks to the foundations of a consistent philosophy.
According to Stewart King, a senior consultant at recruitment company SRi, football’s fundamental shift is in how the intellectual property now rests with clubs rather than a manager or chief scout. Decisions are collaborative and processes around each signing are more objective. The manager is still intrinsically involved in recruitment but most heavily focussed on day-to-day coaching.
Increasingly, it is also the sporting directors or heads of recruitment who are themselves influencing managerial appointments according to principles and analysis that frame their player identification. “There is a shift from clubs appointing people they know to searching globally for the best,” says King. The availability of data and every conceivable statistic has also been transformative, although those clubs with most success invariably only use this is an added layer to traditional scouting.
Southampton largely focus on six countries and everything is guided by how they want to play.
Sadio Mane, for example, came from an unlikely route of the Austrian Bundesliga partly because of an awareness that his manager at Red Bull Salzburg, Roger Schmidt, also played a high pressing game. At Tottenham, Pochettino and Mitchell implemented similar core principles. They wanted the squad to be smaller and leaner – hence the transformative clear-out of players in 2015 – but also multifunctional and physically robust.
A hallmark of recent signings is not just how they can play their high pressing game but how people like Eric Dier, Dele Alli and Son-Heung Min can operate in different positions. The rationale for signings is often deeper than meets the eye. At Spurs and Southampton, enormous thought is given to not blocking pathways for their best academy players.
One of the most astute signings in modern European football must be Alli – who Mitchell knew well from his time at Milton Keynes Dons – but one of the key considerations was still whether the development of Harry Winks or Josh Onomah would be stifled.
The most eye-catching January signing was Manolo Gabbiadini at Southampton and, while it might have appeared to be opportunistically completed on deadline day, Wilson and his team had actually been tracking him for over two years. They already had a detailed view of how he could play as the main striker rather than in the wider positions he had often featured at Napoli.
Southampton’s planning extends over the next three transfer windows and a constantly modified version of their famous ‘Black Box’ remains key to recruitment. It was first devised by Mitchell, who charged a software company with producing a bespoke programme that would allow the club to assess players objectively.
The Black Box was then installed in a training ground room that looks like something out of the Starship Enterprise and, for recruitment staff, just walking into that space is said to feel akin to crossing the white line as a player.
Traditional scouting remains highly valued. Stoke City, for example, have impressively evolved from the successful Tony Pulis era and modified their structure over the last five years to include technical director Mark Cartwright. Data and video clips always form part of the analysis but he is acutely conscious of their limitations.
“We prefer to scout and then use the data to back up what we’ve seen,” explains Cartwright. “You get a much bigger picture watching live. You see what they do off the ball, how they carry themselves, what they are like if they are losing 1-0. Data doesn’t tell you about character.”
Huge emphasis is also placed on this internal squad dynamic at Brighton, where the obvious togetherness has been evident not just in results but the spontaneous show of solidarity to Anthony Knockaert when he lost his father earlier in the season.
Paul Winstanley is the club’s head of recruitment and analysis and says that scouting focuses beyond the obvious to how a player warms up, how they might celebrate a goal and who they interact with. They will also consider how they behave on social media, their family background, off-field habits and broader interests, motivations and influences.
“The last few years have been about building a core group who want to fight for each other and go to the next level,” says Winstanley. “We have to protect those dynamics and the environment that has been built. It is not about individuals but the team and that culture has been clearly set by the chairman, chief executive and manager (Chris Hughton).”
The wider direction of travel is clear and, as well as Arsenal, Manchester United surely must address their faltering recent recruitment. Indeed, having set the standards that others followed at the height of the Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson era, these two original giants of the Premier League era can now learn from the likes of Tottenham, Southampton, Stoke and Brighton.