The club has shut down reliance on agents due to inefficiency, finding only one in 100 suggestions beneficial. Recruitment involves selecting top targets, assessing squad balance, and setting a budget for fees and salaries. When selling players, negotiations depend on the buyer, focusing on player happiness. The club aims for quick transitions between agreement and medical checks to mitigate risks. Scouts now serve as secondary sources for transfers, with data teams increasingly leading player identification efforts, emphasizing the importance of fit over current performance.
The whole system is lubricated by agents: how they work and how they make things work. At my club, we have closed the door to that now.
Sometimes you're miles out and the other owner simply won't sell. So you move on. When we're selling a player we don't want to lose, we negotiate depending on the interested club.
For me, the worst period of a transfer deal is the time between everything being agreed and the medical. Our club will never change the terms once a deal has been agreed.
Increasingly, the identification stage is being carried out by the data team at a lot of clubs, which is a big development in recent years.
Collection
[
|
...
]