Scouting (or the role of the head scouting in particular) isn't just about finding players though, it's about making the final judgement on whether or not they're worth signing. We've read various stories how the likes of Greizmann, Kante and van Dijk were allowed to slip through the net due to either a lack of conviction or poor judgement from the scouting team.
Replacing Sanchez and/or Ozil - What AMs should we target?
I'm 100% sure that decision would be up to the manager, especially with high profile players like Griezmann et al. What you call "finding players" includes the final verdict by the head scout as well, the actual decision is still with the manager though - depending on the relative cost the latter will give more or less emphasis to the scout's report
Yeah of course, but the level of influence of the scouts judgement, combined with the quality of the judgement, is what I hope will improve significantly. The reasons behind his falling out at Dortmund is actually what gives me some of that hope.
Mind you, Wenger's recent comments in relation to Sven don't sound particularly positive and knowing how stubborn he is you wonder if he may actually put in more resistance to signings out of spite.
To be fair to Wenger I'm pretty sure I've read that he was keen on both Griezman and Kante, but every time he asked about them the scouts kept reassuring him that they weren't good players. He should have trusted in his initial judgment maybe, but the whole point of scouts is to collect more information about targets in order to get these calls right. We clearly don't have good scouts anymore. There have been too many issues like this. We sign the players we shouldn't have and never end up pulling the trigger for the ones who turn out great. We're not a one-man project, contrary to popular belief. We're an organisation tha is failing on multiple fronts.
If Sven really is as good as people say I think Wenger will be positively surprised and warm up to him quickly. There have been plenty of indications that he was frustrated with our scouting the way it was during Rowley's latter years.
I'm not sure if that's true Klaus. He scouts Danny fucking Welbeck every day in training and still gives him minutes whenever he can
Regarding the Griezmann story - if as the NYT article states some baseball cunt with an Excel spreadsheet convinced him that he's no good then it's Wenger's judgment on who to trust that needs checking. I don't buy the story anyways, Griezmann was definitely on Wenger's radar before we bought statDNA and he's actually not one of those where I'd blame him - yes we definitely should have gotten him even before waiving Vela's clause but he wouldn't have developed into the central player he has become today.
Wenger identifying talent elsewhere is not the issue, he's obsessed with football and will always be. His issue is acting on it - forget the next Dembele Wenger knew about the current one and didn't move a finger for whatever reason
Do you not think he may have acted upon Dembele if he had someone like Sven, both with the personality and profile, insisting on his value?
No of us can really answer that question, but I get the impression Rowley and co would shy away from putting their reputation on the line to get a player signed. I certainly can't imagine them knocking on Wenger's door and saying we NEED to sign player x in the same manner that Sven did with Oliver Torres.
I think it's the wrong question. Rowley and his colleagues might be shit but shouldn't Wenger look to replace them in that case? Not trying to absolve everyone else but if you're given free reign that also means you need to look for support wherever it's needed and available. His comments on Mislintats appointment definitely don't give the impression he's welcoming his help
Also Dembele is a good example - you didn't need a scout to know that this kid was special. People seriously compared him to Cristiano in the wishlist thread when he just broke through at Rennes. There's no way Wenger after seeing him play needed someone else to corroborate his assessment, he didn't sign him for whatever reason but it's certainly not because he was left unconvinced by his quality
I'm not trying to absolve anyone either. My suspicion is that a big part of the issue in recent seasons has been our bloated squad and Wenger's reluctance or lack of ruthlessness to shift them on in favour of new blood. A valid argument here is that Wenger should be moved on if that is the case. Never the less, it still may also be true that if he had someone to smack him around the head and say 'you can't let this kid pass because of Oxlade fucking Chamberlain and Danny fucking Welbeck', we may have seen decisions from Wenger that were a little more ruthless.
On the kids, it might not be that simple. If our scouting network has not been that strong, then it really could be that on average we are seeing the big name kids much later than everyone else. So by the time we see a kid like a Dembele or an Mbappe, it could be that we are quite late to the party and the other guys already have their claws in them. As Jones says, these guys are established early. You hear stories of them doing trials with the big teams at age 14 and already being posited as the next Ronaldo, Claudius or Neymar.
I doubt our previously weak scouting network spots these players first in the past. And even if they do spot them first, I then doubt that our previously week deal team (Dick) is spending the requisite time wining and dining the families and dropping the necessary brown paper bags to ensure the kids move to London. You’re dealing with kids - this is high touch stuff. It’s not just about going to games in bumblefucksomewhere and saying I saw Mamadou, sign him. You either need to uproot his whole family or give them assurances which might include seeing to it that Mamadou’s hapless brother also gets a deal, and so forth.
We missed out an entire generation of top quality players from France. Not when their talent was already clear to the World but well before that. Either our scouts simply didn't see what was good about them early or Wenger's connections just stopped calling him.
Or, as goon implies and I tend to agree, Wenger was just too faithful to his players and probably his British core project.
Agree overall Claude but there's a differentiation here. Mbappe for one is so outrageously talented that everyone and their mother knew about him before he broke through; not knocking Wenger for not signing him because the boy had the world at his feet from the outset and Wenger did in fact try what you proposed, just like he did 10 years ago and ripped Ramsey out of Fungus' claws
Dembele on the other hand had a relatively low profile - when I first heard of him he had a handful of league games played and as many insane performances, he wasn't a big commodity as his Parisian compatriot. Absolutely no excuse there not to get in there before Dortmund have and to lure him this way
I don't think people realise how many options these young players have. Dembele probably had 50+ offers and picked Dortmund to develop.
scouting networks are pretty complex, at least in most sports they are. for arsenal, im pretty sure that it works like this:
local scout (assigned to cover one country, or one area) goes and sees a player multiple times. he writes up a report each time. those reports get sent to the person responsible for managing him, like a european scout manager. that person reads all the reports and then writes up a summary that goes to the head of scouting. that regional person probably goes and sees the player a few times as well, and im sure our head of scouting sees the player in person as well. then, the head of scouting prepares the final report on the player and gives it to wenger/gazidis. im sure the authority with which they write their report, and their track record, colors the opinion of wenger.
if our scouts had generated tons of rave reviews about kante while he was in france, and everyone in the scouting network had urged wenger to sign him, but wenger did not go through with it, then that is on wenger and no one else. given what we've read about the arsenal setup, wenger still has the final say on everything. the scouts could have written that player X is the next pele, but if wenger doesn't want the player, there is nothing to be done about it. this also ties in to the bigger conversation about who at the club should be making the final determination on whether or not to buy player X. is it the manager's job to also determine which players are bought and sold? you can argue yes, it is, because the manager knows what system he wants to play and what types of players fit into that system. on the other hand, at most clubs, managers dont stay for 25 years, and the system will change 15 times in 25 years, so it is best to sign the best talent and worry about how everything fits later. it seems we've passed up a ton of world class talent in the last 10 years, and in most cases, it wasnt because of money. it was because, for some reason, we were not on top of the situation. either our scouts did not do their work appropriately, wenger did not make the right decision, or the board rejected the signing due to financial reasons. i suspect it is more option 2 instead of 1 or 3.
speedy wrote:I don't think people realise how many options these young players have. Dembele probably had 50+ offers and picked Dortmund to develop.
You think 50+ clubs made an offer that Rennes accepted?
Quincy Abeyie wrote:speedy wrote:I don't think people realise how many options these young players have. Dembele probably had 50+ offers and picked Dortmund to develop.
You think 50+ clubs made an offer that Rennes accepted?
Clubs ring the agent of the player they're interested in. And let them know they want the player. And see how they feel about a move. Even completely unrealistic clubs that couldnt hope to afford eve half the wage demands still desperately chance their arm. Do you really think yous find the players first?
It doesn’t take 50 clubs. It takes one Chelsea stockpiling 100 players and beating you to the best kids every time. Now add, a few other of the top dozen or so clubs in Europe seriously scouting for talent, particularly those mid-tier clubs who recognize value in flipping players (e.g., Dortmund), then we are in deep shit. It takes being a little bit slower to always lose out.
On the Mbappe one, Jones, I suspect that, unlike Ramsey, when Wenger was making his bids these last two summers, it was too late. He was seriously already being courted by Real, PSG, United etc these last two summers. We would have to gone completely out of our comfort zone last year to make something happen there. I do think that from your perspective it wasn’t too late, but given the way this club thinks the opportunity was gone, we don’t go the extra mile, and we needed to do so in 2016 to seal this deal.
speedy wrote:I don't think people realise how many options these young players have. Dembele probably had 50+ offers and picked Dortmund to develop.
Aren't we supposed to be one of those clubs who convince young players they can develop here too though? Why can't we develop players like Dembele instead of Chamberlain and Elnenys.
Re Griezmann, that seemed to be on Wenger for delaying the purchase, he's always too late and slow to act, over complicates things. Even with his subs. Having said that I don't think Griezmann would be the player he is today under Wenger, so he probably did Griezmann a favour.
in my opinion, wenger should not be involved in the final decision on a player, in terms of their valuation.
wenger (or whoever the next manager is) should tell the management team "i need a striker, i want someone who is at least 6ft tall who can operate as a lone striker"....then, the scouting team should find the best version of that player available, and then our transfer person needs to negotiate the fee and contract with the player. it shouldnt work the other way, where we go and find players and then wenger says "no, i dont want him" or "no, £10m is too much, we should only pay £9m at most"....
you obviously dont want to force a bunch of players onto the manager who don't fit his system. but you cant let the manager derail the entire recruitment strategy for the club.
Qwiss! wrote:speedy wrote:I don't think people realise how many options these young players have. Dembele probably had 50+ offers and picked Dortmund to develop.
Aren't we supposed to be one of those clubs who convince young players they can develop here too though? Why can't we develop players like Dembele instead of Chamberlain and Elnenys.
Players have a lot of competition here now, and are under massive pressure. Even leaders like xhaka have struggled for form. Big negative atmosphere and a reputation for being difficult negotiators all play against us. If I was young and good at football I'd sign for Dortmund before I'd sign for arsenal. It's a better chance to club for a younger player.
We stopped being able to develop as many players when the competition got tougher for top four and the youngsters stopped coming here. Spurs were happy to spend a couple of years training a player same with Liverpool. Players have come out and said they picked spurs over us and that'll be why. They pay less wages wise. But players want that stepping stone to develop.