There is an arrogance in football recruitment that nobody talks about enough.
Too many clubs approach the transfer market like ordering a takeaway.
Open the menu.
Pick the striker.
Ring the club.
Agree a fee.
Wait for him to arrive.
Maybe throw in a winger while you’re there.
Football does not work like that.
The player might not want you.
His family might not want to move.
His agent might have three better offers.
The selling club might increase the price.
Another club might suddenly enter the bidding.
The selling club might fail to find a replacement.
The medical might uncover something.
The wage demands might change.
And while you have spent three weeks assuming Player A is coming, Players B, C and D have disappeared elsewhere.
Then deadline day arrives.
Everyone looks surprised.
Players are not products sitting on shelves.
The transfer market owes you nothing.
That is why recruitment departments exist.
Not to identify one player.
To make sure that when one route disappears, another is already open.
A Target Is Not A Recruitment Strategy
Clubs love talking about their “number one target”.
Fine.
I am more interested in number seven.
Anybody can identify Player A.
The quality of the recruitment operation is revealed when Player A says no.
A proper club should already have different routes.
A might be the £15 million permanent signing.
B a younger European player.
C a Premier League loan.
D somebody entering the final year of his contract.
E an experienced short-term option.
F a player from an undervalued market.
G the academy player you have deliberately prepared.
You do not intend to sign all seven.
You create seven routes because you understand you control almost none of the market.
If Player A disappears at 7pm and the recruitment team starts ringing agents asking who is available, you don’t have a recruitment strategy.
You have a telephone.
I Worked In That Gap
This was the part of football that always interested me when I was working around players, agents and clubs.
The gap between spotting a player and actually moving him.
Supporters understandably think recruitment begins with a question:
Is he good enough?
Inside a club there are another twenty questions.
Does the manager want him?
Does recruitment?
Who controls the budget?
Who can approve the fee?
Who is speaking to the agent?
Who is speaking to the club?
Has anybody checked whether the player actually wants to come?
How fast can the organisation make a decision when something changes?
That last question matters more than people realise.
Communication is recruitment.
You can have an extraordinary scouting database.
If the information takes three days to work its way through the organisation and your competitor makes the decision in three hours, the database becomes an expensive screensaver.
Football loves data.
Sometimes competitive advantage is simply having the right people answer the bloody phone.
Blackburn: The Case Study I Know Best
I have supported Blackburn Rovers for forty years.
Unfortunately, they continue to provide useful material.
Rovers’ deadline day this summer was particularly revealing.
Reo Hatate appeared to be heading towards a loan move to Blackburn and was travelling for a medical.
Then Burnley entered.
They agreed a permanent deal with Celtic worth around £6.5 million plus add-ons and Hatate ended up at Turf Moor instead.
That is not automatically a criticism of Blackburn.
Quite the opposite.
If Burnley wanted to turn a loan situation into a £6.5 million permanent transfer and Blackburn did not believe the economics worked, walk away.
Good recruitment sometimes means saying no.
The important question begins after the no.
Who was next?
Hatate gone.
Open the file.
Player B.
Already watched.
Already priced.
Agent already spoken to.
Salary expectations understood.
Manager already happy with the profile.
If B disappears, move to C.
Then D.
The whole point of recruitment planning is that the organisation does not have to invent the answer while the clock is running.
Blackburn cannot financially overpower the Championship.
That makes preparation more important, not less.
The India Question
This is also where Blackburn’s ownership structure deserves scrutiny.
Not because India itself is the problem.
It isn’t.
International companies successfully operate across continents every day.
The issue is decision-making distance.
Venky’s ownership sits thousands of miles from Ewood Park.
That creates a perfectly reasonable operational question:
How quickly can Blackburn Rovers make an important football decision?
I do not pretend to know every internal approval process.
But any club with geographically distant ownership has to make communication exceptionally good because the transfer market often works in hours, not board-meeting cycles.
An opportunity appears at lunchtime.
Another club enters at three.
The agent wants an answer by five.
If a football decision has to travel through multiple layers before somebody can say yes or no, friction becomes a competitive disadvantage.
Distance does not kill transfers.
Delay does.
From Ronaldinho To Now
The historical contrast is almost comic.
When Venky’s arrived, Blackburn were publicly pursuing Ronaldinho.
The club’s owners confirmed a bid of around £6.2 million for the former Barcelona and Brazil superstar, with reports at the time also describing a proposed contract worth around £130,000 a week.
Ronaldinho.
World Cup winner.
Ballon d’Or winner.
Barcelona icon.
Sixteen years later, you could probably land prime Ronaldinho at Manchester Airport at breakfast with his boots, passport and agent beside him and I would still be checking my phone at 10.58pm.
The joke is not that Blackburn should be signing Ronaldinho now.
Obviously not.
The point is simpler.
Sixteen years is enough time to build an outstanding transfer process.
Agents are not new.
Deadline day is not new.
Competing bids are not new.
Players changing their minds are not new.
If the same types of problems keep creating emergencies, eventually they stop being unfortunate events.
They become operational weaknesses.
If You Have Less Money, You Need More Information
This is why limited budgets cannot explain everything.
Money matters enormously.
Blackburn cannot behave like Manchester City.
Most clubs cannot.
But if you have less money, intelligence becomes more valuable.
If you cannot buy the obvious £15 million Championship midfielder, your job is to find him before everybody believes he is worth £15 million.
Belgium.
Scandinavia.
Austria.
Poland.
Croatia.
MLS.
South America.
Relegated clubs.
Expiring contracts.
Premier League academy graduates.
Players blocked by a new signing.
Footballers whose underlying performance is better than their reputation.
Players whose market value has temporarily fallen below their ability.
Information is capital.
Rich clubs can occasionally purchase their way out of poor planning.
Poorer clubs have to outthink it.
Everton: The Same Problem With More Money
Everton provide the Premier League version.
Their summer ended with David Moyes publicly describing the squad as extremely small after the club lost attacking players and failed to complete the late move for Folarin Balogun.
The Balogun transfer collapsed after concerns emerged during his medical.
Everton were subsequently left with only 19 players on their submitted senior Premier League squad list, including three goalkeepers. That means just 16 senior outfield players on the registered list.
That is the useful number.
Because it removes some of the noise around luck.
A player failing a medical is unfortunate.
Building a situation where one failed transfer leaves you with 16 registered senior outfield players is different.
That is exposure.
Moyes himself acknowledged the shortage and questioned whether academy players would be ready to fill the gaps.
Again, I am less interested in asking why Balogun did not sign.
Deals collapse.
I want to know why the organisation became so dependent on Balogun signing.
If one medical can materially alter your squad depth for four months, the medical is not the root problem.
The dependency is.
Stop Recruiting For Managers
There is another expensive habit running through modern football.
Clubs recruit for managers rather than recruiting for themselves.
Manager A arrives.
He wants direct football.
Buy six players.
Manager A gets sacked.
Manager B wants possession.
Half the squad suddenly “doesn’t fit”.
Spend again.
Manager B leaves.
Manager C wants aggressive pressing.
Another rebuild.
Then the board announces there isn’t much money available.
Of course there isn’t.
You have bought three different football teams.
Manchester United’s different managerial eras provide the most obvious modern warning.
Different coaches brought different tactical priorities and different recruitment preferences.
The result is that a footballer considered essential under one regime can quickly become surplus under the next.
That is not merely a tactical failure.
It is capital destruction.
The Temporary Employee Shouldn’t Define The Five-Year Asset
Managers matter enormously.
But they are temporary.
A modern manager might survive eighteen months or two years.
A footballer can be given a five-year contract.
Yet clubs routinely allow the person with the shortest expected lifespan in the organisation to heavily influence its longest financial commitments.
Before approving a major signing, somebody above the manager should ask:
Would we still want this player if we changed manager tomorrow?
If the answer is no, think carefully.
The club should establish the football principles.
Recruitment identifies players compatible with them.
The academy develops towards them.
Then managers are appointed who broadly fit those principles.
A change of manager should be an evolution.
Not an archaeological excavation of four previous regimes.
Injuries Are Not A Strategy
Football’s favourite explanation comes next.
“We’ve been unlucky with injuries.”
Sometimes clubs genuinely are.
A freak cluster of serious injuries can damage anyone.
But injuries also expose poor construction.
If losing one centre-back destroys the defence, ask why.
If one striker injury removes the entire attacking structure, ask why.
If two midfield injuries force the whole system to change because there is no credible alternative, ask why.
Footballers get injured.
They also get suspended.
Lose form.
Need rest.
Get sold.
Go on international duty.
None of this is revolutionary information.
Squad planning should create overlapping solutions.
A centre-back who can cover full-back.
A six who can drop into defence.
A forward who can play centrally or wide.
A young player being deliberately prepared.
You do not necessarily need two expensive specialists in every position.
You need enough flexibility that one predictable event does not become an organisational crisis.
Academy Pathway Or Emergency Labour?
Academies are particularly convenient when recruitment goes wrong.
A club fails to fill two positions.
An 18-year-old suddenly appears on the bench.
Then everybody talks about the club’s commitment to youth.
Sometimes the player deserves the chance.
Excellent.
But there is a difference between a pathway and a hole.
A pathway involves first-team training.
Planned minutes.
Cup games.
Physical preparation.
Loans where appropriate.
Gradually increasing responsibility.
A hole is:
“The senior player is injured and we didn’t sign anyone. Fetch the lad from the U21s.”
That isn’t a development strategy.
That is an HR emergency wearing shin pads.
And when the teenager struggles, everybody asks whether he is ready.
Perhaps the better question is why he suddenly needed to be.
This Is What Proper Contingency Planning Looks Like
Football clubs make recruitment sound more complicated than it needs to be.
Imagine your starting striker tears his ACL in training on Tuesday morning.
At a reactive club:
Tuesday afternoon: internal meeting.
Wednesday: manager gives recruitment some names.
Thursday: agents are contacted.
Friday: club discovers two targets are unavailable.
Weekend: another target plays and his price rises.
Monday: newspaper reports club is “exploring the market”.
Two weeks gone.
At a prepared club:
Tuesday, 10:15am: diagnosis confirmed.
10:30am: striker succession file opened.
Three realistic replacements already ranked by tactical fit, price and availability.
11:00am: sporting director speaks to the manager and selects the order.
11:30am: first agent contacted.
12:00pm: selling club contacted.
If Player A is unavailable, Player B gets the next call.
The scouting happened months ago.
The crisis only triggers the process.
That is what planning buys you.
Time.
Build A Live Succession Map
Every important position should have one.
Not three famous names on a spreadsheet.
A live market.
For the centre-forward role, I would want:
Premium target.
Realistic permanent target.
Loan.
Expiring contract.
Development player.
Emerging-market option.
Player at a relegated club.
Player blocked at a larger club.
Experienced short-term option.
Academy successor.
And alongside each one:
Price.
Likely wages.
Contract length.
Availability.
Injury history.
Playing style.
Physical profile.
Character.
Agent.
Resale potential.
The point is not bureaucracy.
The point is speed.
When circumstances change, you do not begin scouting.
You begin deciding.
Recruitment Should Run 365 Days A Year
The transfer window creates a strange illusion that recruitment begins when the window opens.
It should not.
The window is when registrations happen.
Recruitment never closes.
September should begin January planning.
January should already inform the following summer.
You should know:
Who is entering the final year of a contract?
Which club may need to sell?
Which player has fallen out with his manager?
Which academy graduate needs senior football?
Which relegated club has a wage problem?
Which new signing has blocked somebody else’s pathway?
Which player is producing better numbers than the market realises?
The window should be where months of information become decisions.
Not where scouting begins.
Deadline Day Should Be Boring
Broadcasters love deadline day.
Countdown clocks.
Reporters outside training grounds.
Agents disappearing through side doors.
Blacked-out cars.
People standing in car parks claiming to know who is in them.
Wonderful television.
Not necessarily wonderful management.
A well-run club should want deadline day to be relatively boring.
An unexpected opportunity might appear.
Fine.
A selling club might finally move on price.
Fine.
A complicated deal might need the deadline.
Fine.
But if your recruitment department is still trying to fill four known positions at 9.30pm, that is not excitement.
It is evidence.
The problem didn’t begin at 9.30pm.
It began months earlier.
Recruitment Departments Should Be Professionally Paranoid
This is how I would want them thinking.
What if the striker says no?
What if his club adds £5 million?
What if another bidder appears?
What if our centre-half gets injured?
What if the manager is gone by Christmas?
What if we unexpectedly get promoted?
What if we are relegated?
What if our best player receives an offer we cannot refuse?
What if the academy prospect isn’t ready?
Good.
Now build the answer before the question arrives.
The best sporting directors are not fortune tellers.
They don’t predict every event.
They build enough optionality that they don’t need to.
The Market Owes You Nothing
That is the arrogance football needs to lose.
Identifying a player does not give you any entitlement to sign him.
The transfer market is not Amazon.
It isn’t Deliveroo.
You don’t click:
CENTRE-FORWARD
6ft 2
18 goals
Championship experience
£7.5 million
and receive a notification:
Your striker is five stops away.
The player has choices.
His agent has choices.
The selling club has choices.
Your competitors have choices.
So stop blaming injuries for exposing squads that were already thin.
Stop describing predictable transfer complications as extraordinary events.
Stop buying players exclusively for managers who may be gone before the contract is halfway through.
Stop throwing academy kids into holes and calling it a pathway.
Stop reaching deadline day with work you knew needed doing in June.
And stop telling supporters Player A got away.
I want to know who Player B was.
Then C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
Plan A tells me what you wanted.
Plans B to G tell me whether you knew what you were doing.
Football is unpredictable.
That is precisely why planning exists.