Exclusive: Lee Johnson gives an insight into how Bristol City evaluate new signings The Robins' head coach has lifted the lid on the work that goes into assessing potential new recruits Bristol City head coach Lee Johnson has shed some light on how the Robins look for new players. In a special interview with the Bristol Post - out on 19 July - the former Barnsley and Oldham boss talked about how it's possible to check up on new targets via their activity on Twitter. He also conceded that such methods were used to examine whether Famara Diedhiou and Eros Pisano were of the right profile for City to target the players. "You can build up a very good profile of somebody very quickly now on social media. You can go straight to Twitter you can go to Instagram," he said. "You can see how players interact with the fans, you can see the type of humour that they have, you can see what’s important to them in their lives. "Like I’ve said before, we want to bring great people into Bristol City not just great footballers. "It definitely is important in building up a profile and you can find out various things as a coach. What motivates players, who their favourite players are - because that's always a reference point to get that buy-in to maybe get something extra out of them on the training pitch," revealed Johnson. The analysis of social media is believed to be just one of the ways that the clubs uses to examine a player's character and motivations. "We'll use any means we can because the truth is we haven't really got any reason not to. "We've got enough staff to do the due diligence so we do everything we can." So was this type of research used to check up on new signings Eros Pisano and Famara Diedhiou during the summer? "Yeah absolutely - we had to get Eros to delete about 15 tweets so you lot didn't catch him. He's quite a character," said Johnson. The head coach went on to explain that he didn't get the chance to watch any of the international youth tournaments held across the summer because he was too busy scouting for new City players. "My summer was very much based on watching potential Bristol City players of the future, whether that be our loan players being out, and catching up on the bits that I missed during the intensity of the season, or potential recruitment targets and players that we're potentially narrowing down and making an offer for. "Most of my time was spent into that laptop watching games but also out and abroad live watching bits and bobs, particularly towards the end of May when the foreign leagues were still going." Johnson has already revealed about how he makes a presentation to potential new recruits about how he will improve them as a player, as was the case when landing the signing of Famara Diedhiou. The above excerpt is part of an exclusive interview Lee Johnson gave to the Bristol Post. See the full interview – the real Lee Johnson – from Wednesday 19 July. http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/exclusive-lee-johnson-gives-insight-202021
So basically we are signing players depending how they use social media We should be signing players for what they do on the pitch.
No Read what he just said you tit. If we're looking at the players social media it clearly means we are interested. All he said was they get an idea of the personality of the guy, which is just that extra bit of information that wasn't available 10 years ago. Stop taking swipes at the bloke all the time. What he's just said is actually clever research into potential signings.
This makes the Tomlin saga even more interesting. For any manager - not just LJ - Tomlin's social media posts profile him as a managers nightmare.
Employers are known to use it- If I saw a candidate effing and so on I might think the same- That said, if you looked at my facebook profile lately, you would think that all I do is drink Mythos and Cocktails as I did for 2 weeks in Greece- Now its back to the occasional red wine. Its all PART of due diligence and given some of our errors in the past, then thorough DD is good practice
All of this is part of modern life and thinking, that is the way it is and you can't blame people for using all information to their own advantage but this statement made me think, if they have all of this staff doing due dilligence what has happened to our scouting network? "We've got enough staff to do the due diligence so we do everything we can." I may be out of touch but I have not heard a murmur.
It's not just footballers that are assessed via socail media, this happens in the vast majority of big companies these days. Whenever I walk through our HR area the agents there are always checking job applicants against their social merofiles such as FB, Linkedin etc.
Thank **** you never wanted to be a footballer in this day and age then But like others say, social media is being watched all the time for recruitment. I know my wife who is a HR director always searches for people prior to being interviewed.