Former Manchester City chief reveals QPR plans By Paul Warburton Jun 22 2012 QPR last night launched the revolutionary scouting system that brought the Premier League title to Manchester City. New technical director Mike Rigg has been tasked with making sure lightning strikes twice when he hires up to 100 coaches and others to find a production line of players that lasts for the next three decades at least. The man lured to west London from City unveiled the plan that sees a top to bottom clean sweep of the existing system at Loftus Road. A one-off glimpse at Riggâs laptop showed 45 pages of information on just one former City target that detailed everything from where he shopped to whether or not he liked tennis. But the simple premise of Riggâs revolution is to leave QPR the plan, essentially a database in four sections, long after he and boss Mark Hughes have left. He said: "You should find players and buy them on the back of a great depth of due diligence. "I would say 90 per cent of clubs pay lip service to that. Itâs sloppy scouting. "I have come here to put in place a structure which, regardless of whether Iâm here in the future, will carry on for the next 15 or 20 years." Riggâs four tiers start with 10-year-olds at QPR followed by academy hopefuls leading to those just beyond the first team before arriving at the Premier League stars at the top. Each layer is tightly cross-referenced with coaching, development and sports science monitoring â and the crucial ingredient is that everything about everyone gets recorded. Rigg added Why other clubs donât do this I have no idea. "I should have walked into QPR and known what our target list was, but there was no structure. How can a club like QPR not have an identification, recruitment and development strategy? "Iâm currently doing an audit of what we need in the way of extra people. But if I can have the entire programme in place by the end of next season, then maybe three years from now, we can talk about how successful it has been." Read More http://www.fulhamchronicle.co.uk/london-qpr/2012/06/22/82029-31234863/?#ixzz1yVVH59Ca
Blimey. The selection criteria, science monitoring and profiling of the youngsters sounds like Hitlers Nazi programme for the master race. This is serious business. Rangers will have a team of superheroes one day. One question though. If the Man City academy programme is so brilliant, why are they still shelling out £20m plus on a player? I don't see them bringing many youngsters through.
I think it's because the owners didn't want to wait for silverware and can afford not to. And once you have essentially 2 world class starting 11 s in your squad, it's very difficult for young talent to break in. If they haven't done in a couple of years, they have obviously wasted their money.
Because they can. Same reason why the scum do the same. We wont be under the same pressure to get a trophy every season so we can look at the long term, rather than just next season like those clubs do.
Blimey! Makes a difference to Paladini picking up the phone to another agent or manager saying "Got anyone going spare?" With this level of scrutiny and due diligence I hope the future is bright. Shame it wasn't in place for Sparky to refer to when we signed AJ, Nelson and Dyer! I know where AJ gets his kebabs from, did that show up in his profile?
Yep, it's a good point. I've often wondered why Rigg would want to leave such a plum job at Citeh, but I think that therein lies the answer. It must've been frustrating for him to build a whole youth development and scouting system, but knowing that any talent they develop has got little to no chance of breaking into the first team anytime soon. At QPR the short-term expectation are very different, and hopefully those lower pressures offer a better chance to bring through home grown players. Anyway, it all souunds good to me. Onwards and Upwards!
They've got a lot of work to do to set up such a vast network while doing the short-term bits necessary to keep us in this league (both equally crucial parts of the plan IMO). I do wonder what the break even point is in terms of players coming through/sold compared to simply buying them because the outlay is so significant. Nobody can doubt the commitment of building a 100-strong team for the future. I am completely impressed and completely intrigued at the same time.
So do I Eamon! When it was for the people? but now , only the rich. I love the rich but our lovely game has gone down the tubes!!
The patented ''watch the best teams and throw billions of £'s at them in order to snare their most gifted players''. I thought Abramovich introduced that to these shores.
While Rigg may turn out to be the perfect Chief Scout it is highly dubious to laud him on the basis of what's been achieved at City. Throwing a £billion or so at attracting the biggest names in the world game does not exactly require in depth scouting or the building of an effective academy. Perhaps he sees QPR as the opportunity to actually build something from the bottom up this time.
