I believe, if my sources were right at the time, Hamilton never even had any of his imported players watched - EVER! Seemed cost effective at the time no doubt but not much of a policy
video scouting is the worst you can do. you could easily show a five minute clip of mark fotheringham doing his 'fozzy flick' and making a few neat passes, making him look a talent, but it won't tell you that he is in fact an inept footballer. fernado derveld and raymond de waard were two signings from the netherlands by hamilton and both were signed on the basis of videos. both were absolutely rubbish. people forget that we were a league one club three years ago and with that in mind, we still have a scouting system which is not at a decent premier league level - these things take time to implement.
They are the one's I was referring to. DeWaard, a 6 foot 7 inch left midfielder Why it never crossed his mind to try and use him like a Peter Crouch kind of striker I will never know, hell he could not have been any worse stuck in the box for crosses
Muzinic was signed by reputation alone by John Bond, who had to get a translator from UEA to shout instructions to him during the match, he never spoke a word of English. Hardly surprising he was a flop for Norwich, and he was the the record signing at the time; can't really see that happening now; There was the old quote by Justin Fashanu about we'd bought his milkman or his postie.
Foreign players represent far more value for money then signing players domestically. If you were to sign Tettey from a Championship side, I think clubs would be saying £6 million- ish. Far cheaper than we bought him, even with the scouting fees. Now we are in the Premier League we have to buy players of that standard, not sure we will find another David Fox for 50k or a Russell Martin because we are a Prem team. I think we've been scouting abroad the day we got into the Premier League, I honestly do, and we're now getting the sort of knowledge we can put to action.
How limited is it then? I am not saying we have loads of scouts going through every European league, I think we have no more than a handful.
a handful is right. now think about how big europe is. any little gems we find abroad will have to have been thoroughly researched which means that the people out there watching that player can't go to other games in that country the same time the player is playing, which instantly limits their awareness. honestly, norwich probably have one of the weakest continental scouting networks in the top flight. it costs a lot of money to send people out to watch football all year round. it will get better, but these things take time. logically, we are more likely to sign a player we know a lot about than one we don't so logically we are more likely to sign a player from at home than abroad. it doesn't mean, as some people seem to be suggesting, that they are against signing foreign players or are scared to, its just they haven't had the resources to be able to sift through the dross to find the gloss! there are some seriously **** players in europe but cos they have an exotic name, some people think they'd be better than someone who is british.
You appear to be making an assumption that we think a scout just jumps on a plane and watches them play in one game? You have an extensive knowledge of scouting players we all know that, but Jesus christ give us a bit of credit. It's a suicidal business strategy not to research your investments throughly in this case a footballer is an investment. My point is perhaps we should look at the foreign market, it's up to Chris Hughton at the end of the day I can merely give my opinion. As for the players mentioned they are good in their own right, but I don't want Swansea's seconds and don't want to sign a soon to be 29 year old Jimmy Bullard impersonator. I want us to make a proper investment someone who will become Holts successor.
Yeah I'm not quite so sure that a reliance on actually being at games is the same as what it used to be twenty years ago. I would imagine technology has vastly increased a scouts ability to observe games for preliminary viewings on players. I'm also not sure why the club are employing British scouts (if thats the case) as surely a French scout would know more about French football. I just assumed foreign scouts were used alot of the time as it seems the logical thing to do. There must be a tonne of scouts itching to work for Premiership clubs. It strikes me as being a rather half arsed way to do things, your paying more for someone who knows less. Pay the people who already know who the good players are. I don't really see the huge expense or why the lack of investment, just employ someone who lives in the country and if a scout is on £100,000 a year?? + expenses you've got a country covered for £300,000. You can save that easily on one player. No brainer to me, spend 2 million on foreign scouting a year to probably save twice that on transfer fees, wages, better players and sell ons. Tettey has probably doubled if not tripled his value already, I don't think anyone would be happy with selling him for less than 6 million for him at the moment.
I have to say that there's some very sound reasoning in your post carrabuh. I wonder who takes the credit for finding Tettey - as you say, I think he has been a total relevation and is exactly the type of player we needed if we are going to stay in this league.
If we stay up i say partner Tettey with Biglia, that would be another sound aquisition from across the waters
i think this discussion has got a little out of context which is probably my fault to be fair. i'm not suggesting for one minute that we won't be signing foreign players or that we don't have the infrastructure to find them in the first place. what i am saying is that we should not expect to see a 'foreign invasion' so to speak, at least not yet, because we haven't got the resources to find them at this stage. therefore, we can expect to see one or two moves in the foreign market, maybe even as soon as january and certainly next summer but these will have to be complimented with home-based footballers too simply because we know that market inside out and can move quickly to attain targets. just as a side note, there is no way the club spend £2m a year on scouting at the moment (of course i don't know that 100% but i can take an intelligent guess from what i know about how the club do these things) but the aim will be, providing we maintain premier league status, to bolster it towards getting a good number of contacts in many nations. top scouting is a very expensive thing to do in europe, especially to do it well which we need to with our limited resources for transfers/wages.
with respect to scouting abroad, it was reported on Radio Norfolk this morning that Bowkett had said that Hughton had recently been scouting at some obscure game in Belgium. Now that says two things, (a) we seriously have a lack of scouts abroad if Hughton is going or (b) we are seriously looking at someone from that league. You can make up your own conclusions either way on that one.
If the boss is there surely he is checking out wether he want to do a deal on someone who has been scouted?
