The latest version of Football Manager seems to support Comolli's claims that the club currently has the grand total of three scouts. Three scouts. Three. Now, this could merely be pointing to Comolli's scouting knowledge actually being based off playing FM games rather than real life, which would explain some of the transfers he signed off on for Spurs and Liverpool, but on the other hand it does have to be said that our key signings since the time Comolli arrived were players identified by the manager (i.e. Berbatov, Parker, the failed bids for Moutinho and Willian), by Levy (Modric, VDV, Vertonghen), were known commodities (Soldado), or other clubs were bidding for them (Bale, Sigurdsson, Chiriches) - with Sandro being the only real exception, as Ian Broomfield unearthed him.
That could well be true and he was one of Nicholson's key signings. I note that he also signed a player from West Ham in the early 60s who was supposed to be Blanchflower's replacement, John Smith I think, and he was barely heard of again. I've racked my brains to come up with managers who repeatedly made good signings (even 60% of the time) and can't really come up with any. Comolli had a very good record if you compare sale value with purchase value and a pretty good one based on what the players achieved when they were with us. A team of Comolli signings would slaughter a team of Redknapp's signings whoever was the coach!
Comolli claims it's Freund, Dave Magrone and Mick Brown. If Broomfield is back at the club, that makes it four - or keeps the number at three, depending on whether you consider Freund a scout or not.
I am not going to reveal much about the current scouting situation, but I will confirm the scouting network is currently undergong a third serious review since the summer of 2012. It's an area which Daniel Levy takes very seriously, because it is in the Club business plan to endeavour to bring to the club, players who will enhance our playing resources. As for numbers, we have at an absolute minimum, over 40 domestic games covered every weekend, ranging from PL games down to the depths of non league. In addition to this, we have scouts covering colts league football every week. The majority of these are on a expenses only wage, some are on a per match wage, some are voluntary and some are on the club payroll on a full time basis. As for Commollis's comments on Talksport about "you never see a Spurs scout at games" well, quite rightly in my opinion, the club prefers our scouts to keep a low profile when watching games/players.
Firstly, Comolli has an issue with us and secondly he was fired by both the prem clubs he was employed by and as no others have offered him a job he is reduced to being touted around the media to talk aboutr a club which sacked him 6 years ago...therefore it's worth treating his views with a lot of suspicion
Levy's probably wishing the meeting with the THST was scheduled for a month ago, rather than next week. The Trust probably have half a dozen extra things on their minds to grill him about now.
I see Levy is reportedly now after Southampton's recruitment head Paul Mitchell. Oh he does love a "man of the moment" appointment doesn't he! Perhaps we should get Sam Allardyce seeing West Ham are sitting in 4th?
