Rob Mackenzie

The reality within the industry is that clubs have such varied structures, such varied titles.

Someone’s job title can actually mean many different things, even if it’s the same in one club as in another. Regarding myself, I’m privileged to be the Head of Scouting at Tottenham Hotspur.

My responsibility is to manage a team of 10 people, plus myself, within first-team scouting. We’re responsible for the identification and assessment and recommendation collectively of players from U19 international age groups up to first team.

That remit falls under us as a department. In addition to managing those individuals and instilling the processes, my role is to support the Technical Director, Johan Lange, and the Head Coach Thomas Frank and his staff when we start initiating discussions around what’s required within our own squad, here and now but also in the future.

And then, in the case of those meetings and discussions, bringing to life the stories and cases of players that we as a department position to be the most appealing.

It’s bringing those to life and trying to showcase why we think they’re a really good fit, along with managing and assessing any players that come the other way from the Head Coach and his staff.

And then I guess I play an introductory role, when it comes to agents and explaining our potential interest in a player where we feel they might sit within our thinking. If it gets more serious, in terms of progressing to a more financial stage, then I pass that baton on to Johan Lange. 

My role’s quite varied. I’m out on the road, scouting players live, because if I’m to be the mouthpiece of the department, I have to have a very strong opinion myself and I have to be convinced about the players that we’re suggesting being the right ones.

So I guess I wear different hats and it’s quite varied, even though it’s specifically focused on recommending the best players possible for us in the marketplace.

We have three people based abroad, within their respective countries – Joao Ferreira, Giuseppe Di Credico and Max Legath. They’re responsible for their own competition predominantly, whilst also scouting other competitions that we distribute between the group.

Joao’s based in Portugal. Giuseppe, probably no surprise based on his name, is based in Italy, and Max is based in Germany.

Our priority has always been ensuring that we have the right people. Being able to travel anywhere to watch football is arguably, from a logistical perspective, as easy as it’s ever been. So we actually prioritise the individual over the location. As an example, Giuseppe and Max came through a process that we ran about 15 months ago – yourselves at Training Ground Guru helped bring interest and exposure to the advert that we ran then, similar to also what we’re doing now – and the priority is not necessarily on where they’re based.

You can get some benefits from people being based in different countries – for example intel, character, insight, a real finger on the pulse when it comes to market dynamics within that country or that competition – but for us it’s more about who they are, how do they see the game, how do they think? 

If you can align a group of people with a firm understanding of what it is you’re looking – also what it is that you’re not looking for – that surely is what’s going to lean towards you being able to work in the most efficient way.

And we have Seb Taghizadeh, who fulfils a similar role, and Alex Fraser, our Chief Scout, who are both based in the UK. We have those five doing predominantly hands-on-scouting, in addition to myself.

And then we have a team of Recruitment Analysts,who are more hybrid in their skillset. They very much assist with the live scouting, video scouting, but they’re also responsible for player profiling and bringing player stories to life internally for us within the department.

And then we have somebody who can piece it all together in terms of assisting with the travel logistics, meeting logistics – whenever we invite people over it’s so vitally important to ensure that first impressions are as good as they possibly can be – Jamie Bryan, our Scouting Co-ordinator, who does a fantastic role in that for us.

He’s based at the training ground. And then we also have Joe Bucknell as our Lead Scouting Insights Analyst and his role is assisting us exclusively within the scouting department with regards to data and objective insight.

And he does a fantastic job in ensuring that across both identification and assessment, we have as much of a comprehensive understanding of what a player is currently doing, what they’re potentially capable of doing and that’s something that we’re able to understand longitudinally throughout their career. That level of contribution to the departments is really invaluable

100% – I think anybody in my role at any club will tell you exactly the same.

You are continually assessing your own players, week in, week out. When they perform for your club in your shirt, you’re continually updating your knowledge and understanding about them, what they’re potentially capable of doing, both short, medium term, maybe also in the long term.

There are so many factors that go into hopefully being able to build a complementary and effective squad, so many moving parts, the shift change within the season, out of season.

We obviously have an idea of what an optimal squad looks like. I’m fortunate in the level of club that I work for, that we compete in UEFA competitions.

So you have not only the Premier League squad rules to navigate, but you also have UEFA squad rules to navigate. You obviously have injuries that that can happen both in season and during transfer windows, as we’ve experienced recently.

You best have both eyes on not only the next couple of windows, so a January and a summer, but you’re also looking beyond that.

You know, the contract expiries of your own players, the ones you want to renew and extend, the ones that maybe you’re looking for the prime opportunity to trade them. Externally, you have contractual situations changing frequently as well.

It’s a difficult role to almost take a breath in and sit and reflect. Very objectively, I think we had a successful transfer window in the summer and we’ve brought in players capable of influencing our 11 and enhancing our performance in the Premier League.

But there’s also no opportunity to sit and reflect on that and think, ‘Well, did we do a good job there?’ If you’re like ourselves and you value live scouting heavily as part of the process, there’s only a set amount of game weeks that you can watch players in and if you don’t maximise every single opportunity that you potentially have to be watching them in the most relevant games against the most relevant direct opponent, suddenly you can find time’s been and gone.

So it’s fascinating in that regard, in that the reality is ever-evolving and you’re continually looking for what’s next, as opposed to really digesting and appreciating what’s actually happening right now.

Yeah, they do – and that’s something you acknowledge that at times. The best-run clubs – and certainly hopefully ourselves at Tottenham Hotspur – there’s just continual discussion, agreement and alignment between key stakeholders.

So that’s typically ownership, Chief Executive, Technical Director, Head Coach, as to what does a typical recruit for our football club look like?

There will be nuances in how that player plays in terms of their actual skill set and profile, but I think the best-run clubs are the ones where when they announce the player and they stand there with the shirt in their hands, you go, ‘Yeah, I think that’s about right for what they’re typically about, what they’re aspiring to achieve.’

Hopefully in cases like ourselves, where there’s a longer-term strategy in place as regards to what the football club wants to continue to look like regarding a sustainability squad planning – there’s an understanding of what this person might look like, what age they typically might be, what experience they have.

If you look at our window in the summer and the players that we signed on permanent transfers – in terms of Kevin Danso, Mathys Tell, Joao Paulinho, Xavi Simons, Randal Kolo Muani, Mohammed Kudus – exposure to playing in the Champions League previously (was important).

Within the best run clubs there is a solid understanding of what a future player for your club might and might not look like. 

We experienced a summer window in which we obviously had a Head Coach change. We experienced a serious injury to James Madison as well. In the players that we agreed to sign – as a collective and obviously led by Thomas – they are all playing regularly and contributing to our 11.

For me, that is the best indicator that there is agreement and alignment. If you consider what Joao Paulinho is capable of bringing to a starting 11 versus Muhammad Kudus, these are distinctly different players,but equally they reflect the qualities and the attributes that Thomas Frank wants to have within his team.

So we have a strong understanding. I think sometimes a strength can be having levels of flexibility. In some clubs there’s a strong game model and an understanding of style of play.

I’d like to think we’re the same, but in terms of recruits that are brought to a club, sometimes it’s the desire of a Head Coach to have something slightly different so he can change it.

For example, if I predominantly have offensive-minded full-backs because predominantly that is how we play, sometimes it’s actually the request that I want someone a bit more defensive minded, a bit more well balanced, because this game model will be fluid, it will change. 

If then within a game I want to affect that and I want to change it, that’s how I can do it.

I’m aware that obviously styles of player, game models, philosophies, are stronger and more prevalent than ever before. But I think equally, having players within a squad who are capable of complementing each other and leading to you being able to win games in different ways, that is also still vitally important.

As involved as anyone could be and rightly so.

Sometimes you can hear people reference, ‘Is this a club signing, is this a manager signing?’ I’ve never worked in a structure with a group of individuals where the Head Coach is not the one with the loudest voice with regards to the suitability of the player.

At the end of the day, it’s them picking the team, not us within a scouting or recruiting department. If they’re absolutely convinced – and there is alignment across the leadership team – then those are the players you should go for. Are there any players within this work that you fundamentally would say no to immediately, that you don’t like?

If there are, we then discount them. Our role is to support you, to support the club and to maximise our potential ability to be successful on the pitch. We only do that by signing players that fit both from a club perspective, ie strategy, but also what you want. And then, on the flip side, are there any other players that we haven’t factored into this work that you would like to bring to the party?

If you are to be consistently successful within your recruitment of players, I personally just do not see an alternative.

In our own little bubble within a scouting and recruiting department, we feel we’re the ones who know these players the best or the most. The reality – and it took me a while, I guess, to process it – is that when you sign a player, you become the people who have the least to do with them, because obviously they’re working with coaches, medical, sports science, analysis.

In my role, I feel that responsibility that if we’re to recommend players who everybody else in this club are going to have to work with on a human level as well as obviously as players, I have to feel like I can trust that that player as a human being will represent me and my department in the appropriate manner.

If they don’t, you will soon hear about it, because everybody’s working life is affected other than ours, arguably. Thomas was as heavily involved as any Head Coach that I’ve ever worked with before.

It’s always about getting a balance and having a squad that’s complimentary. When I had the privilege to rejoin Tottenham Hotspur just short two years ago, there were a whole host of things from a strategic perspective that would enhance our ability to be successful moving forward. At that time, with Ange as the Head Coach, we were definitely in a period of transition in terms of some of the more experienced players leaving.

They were either at the right point in their career to move on, or maybe found themselves not the ideal stylistic fit for how we wanted to play. Either way, that that was happening. So how do you regenerate a squad from an energy perspective, an enthusiasm perspective, from a strategic perspective?

It was apparent that because we were aspiring to play in UEFA competition, having people  who could assist with the UEFA squad was also one of the objectives.

In signing both Lucas Bergvall and Archie Grey, not only are they top elite young talents and fantastic human beings, they will also assist the club in what they’re able to do from an on-pitch perspective but equally from a squad dynamic perspective moving forward and from a UEFA perspective.

That’s maybe not the sexy stuff, you don’t shout from the rooftops that this is the level of detail and thought that’s going on, but that is what was going on. Within that summer and in January we signed players who would assist with our mid to long-term sustainability as a football club.

Then, on the flip side, it’s about getting a balance and complementing what you already have. We were fortunate enough to have signed those young talents who not only can contribute now but also in the future.

Then it felt natural [to] say, ‘Well if we’ve hopefully done a solid role in recruiting some of the most exciting talents across Europe and beyond, then actually from a short-term competitiveness perspective… it felt kind of natural to complement what had gone before and enhance the 11 in as many ways as possible and give Thomas Frank and his staff different options across different areas of the pitch.

Because winning games is the most important thing – any Spurs fan who was in Bilbao (will know) that winning things is the holy grail. In the two summer windows we’ve had, I would like to think that from a strategic perspective we’ve satisfied two of the objectives that felt prevalent when rejoining the club.

Moving forward we’ll look to enhance in both areas, kind of balance them both off.

Every case is different. With Muhammad Kudus, there were quite a lot of touch points that were possible.

Johan and Thomas are both Danish and worked in Denmark. In terms of their links, their contacts within Nordsjaelland – where he had moved to from Right to Dream initially – (they were) able to get a strong level of insight.

Equally, (with) players who’ve played with him more recently, you try to get a bit of a balanced view. So people who have seen him at different touch points in his career. You don’t just want one experience repeating, because that can be a bit misleading or not necessarily as representative as it possibly could be.

He is now captain for Ghana and taking on quite a leadership role and thriving off the fact we have some really talented young players. That was something he was looking to embrace if possible in his next challenge.

He felt a real good fit for us. It’s the hardest thing to do (scout character), but it’s also the thing that often makes the most difference.

It’s the hardest thing to do because everybody’s points of reference as human beings are different. It’s not that you can’t necessarily find enough people to speak to who have worked with them, who’ve played with them, but what I find annoying, frustrating, unacceptable, you might be sat there saying, ‘I don’t have a problem with any of those things.’

Or, I’ve seen this guy in a situation where he’s a starting 11 player and played every week. If ever there was going to be the best version of a person, it is surely in those circumstances. What are they actually like when they’re not in the team?

It’s not hard to get the intel. The challenging bit is trying to understand the real reference points that you have in your club, your key stakeholders, and then how does this individual fit?

Thomas Frank places a very strong emphasis on character and people. One of his things, that I know he’s talked about publicly, is about being confident but humble, having discipline – and simple things such as being on time, being present. ‘I can accept people making mistakes, but what I can’t accept is people not being willing to contribute to the collective and not being on time.’

Whenever we’re trying to gauge the potential character personality of any player, you have to acknowledge that we have some real established lines here.

You’re continually thinking in that context, what could this look like? Are there any indications that anything like this could be a thing? Because if it is, this is probably not likely to go well. I don’t think it’s necessarily that difficult to get intel. It’s how you interpret it, because people don’t like speaking ill about people.

As human beings, we’re not wired to openly criticise people or potentially talk someone out of having an opportunity. So you have to contextualise what somebody might be saying to you. If you can skilfully challenge them, even a question such as, ‘Well, what’s the most frustrating thing that you’ve ever seen?’

And almost try to eke out any little different things. But it depends on the people that you’re speaking to and what their expectations of other human beings are. Thankfully, for the planet, we are all very different.

If you do not have the ability to contribute to a game of Premier League football through an element of physicality or athleticism, your ability with the football has to be exceptional. If you are coming from an external competition, you will come up against athletes that you will just not have played against before.

The Premier League has got to that point where almost everybody is an elite athlete first and foremost. Obviously, that is very prominent within your checklist when assessing players externally – do we think they could potentially cope within this competition and how does their skillset coupled with that look in the context of the Premier League?

I remember when we were at Leicester and signed players from the Championship equivalent in France – even after pre-season games, the players would say, ‘That’s the most intense game I’ve ever played.’

Even (Kalidou) Koulibaly, when he left Napoli to join Chelsea, he said in Serie A you can think and then you can run. In the Premier League you have to think while you run.

If you consider the career he’s had and his sheer athleticism, the amount of Champions League appearances he’s made, if he’s saying this then it is just a different world.

It’s something that you just cannot under-estimate, because it is unique. The Premier League has positioned itself in such a way now that the potentially applicable future players for you as a club are getting less and less.

So many players are 6 foot 2 and can run and can duel. If you look across Europe, across the world, there is nothing that compares to this, there just isn’t. The athleticism is remarkable. Unless you play one or two very specific positions and have an unbelievably high skill level and are exceptional technically, underestimate it at your peril.

These guys are just unbelievable athletes. That’s one of the things that will always stick with me from a live scouting perspective. The tempo of a game, the flow and momentum changes of a game and then the athleticism of players involved, is one of the real key things that you get exposed to live, closer to the pitch.

That’s where you get a real appreciation of what this looks like from an athleticism perspective. You then start picking up within the game who the quickest players are and how they would look in the Premier League.

It’s such an important part of the package to be a modern day Premier League footballer, something you have to place a high emphasis on in assessing whether somebody’s suitable or not.

A coach will always want players who can play for him every week, even if he chooses to rotate.

A Chief Executive will want to maximise the potential value generation of an asset. So the ability to have your players on the pitch regularly is a skill and can differentiate you from teams who are not able to do that.

So again it’s part of the profiling and assessment aspect of our process. The perceived robustness of a player is something that we value very highly.

As an example, if you were to consider someone like Muhammad Kudus, his strength, ability to hold opponents off, is outstanding. I think any Spurs fan will agree with that. Try getting the ball off this guy.

But then equally, if you looked at his time at West Ham, outside of being called up for his national team and getting sent off against us and subsequently suspended, he missed two match days. He was never an unused sub – if he was available on the bench, he would always come on.

This is a geyser who has found a way to keep himself fit and as a result already has been one of our most played players. It’s a reflection on physical make-up and genetics, but also on how professional they are.

I’ve been fortunate enough to sign some real significant experienced players, people like Ashley Young who we signed at Aston Villa on a free transfer. At Leicester City, Marcin Wasilewski, Esteban Cambiasso – guys you could describe as being experienced post peak, but when you actually do the the research and do your job properly, you very quickly understand that these guys manage their bodies, they manage themselves as professionals in such a way that they’re still readily available to perform and be available.

I mean Ashley Young’s playing Ipswich now at 40 years old. That’s not going to guarantee they won’t get injured though – it’s still going to be down to the way they’re managed within the squad, in training and in matches. Luck as well. My philosophy is control the controlables and try to minimise the risk and maximise the chance of success as much as possible. Yes, you can have a player who’s shown an unbelievable level of robustness previously and they get injured with you.

That can happen. But I still don’t think that should deter you from trying to ensure that you’ve done everything within your power to recommend the most suitable players, which is the ones who also have the full package.

But this is life. Things happen that we don’t expect, especially contact injuries that are unfortunate and not predictable.

But if you show strategic discipline to your process and you factor in the right things, you will be successful more often than not. And as I said, control the controlables and appreciate that you can’t predict the future.

There will always be slight differentiations between what you expect, based on where a player’s playing, what their career trajectory is to this point, what you’re aware other people at that club might have earned at some point in time. For example, there will always be overestimations from people whose agenda it might suit to earn more money than will be underestimations.

I think over time you build an idea of the marketplace to such an extent that you can, to a degree, anticipate based on a club’s transactional history, for example other points of reference from players of a similar age, similar experience level, who’ve moved from a similar competition.

Or again, based on that context, what would we be willing to go to as well?

With experience, I think you’re able to generate a bandwidth that typically will be pretty accurate. Yeah, and that’s what I mean about, I think as a club, strategically understanding who you are and who you’re not, and so much about scouting and recruitment is maximising efficiency and time.

And I think still, even though finances are vitally important, being able to be the first to the party for a player is still very important. It’s so vitally important to say what you are looking for to then be able to hopefully go out and actually execute it.

What does a potential future recruit look like for your club and why? If you don’t know that, if there’s not that inherent determined aligned strategy, then your scouting operation just can’t be as efficient as it should be, because you’re covering everybody when the reality is you’ll know these guys typically won’t meet expectation on the pitch. Based on contractual situations, clubs they play for, it’s highly unlikely that they will actually be available for us. It’s finding that sweet spot of players, where you maximise your time, energy and then hopefully act and execute.

The Research Associate gig I had at Birmingham University – while that was football focused, it realistically had nothing to do with the professional game.

When I was at University at Liverpool John Moore’s, I had some fantastic role models there, who’d worked and who were working in a consultancy capacity within the game. So the likes of Martin Littlewood, who I was fortunate enough to shadow when he was working at Bolton at the time, a very pioneering club, and did things differently and were heavy on sports science provision.

I continued to seek out any opportunity while studying to expose myself to what it was really about. I finished my Master’s at John Moore’s and then actually had in my mind that I would maybe go down a sports psychology route and try and be a sports psychologist and operate within football.

I hope that contributes to my thinking about scouting, recruitment, assessment of a player, because I think about the player versus the person a little bit more.

Then an opportunity was advertised at Leicester City, alongside doing a PhD at Loughborough University. It was kind of split 50-50 in terms of the time spent, within Performance Analysis department.

So working alongside Andy Blake there and contributing to what was going on at Leicester. So whilst it didn’t 100% align with what I thought I was going to do, I also looked at and it and I thought, ‘Well hang on, this is a well established football club that’s now on an upwards trajectory with Nigel Pearson as the manager just about to get promoted from League One to the Championship.’

Actually, would it not be better to expose myself if this is the industry that I want to work in, what this looks like on the inside and then see what it’s all about in terms of an infrastructure. It might be that I actually do want to go down an analysis route having exposed myself to it.

What Nigel built, as a football club and infrastructure, camaraderie, I would describe it as serving the best apprenticeship in professional football that anyone could ever have.

I think Nigel Pearson, Steve Walsh, Craig Shakespeare, these guys were not only excellent at what they did as professionals and successful, they was so embracing of others. Even though I was almost a glorified intern really, they didn’t have any ego and they afforded me the opportunity. They wanted to develop people. It was a real football school. If you could prove yourself to them, if you not only socially could fit in but you had a skill set, you had something to bring to the party with regards to a skill set, they were unbelievably inclusive. 

They let you let you do things and knock on their door and say ‘have you thought about this?’

This is 2009 and whilst doing analysis on our own team at that point. I remember sitting with Steve Walsh and being curious and saying, ‘If this is the level of detail and analysis and scrutiny that’s going on on our own players, what are we doing on external players?’

This was at a time when you were only essentially able to get it for either your own games or your own competitions. Wyscout compared to what it is now – I think you could you could request five players a week to be clipped up from one game and that was it.

And then you had to wait till the next week to ask again. So, we tried to be a little bit innovative. We essentially used the same coding template we were using on our own players for external players. We highlighted them based on age, contract expiry, etc.

Riyadh Mahrez is I guess the best case of us generating a level of insight and knowledge about him as a player that maybe other comparable clubs didn’t have at the time. If I was considering now from a data perspective, I would expect his expected assists or his chances created at that period at Le Havre would have been absolutely through the roof. He was creating some unbelievably good chances but people weren’t converting them. If you then looked at just the very basic biographical reflections of his season, what was there to be excited about? But we felt internally that actually now this guy’s doing some really exciting stuff.

Shouldn’t we be going out to France watching him in Le Havre? Having gone into to Leicester City with no expectation about scouting or doing scouting, having a career in scouting, that’s then what I found myself finding almost the most passion for moving into that.

So I guess if I were to have any advice for people it would be can you in whatever capacity almost get your foot in the door at a club because what you perceive to be what’s going on might be totally different and actually there might be something within that that hooks your curiosity as to what might be possible.

What was created there – not only what the club then went on to achieve on the pitch, but in terms of what they created in terms of the careers that people have had since then – it’s quite unrivalled in my view. And as I say, unbelievably grateful that especially in those three people, I had the best role models across both life and working in professional football as I could have possibly had.

And I will be forever grateful and appreciative that I was lucky enough to have that schooling really.

There were quite a few moving parts. So Steve Walsh, who was the Head of Recruitment and Assistant Manager at the time, who I was fortunate to work very closely with, he’d seen him play previously in a game, like 18 months prior. And I remember him coming back and saying, there was this kid at Le Havre who did okay, he was alright.

He didn’t set the world alight, but there was something there. Then fast forward 12 months and we begin a process to find a winger capable of coming in in January supporting what we already have with potential future to go on.

But at that time we had little money to spend. I think that summer we signed free transfers and we had a group of players who were coming out of contract and weren’t sure if they would be staying or not.

So again there was a sensitivity around if we were going to sign anyone. And who do we sign? So when I guess we started this batch of work on who are people either in our competition, comparable competitions.

One of the criteria was contract expiry. What anticipated transfer fee would we expect for a guy with an expiring contract at the end of the season in league 2 in France. We were seriously considering maybe six across Europe as well as other guys playing in the Championship or above. And it was then that we were then like we significantly need to revisit this player.

I remember David Mills, who was the Chief Scout and had a very trusted opinion and rightly so. He went out to watch Riyad and came back and was positive enough about him and said, ‘Yeah, I think this is a good idea.’

So then, when we sat down with Nige to revisit, he’s been like, ‘Right, you and Walshy, I want you to go watch him.’

There was a very small window of opportunity to go watch him, because Steve’s role was Assistant Manager as well, so he was present for every Leicester game. We played away at QPR, I think, maybe 1-0, Vardy goal.

That was a 12:30 kickoff on the Saturday, so to get to La Havre and back on the Friday night, to then me being able to drop him off in time outside of Loftus Road was a logistical challenge in itself.

And, and the actual day of going to watch him play against Auxerre, I didn’t think we were going to get there on time, it was carnage.

When you’re actually leaving Heathrow Airport at 9:30 in the morning and you can’t get to La Havre for an 8pm kick-off, how is this possible? But the thing that stood out with Riyad was just this sheer positivity within his game.

The ratio of times he would take players on and be positive either with a line-breaking progressive pass chance and the quality of chances created. He essentially was off the charts and you’re like, if he can translate this to the English game based on his physicality or lack of.

I remember sitting in some stadiums even after we’d signed him and listening to the scouts talk around you – ‘Have you seen this Mahrez at Leicester? He’s built like a stick. And you were like, well have you tried to get the ball off him?

Look, we were fortunate enough to sign him at Leicester and he’s gone on to have an unbelievably successful career, but he still plays the game in the same way. Those ratios, what’s a percentage chance he’s going to dribble or do somewhat. If you then assessed his time at Man City as an example, those ratios were exactly the same.

He was just an excellent, outstanding player. I think it’s as simple as that.

I think the fundamental answer is yes, based on more clubs than ever operating in a similar fashion, with a business mindset that we want young talented players who will have not only growth potential as a player but equally from a financial resale perspective. So you now have far more competitors than ever before.

There is still opportunity. So like you mentioned there with Jhon, I’d argue similar with Lucas Bergvall. We. We were fortunate enough to be able to convince him to join us ahead of Barcelona, which was a fantastic coup for the club. I think maybe the opportunities in which to sign these guys is the windows getting smaller and smaller and you have to be able to react to less information faster.

In the case of Jhon Duran, like you mentioned, here was a guy who was signed out of Colombia who made his debut in Angovado at 15 and moved to Chicago Fire.

I think it’s a record transfer for a teenager coming into the MLS. He had a slow burning start to his season. And why wouldn’t you? You’re coming from Colombia, you come to a new environment, new language. But then it was kind of the back end of that season where you felt like maybe his performance level had stabilised and actually it was then something really significant.

Joe Bucknall, who joined us at Tottenham but worked at Villa before, I remember him highlighting very much that there’d been a consecutive run of games towards the end of the MLS season in which Duran had started to spike.

Based on our what we were looking for at the time, in terms of Ollie Watkins as an established number nine, then was there somebody who could first and foremost support him, but then maybe overtake him. So again, back to knowing what you’re looking for.

So a 19-year-old athletic striker in MLS is potentially applicable. Then the work starts there and when we presented him to Unai in that first January after Unai joined, he was then of the same opinion that this was a unique case in the market and quite interesting.

With Lucas, here is unbelievable talent. I’m very cautious, when credibility is everything and your opinion is all you have as your badge of honour, with how I view a player, because I’m aware that so many things can happen. But I think in the case of Lucas Bergwal here is a genuine generational talent and a fantastic human being. You realise that as soon as you meet him that this is different.

Here’s a kid who has the humility of a 18, 19 year old at the time but who looks you in the eyes and gives you the impression that this guy can hold his own. He will have the humility to listen to people older than him and show the appropriate respect as a kid who’ll say give me the football now and I’ll do my talking. Again you look at how stable is and fantastic his family environment is.

His brothers are players. Mum was a player. Just a fantastic support network. That matters when you understand that there will be rainy days in football and it’s then who are people surrounded by and how likely is that to be what you want them to be surrounded by for them to come out maybe of the other side of anything.

So so with Lucas it was a player who everybody knew about. I mean the fact that he trialled at various clubs and for whatever reason things didn’t quite go for him there. I remember sitting with Johan Lange and, and discussing him and, strategically, we’d identify could there be any young exceptional talents out there who could actually assist us both in the near future but also longer term for the football club and really bring that excitement back to the supporters; someone to resonate with.

At the back end of his final season before we signed him, in the February it was on his birthday his level of involvement at Djurgardens in games, the fact that he was trusted to start and complete games in different positions, you just felt it all starts to piece together.

We were fortunate enough – hopefully also good enough – to execute what was a rare opportunity, a small window of opportunity. Based on the work that we’d done, the knowledge that we showed him and his parents that we had about him, his life to that point, his qualities as a footballer, how he would fit, we found ourselves as a football club in a position where an 18 year old travelled to Barcelona – a club that I think even in the last 72 hours also Steven Gerrard in, in the context of talking about Trent, has referenced if Barcelona calls, your head gets turned.

We had done enough and convinced Lucas and his family enough that we were actually where he wanted to come. So he visited Barcelona and left Barcelona to go back to Stockholm.

I remember me and Johan were on flight radar, looking at whether his flight was actually taking off from Barcelona. You were like, ’Is he on that plane? Is he going back or is he just going to stay and sign?’

Because, let’s be honest, the normal timeline if you go visit somewhere (like Barcelona) you would be going to stay there and sign. I remember we were that excited and invested in it that we were like, ‘Is he on that plate?’ And then checking the WhatsApp messages and going, ‘They’re on one tick.’

Because you’re like if he gets back to Stockholm, we’ve got a real chance here, because you don’t go there if you’re just gonna sign. The news then came through that his choice was us. That January we signed him on deadline day, went to collect him and his parents from Stansted and I guess he falls into the unappreciated gem talent.

The reality is the window of opportunity now to sign these guys is getting smaller and smaller and also it’s often when they’re younger and younger than when we signed Riad – I think he was 22 as an example.

Now, in 2025, you imagine that this transfer, like Lucas, is probably happening when he’s 18.

Because the Premier League has developed as much as it has, it is getting harder and harder for a player over a certain age and experience level in a peripheral competition. It’s getting harder and harder for them to potentially be good enough. Almost the reality now is if they show the potential to be good enough at a young age, that is when players will start to move more and more.

You assess the marketplace now in 2025 and the age of players that are moving, the lack of experience that they’ve accrued to that point, they’re moving earlier and earlier because the reality is everyone is almost in a calculated foot race to sign them.

So everybody has to go earlier and earlier to try to get a head start. If you wait, they will have gone and they will be at clubs that may not be possible to sign from. So it is definitely an emerging trend – and I think we’ve seen it this summer – that people are willing to pay a significant fee on maybe a bit older than people have been doing in recent years.

People like Man United, having signed Brian Mbeumo, Matthias Cunha, ourselves, having signed Mohamed Kudus, Arsenal, in terms of who they’ve recruited, if they’ve played in your competition, even the top clubs now are prepared to sign people a little bit older than this because they’ve all gone when they were young.

So then you hit this sweet spot that everybody’s kind of trying to find and actually there is not a lot of players in there that are actionable. Or then if they are actionable, are they good enough?