The ‘Database’

Our friend with a foot in both forums, axegas, posted an interesting theory on how recruitment works at Rovers on Gaschat and I wanted to reply to it over here seeing as I no longer have an account on there.

From piecing together various bits of into from interviews and podcasts they have concluded:

“
The manager will specify to TW a position he wants a player in and the general profile of a player he envisages. So that player could be experienced or young, pacy or a tough tackler, depending on the managers preferences. Then Widdrington will go away and consult his database of players that he works to compile, he’ll sift out the players that don’t match the requirements, then return to the manager with a list of about 10 or so players in the position that the manager wants. This is what Widdrington means when he says the club works windows in advance because work on this database never stops and it will include players that aren’t quite ready to represent Rovers now but could it the future.

The manager will then sit down with TW, and go through the players, selecting 2-3 players that they want to target first then probably a few backups in case the approaches for the most desired players are unsuccessful.

Widdrington will then take that to Starnes who will say yes/no to the players wanted and go about the process of making an official approach, submitting offers, talking to agents, unofficial approaches, that kind of thing.

Widdrington is ultimately responsible for making sure that the players on his list are going to improve us in the position required, the manager is responsible for choosing the profile and positions of the players coming in as well as deciding who the top targets are going to be, Starnes is responsible for giving the green light on any move and making sure that the transfer is financially doable for the football club.

”

I wanted to debate this because it seems to me that the key issue with appraising Widdrington is that his database is automatically assumed to be correct. It is spitting out high quality names like Ronaldo, de Light, Fernandinho etc. and, for whatever reason, the manager is choosing to sign the one duff one in every position.

But if the database is spot on, how come when BG said to Widdrington “I want a centre forward to replace JCH” the database threw up Hanlon’s name? The guy was played as a winger by the Gills?

Also, when we look at clubs in our league who are getting recruitment on a budget right, like Accrington and Crewe, where does our database fit in? Were their players in our database? Were they offered to our manager but he chose someone else? Is it s a regional issue? Or is our database the product of poor scouting and we’re giving lists full of crap players to the manager and the trick is to pick the least crap?

In addition, according to a poster on the other side Widdrington has made some signings off his own back- Barrett and Timmy Abraham were signed and given to Garner. Those two were far from stellar adverts for the quality of our scouting/database.

Also what of the notion that we have no local scouting network?

Given that there are quality players out there and we don’t seem to be signing them, I’m finding this faith in Widdrington’s database as the sole arbiter of lower league football talent problematic. It seems to be a particular issue this season that we have recruited players who were top of the table in particular stats, eg Ehmer was top of something like headers won and Westbrooke was top of challenges ducked out of etc. It honestly gives the impression that our scouting was done on paper and nobody bothered to delve into their actual character, like they weren’t scouted in the flesh.

It seems to me of all the issues Rovers face the whole scouting infrastructure needs the biggest overhaul of all.