There are a lot of problems at youth and scouting level right now as flb said, someone involved with the club told me about it recently. It seems that the root of many problems is Marwood and also the remnants of the Hughes era who are out of their depth.
An overhaul is needed in more than one department at the club according to this chap anyway and all evidence on the surface makes me agree. Our scouts at senior level seem to have unearthed nothing for us in a long time now.
Savic has failed to settle in our league when the expectation was for him to play an immediate role as #3/#4 central defender. Scapuzzi has been a complete dud and could be sold off to Siena soon. The youth scouts are finding plenty of gems though like Suarez, Rekik, Pozo, Almeida, Lopes, and Bossaerts, but the question is why aren't our senior scouts finding us any players who could save us a fortune, all of our transfers and targets are well known players.
We are a rich club but even the richest clubs can find high quality cheap players who aren't obvious signings. Our best example of this was Kompany and that was four years ago now, ultimately saved us £30million and gave us one of the top few central defenders on earth for £6million. All we seem to target now are big name players with big reputations when there are many "next (big name player)" out there who good scouts find.
Look at Benfica, it's staggering what they do... every year or two their best players are sold for huge fees to top clubs (Coentrao, Ramires, Luiz, Di Maria) and they simply replace them quite cheaply with players whose value doubles in a year and are again wanted by top clubs (Witsel, Gaitan). A first class scouting system can find these players fast. Arsenal have done well in this department too.
An overhaul is needed in more than one department at the club according to this chap anyway and all evidence on the surface makes me agree. Our scouts at senior level seem to have unearthed nothing for us in a long time now.
Savic has failed to settle in our league when the expectation was for him to play an immediate role as #3/#4 central defender. Scapuzzi has been a complete dud and could be sold off to Siena soon. The youth scouts are finding plenty of gems though like Suarez, Rekik, Pozo, Almeida, Lopes, and Bossaerts, but the question is why aren't our senior scouts finding us any players who could save us a fortune, all of our transfers and targets are well known players.
We are a rich club but even the richest clubs can find high quality cheap players who aren't obvious signings. Our best example of this was Kompany and that was four years ago now, ultimately saved us £30million and gave us one of the top few central defenders on earth for £6million. All we seem to target now are big name players with big reputations when there are many "next (big name player)" out there who good scouts find.
Look at Benfica, it's staggering what they do... every year or two their best players are sold for huge fees to top clubs (Coentrao, Ramires, Luiz, Di Maria) and they simply replace them quite cheaply with players whose value doubles in a year and are again wanted by top clubs (Witsel, Gaitan). A first class scouting system can find these players fast. Arsenal have done well in this department too.