Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers boosted by arrival of two new scouts from Manchester City
Liverpool have recruited two more senior scouts from Manchester City.
New faces: Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has seen his scouting network boosted Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Comment
Liverpool have recruited two more senior scouts from Manchester City.
New faces: Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has seen his scouting network boosted Photo: GETTY IMAGES
By Chris Bascombe
10:30PM BST 02 May 2013
Last summer, Liverpool lured Dave Fallows as head of recruitment and scouting while Barry Hunter also joined as a chief scout. The pair had also worked together at the Etihad Stadium.
They will now be joined at Anfield by Andy Sayer and Kevin Hunt, who have been key members of Manchester City’s scouting network in recent years. Sayer had responsibility for monitoring players in Germany, Holland and Scandinavia.
Hunt made 282 appearances for League of Ireland side Bohemians prior to moving into scouting.
A number of City scouts have been understood to be frustrated at the club’s policy of largely targeting well-known, big-money signings, while the latest arrivals at Anfield are part of the ongoing revamp of Liverpool’s recruiting staff.
Last month, managing director Ian Ayre explained how Liverpool were adopting a more collaborative approach to transfers.
Essentially, the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, want safeguards to ensure no individual has too much power to buy and sell without a more thorough vetting process.
There is a view at the club that under successive regimes, going back over a decade, the power of the manager has been too absolute on occasions, leading to a lack of due diligence on players and bad decisions in the transfer market.
FSG believes the more eyes and ears there are assessing a player, the better. This will also ensure the club never favours particular agents or agencies.
However, this does create the possibility that even if manager Brendan Rodgers is adamant he wants a particular player, it could be blocked if there is no broad consensus among the committee reporting to the owners.
Rodgers has remained firm in his view he will have the final say and will not have any players he does not want. He has accepted, however, some of his choices could be rejected by the board.
The Liverpool manager says this — and the notion of a ‘committee’ – is no different to the principles at most clubs, where the manager has a support network around him but must work within budget.
Rodgers said: “We have a number of people, scouting staff and analysts, who will look for targets who fit the profile of the players that we want.”
The £12 million pursuit of Swansea City’s Ashley Williams this summer is, in many respects, perceived as a test case because while the manager is clearly keen to pursue the player there are younger alternatives being observed by the scouting team.
