What is going on at Brentford

[Blue in the Face]

I was thinking more along the lines of targetting players who have played well, had the potential at a younger age ( Mendez-Laing at Wolves, Damour at that French academy ) but never realised it ( Mendex-Laing to Rochdale, Damour to French Ligue 2 ).

I see what you mean. Then perhaps the "committee" should have more credit as Big Ken fits into that category too. One thing I'd say we've benefitted from with Ken is we signed a player who's weaknesses in his game were improbable through good coaching.

Which is why people use measures like xG which value shots from far out as less likely to score than tap ins and take it to account the type of shot and where the ball has been passed from etc

The data would have to get that specific for it to be useful I suppose. I can see how could be useful for searching through loads of players from all kinds of leagues you won't have the man power to scout. Don't think anything will ever beat human judgement to spot talent or potential though.

[Rjk]

I see what you mean. Then perhaps the "committee" should have more credit as Big Ken fits into that category too. One thing I'd say we've benefitted from with Ken is we signed a player who's weaknesses in his game were improbable through good coaching.



The data would have to get that specific for it to be useful I suppose. I can see how could be useful for searching through loads of players from all kinds of leagues you won't have the man power to scout. Don't think anything will ever beat human judgement to spot talent or potential though.

Nobody is using a purely stats based approach to scouting. If you can find an interesting player through a stats approach, you then get a scout to have a look to confirm what the data is telling you, and to try to work out other characteristics that aren't readily measurable.

Old fashioned scouts aren't infallible though, I recently read somewhere that man u passed up the opportunity to sign isco as a 21 year old because "his head was too big for his body"