The Nowhere Men (35 page)

So much for logic, and the eternal verities of the scout’s trade. Clarke’s appointment as Blackburn Rovers’ head scout, in September 2012, was compromised by the arrival of a new head of recruitment, Luke Dowling, the following January. The apparently arbitrary usurpation was a response to the arrival of Blackburn’s third manager of the season, Michael Appleton, who called Dowling ‘my right arm’. It was, at the very least, a criminal waste of knowledge and experience, but it proved to be a temporary aberration. Appleton was sacked after 67 days in charge, together with Dowling, on March 19, 2013.

Dean Austin was utilising his knowledge and experience as assistant manager at Notts County. The break he had been seeking so persistently arrived suddenly and unpredictably. He was out with his young family in Radlett, a large prosperous village in the Hertfordshire commuter belt, when his mobile rang. He saw it was Chris Kiwomya, realised that Keith Curle had just been sacked at County, and turned to his wife. ‘He’s got the job,’ he said, impulsively. The decision to abandon scouting duties at Bolton, who had lured Dougie Freedman as manager from Crystal Palace, was a foregone conclusion.

‘It was quite bizarre,’ admitted Austin. ‘Chris and I are not best mates. I played against him for Southend and Tottenham and we’d seen each other on the development circuit over the last couple of years. We’d talk about football, and how we’d want to do it properly, given the chance. He left a development job at Ipswich, and we hadn’t spoken for three or four months when he called. I waited until I’d got the kids in bed that night before calling him back.

‘To be honest I’d been really looking to get out of Bolton. I was not enjoying it, and people I respected there had been topped. I didn’t want people to say there was a problem between Dougie and me, because there wasn’t, but I knew if I took another scouting job I’d be accused of sour grapes. Coaching is different. When Chris asked me to work with him there were no guarantees. He was a caretaker, but I believed in what we could do. I just thought that, even if it got me out on the training field for only a week or two, it was worth it.

‘It’s been a bit of an eye-opener. I have never worked in an environment like this before. There’s no running water or changing facilities at the training ground. The lads come to Meadow Lane, get changed, drive five miles, train, and then drive another five miles back to the ground in soaking wet kit before they can have a shower. It is what it is, I suppose. It has got me back on the horse. Let’s see where it takes us.’

His deadpan delivery disguised his excitement. Austin is not an expressive man, but I had become attuned to his earnestness. We had talked about the alchemy of the appointment process, and how the force of his convictions could unnerve a potential employer. I admired his relentlessness, his determination to allow hope to triumph over experience, but doubted whether his diligence would find due reward. I was wrong. The discomforts defined and inspired him:

‘I’ve had a really good response from the lads to my sessions. Quite a few of them got on really well with Keith Curle, so there was some hangover from that, but this is what I do. I’ll do the scouting stuff, anyway, as part of this job. I have tried to take everything I have learned over the past twenty months in there with me. I’ve realised sometimes people don’t want intensity. They merely want to understand what they are doing, and why.

‘After the first week my wife asked how it was going. I told her Chris reminded me of myself six or seven years ago. Very keen, very professional, very passionate. If he had a fault perhaps he talked too much. I have learned a lot about footballers, and their attention spans. You lose them in any meeting which lasts longer than twelve to fifteen minutes. Preparation is everything. At half-time, if Chris asks me to contribute, I am short, sharp and concise. I want them to work off a few points.

‘I go round to a few individuals and talk about simple things, like passing with a purpose, or strikers running beyond the back four. When you are signing players in League One or Two it is about mentality. They have a different outlook. There’s not much money about, but the good ones put everything into it. Some will try to mug you off, but you can recognise that and deal with it. We’ve got two months to get as many good results as we can. I’ll just throw myself into it, and see what comes around in the summer.’

Steve Jones had reached yet another crossroads. He was working on a monthly consultancy contract at Bristol City, his seventh club in 15 months, and had been promised a place on the shortlist for the head of recruitment’s role in a department remodelled in response to debts of £41 million. The need to slash a wage bill which had spiralled beyond £18 million, ruinous in the lower reaches of the Championship, preoccupied owner Steve Lansdown. His dissatisfaction was expressed tersely and with revealing candour:

‘In the past we have been plagued by a football hierarchy who want you to believe there is some form of black art to finding players and those secrets should never be shared. I suspect it is a means of protecting their position and trying to show their importance, but I am pleased to say that our recruitment policy has now moved into the twenty-first century. We have two people working full time on compiling the statistics and information on players, while we are establishing a team of scouts around the country to watch these and report back.’

Jones had been alerted by Richard Shaw, who was scouting on an ad hoc basis after being dismissed by Coventry, following a short spell as caretaker manager. The strategy had been set by the owners’ son, Jon, the club’s managing director. It survived the almost immediate sacking of manager Derek McInnes, and his replacement by Sean O’Driscoll. He was an exceptional coach, but a dour, taciturn man. Jones had to read his moods, and relate to his ambitions, while meeting the demands of a club in transition.

‘I’ve got a clean sheet of paper, and first dibs at the job. It is a big opportunity for me to get back in full time. I’ve worked through the lists, and it is clear some players have been nicking a living. I’ve got to help the club make the most of their assets. Twelve are out of contract in the summer; only four will be staying. Five of the other eight have already been told they’re going. It is a simple brief, but a difficult one: slash the wage bill, and find young players with sell-on potential.’

Jones found time to observe tribal custom, and successfully eased Steve Gritt into his old job, on a retainer at Birmingham City. He also employed Brian Owen, the cabbie who had been let go by Hibernian during the implosion of Scottish football in the aftermath of the Rangers scandal, on a part-time basis in London. Gary Penrice gave him leads in Portugal, with Belenenses, in La Liga, with Las Palmas, and Holland, with Ajax. A throwaway line, delivered on our visit to Forest Green – ‘some of the best scouts I’ve seen are the forty-pence-a-milers who are struggling for their lives’ – acquired sudden clarity.

‘I don’t pretend to know it all,’ said Jones, who was putting 5,000 miles a month on the clock of his old Mercedes. ‘They might end up giving the job to someone else. I’ve spoken to the owners’ son, who has told me to stop worrying about it, but there’s no back-up. I talked to my wife about things, before I gave it a go. This is my last chance. I am not going to mug myself off. It can be a horrible game, and if I get rolled, I’d rather become a plumber, or go van driving.’

The tone was familiar, valiant. I hoped for the best, feared the worst, and decided my journey, started that night at Staines Town, was coming to a close. Just enough light had been directed on the nooks and crannies of a shadowy world for attitudes to be struck and conclusions to be reached. Football scouts are an imperfect breed, but their instincts are sound. They are unfashionable, encouraged to believe in the myth of their built-in obsolescence, but have
cojones
and credibility. The best work at their craft, but don’t take themselves too seriously. They are strong-willed and built for the long haul.

I had been primed to amplify whispers about financial impropriety. Though there was the occasional unsubstantiated rumour about the relationship between a manager and a scout who was known, acidly, as ‘The Bagman’, his story did not belong here. Tales of sweeteners, of shady practices involving nameless agents and faceless players were simple to concoct, and impossible to disseminate, without funding the winter tans of m’learned friends. Bogeymen doubtlessly lurk under the bed, but let us leave them to the darkness.

Scouts are not stereotypical scallywags; they have a rare generosity of spirit. Jamie Johnson, Mel’s son, took my son, a sports coaching science graduate who had worked within football for two years, under his wing when he expressed an interest in technical scouting. The first lesson was of the futility of hiding behind the computer console: ‘You don’t see people then, and people talk. You know what we are like; we’re a bunch of old ladies who like a natter. People can’t help themselves. They want to tell you what they are up to. That is the essence of our game.’

Technology has its uses in recruitment, but was being implemented blindly, often for its own sake. There was little scrutiny of its benefits, an assumption that, in isolation, it was infallible. Analytics will evolve, and eventually justify the inordinate faith placed in it, but the link between a scout’s optic nerve and his brain will never lose its value. You can’t create a love letter out of numbers, or express beauty in an algorithm. There’s no sensuality in a sine curve, or warmth in a heat map. The neuron boogie, which causes tiny hairs to elevate on the back of a scout’s neck, is a timeless tune.

It’s time to ’fess up. Scouts remind me of my own tribe.

Journalists become inured to the absurdities of an insanely competitive profession, but remain vulnerable to perceptions of progress. As a breed, we are being assailed by accountants, who relate hi-tech methods to low cost bases. Too many good men have been stripped of security and self-esteem because of financial expedience. Too many mistakes have been excused by advances in technological expertise. Those of us who remain in the trenches tend to care, even though we disguise our commitment with gallows humour and guttural laments for what we once had.

I came to identify with Mel Johnson, my guide and tutor. I had feared for him as his, and our, story unfolded; the interregnum between the sacking of Damien Comolli and the bedding down of the Brendan Rodgers regime was ominous. Johnson would have been forgiven for losing his faith, but he retained his professional perspective , and continued to do his job to the best of his ability, in difficult circumstances. He was not blind to its cost, nor unappreciative of its eccentricity:

‘We always put football first, before family. That’s wrong, but it is why we do what we do. I can remember once having tickets for Dionne Warwick at the London Palladium. She is one of my favourite singers. Then I got a call to go and do Atletico Madrid against Athletic Bilbao. What do I do? You’ve guessed it. I’m on the plane to Spain. I put football first. They are killing us, but nine out of ten scouts would have done the same.

‘I really must find time to clean out the garage. I have condensed everything in my life, but not football. You can’t move in there for boxes and suitcases full of stuff. I keep everything; match programmes, team sheets, match tickets, even plane tickets. I tell you, if I go to a match and I can’t get a team sheet I am positively suicidal. Silly, I know, but that is the way we are.’

There was a soothing familiarity to the conversations he had with Gary Penrice in the Mona Lisa café on the Kings’ Road, before a sequence of Chelsea games in March. Luke Shaw’s price had soared, beyond £10 million. Dave Philpotts and Ronnie Moore were achieving minor miracles, in maintaining Tranmere’s challenge for promotion to the Championship. Brentford were making inroads into the immigrant community, because of the sensitivity of the scouting of Miguel Rios, their park-keeper.

On a broader level, the irony of Stoke City’s signing Jack Butland for a cut price £3.5 million, from Birmingham City, had not gone unnoticed. Mark Cartwright, the goalkeeper’s erstwhile representative, was Stoke’s newly-appointed technical director, and memories of that Friday foray to Southend remained vivid. ‘A bad game will always be with you,’ said Mel Johnson, sympathetically.

He was invited to Melwood, to be briefed on the renewal of Liverpool’s recruitment strategy. He watched the first team train, and saw Jordon Ibe, his protégé, score twice as Liverpool reached the quarter-finals of the FA Youth Cup at the expense of Leeds United. Together with Alan Harper, the other principal survivor of the Dalglish era, he was extremely impressed by the intellectual rigour and detailed vision of Dave Fallows, the new head of recruitment. Johnson’s diligence had also been noted.

The potential of analysis and experience became apparent when he was asked about Isaiah Brown, a 16-year-old prodigy who had been an unused substitute for West Bromwich Albion at Chelsea that weekend. The scout had done his homework: ‘He’s a Kit Carson boy. I met his stepfather at an under twenty-one game recently. He told me the boy had changed agents.’ Such information was invaluable and unavailable online.

Rodgers had resisted the introduction of a Director of Football at Anfield, but accepted a collegiate approach, in which transfer policy was dictated by collective wisdom. Fallows, Michael Edwards, the head of analysis, and Ian Ayre, Liverpool’s managing director, all helped to shape the strategy. Senior scouts like Johnson were their eyes and ears.

Since Liverpool’s business plan was based on the detection and development of young players. Griffin was quick to push the potential of Wycombe’s full back Charles Dunne – ‘he’s getting some interest from Celtic, and will play in the Premier League one day’ – and gave an honourable mention to Kortney Hause, a 17-year-old centre half.

Johnson smiled, knowing his friend had been told by his club to generate a loan fee, to help cash flow. He had heard of a prospect in Plymouth, 17-year-old striker Tyler Harvey, and had been given additional responsibility for scouting in Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria. ‘I’m so excited,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait to do it.’