One of the problems Sevco is going to have going forward is that they have based so much of their strategic approach on what Celtic has done before them.
They looked at what we did and said “that works. Let’s try it.”
I’ve tried that approach to various things, and it doesn’t work. A lot of things look far simpler than they are, until you try them for yourself. But only a mug would have just assumed a complex operation like a football club’s transfer policy was a straightforward matter.
Celtic has been building a scouting network for over twenty years. The project was launched whilst Jo Venglos was at the club; he was appointed, in part, to co-ordinate it and when he left the manager’s office Fergus kept him here in a scouting role. His focus was on Eastern Europe, and one of the first players he recommended was a Bulgarian called Stiliyan Petrov. That was the first clear proof that the system was going to work.
And it has worked. Other talents followed, and left, over the years and made us good money. The club now has a reputation for this; we could probably sign some young thruster, big him up to the nines, and punt him for a profit whether he was any good or not if we had a mind to. We’ve gotten very good at finding these kind of talents and the world knows it. That’s a good skillset to have. It’s a good reputation to get.
Sevco thinks you send scouts to games until you get lucky, or that you can rely on one man and his knowledge of the lower leagues. As if no-one else is looking there, as if there’s an undiscovered superstar toiling away in some English seaside town, just waiting to be found.
As I said in an earlier piece, we didn’t luck onto Moussa Dembele; we knew exactly what we were getting with that kid. This wasn’t a punt. This wasn’t a “develop him and move him on” signing. We knew we were getting a top player, that was the point. His talent was obvious to everyone looking. We moved fast and sold our club like crazy … it’s as simple as that. We didn’t discover this kid. We were ruthless in pursuit of him.
In the coming window, Sevco will probably try to move on some of their players. If they don’t already know this they will be astounded – horrified – at how little these footballers are worth. I’ve watched Martyn Waghorn, and there’s nothing there at all. He’s a big guy who can play a certain role.
Watch Moussa in the same position; his first touch is exquisite. He can turn with the ball. His close control is exceptional. He is cool under pressure. When he wants to he can turn on the speed as well. He could play just as well behind a striker as he does in the lone slot.
Waghorn is a one dimensional footballer who scored a hatful of goals in the Scottish second tier, and many of them were from the penalty spot. The plan was to “develop” him into a multi-million pound player, him and Tavernier. But these two have come as far as they are going to go. They’re ordinary players in an ordinary squad, and even if they were more than that Warburton has no idea how to make them better, and that’s the simple truth.
Part of the problem is that he’s English.
That’s not me being cheeky or controversial. Let me explain.
Warburton comes from a football culture that prizes certain physical attributes and skills. They’ve created a prototype player down there, but it’s no secret that English players don’t move abroad or that their national team grossly underachieves. Their league setup is huge, which reflects their population, which is why they can turn out good footballers in great numbers … but I would ask you to consider who the last really exceptional English player was?
Warburton’s philosophy is based on an English system, and that system does not turn out the kind of technically gifted players that you can develop and sell on. Neither does the Scottish system, which is why so few of our players scale the heights anymore. God knows they used to. But so many clubs now focus on the wrong things, first amongst them being pure brute strength. Look around the leagues north and south of the border, they are full of big, brutal, super-fit blood and thunder players … who have no ball skills whatsoever.
Those skills are not to be underestimated … but they are no match for pace and close control and vision and awareness, which is why continental players frequently take them apart. Moussa’s skills were developed in France. The longer he stayed in England the quicker he’d have gone backwards as a player. Only in a few very exceptional cases – Luis Suarez (who was developed abroad and turned into a world class player under Brendan) and in the one UK case, Gareth Bale – have players actually found a world class level in that league instead of losing something.
Who was the last truly fantastic foreign player who moved to England at the absolute peak of his career? Most of them wait until near the end.
And is it a coincidence that the only top class English player we’ve helped to make better in the last few years was a goalkeeper?
Patrick Roberts is a rare exception, but that’s why we went for him in the first place, because he fitted the template we want rather than the UK one as a whole. It’s why I look forward to seeing what our own youth academy produces in the next few years.
Other Scottish clubs are rooting around in the English leagues too, and some of the players they’ve found have enhanced their teams, but the penny hasn’t dropped yet that it’s not working, that none of those teams is near challenging us, and in fact none has even significantly got ahead of the others. Sevco thinks that amidst all that there are gems, the sort you can sell on for £5 million, but if there are how come Aberdeen or Hearts or St Johnstone haven’t ever “lucked” onto one of them? It’s not as if they haven’t been doing the same thing?
The foreign markets are where you find these guys and for that you need more than just Mark Warburton’s contact book of the lower leagues of England. You find these guys in Holland and Spain and Germany and, most notably, in countries like Norway, Finland, Belgium and Eastern Europe. These guys are out there, in those places, but you need the personnel in place to give you that preliminary heads-up so you can go and look.
And you need people on the ground who know what’s what. There’s no point in you sending scouts to watch some young kid only to find out Inter Milan were there the week before you and there’s already a verbal agreement in place.
Sevco’s strategy is a shambles because like everything else that’s happening over there it hasn’t been thought through at all.
The plan was to sign a bunch of young players who could be polished and then sold on for profit; look at their team. Who in it would you take for our subs bench? Go one step further; would Aberdeen have signed Kranjcar? Would guys like Holt, like Windass, like Forrester, even get in their side if McLean, Jack, McGinn and Hayes were fit?
Back when Sevco was formed they had a plan, or they told us they did anyway. It was to develop young players from their own academy system. They ditched that idea almost as soon as they could, to bring in guys like Sandaza, Ian Black and Kevin Kyle and under Warburton it has, if anything, got worse as he’s brought in over 20 players in two years.
This is making it up as you go along.
Watch the window in January. Players will be leaving Ibrox, but not for the kind of money they were hoping for when they signed these guys. That strategy is dead in the water, and the most astounding proof of it is in Moussa Dembele, a player whose transfer market value is, at the moment, greater than that of their entire first team squad.
And it’s still rising.