Town CEO Mark Ashton has been speaking about the appointment of the club’s new head of recruitment, Sam Williams, and more generally on how scouting will work at Portman Road.
Speaking in a podcast with TWTD and Blue Monday, which can be watched in full below, Ashton was asked about Williams, who will join the club on April 11th from his current role as a first-team recruitment analyst and academy scout at Manchester United, having previously worked at Bolton Wanderers and Sheffield Wednesday.
"A very, very bright individual with a very high level of IQ,” Ashton said of Williams. "It’s a role that we’ve been looking to fill since I joined the football club. These people are very hard to find, the real good ones are hard to find.
"We’ve interviewed six, seven, eight, probably more people in regards to this role. [assistant manager] Martyn Pert has got right in the middle of this and has been really supportive because having worked with Martyn historically he knows what we’re looking for, he knows the type of individual that we’re looking for.
"Sam was someone who was recommended to us, both Kieran and Martyn knew of him at Manchester United, they didn’t work with him on a daily basis, but we’ve got really good relationships with the likes of [technical chief scout] Mick Court at United, who Martyn, Rollsy [director of performance Andy Rolls] and I have worked with historically, who vouched for him.
"We interviewed him a number of times and to persuade him to leave potentially the biggest club on the planet and come to us and be part of this journey I think is a real coup. He’ll be joining in the next couple of weeks.”
Scouting these days is as much about data and software as it is taking in game after game live and Ashton believes the two should work in tandem.
"It’s a fine line, for me it’s always a balance,” he said. "There’s a balance between the objective and the subjective. Some of the things that the data shows now are incredible and the modern coach, the modern manager, the modern recruitment team have got to understand data.
"I think you’re moving away now from scouts that either can do one or the other. The majority of upcoming new breed of scouts do both, and they understand both. And it’s check and balance on both sides.
"I’ve said this time and time again, my method of operation hasn’t changed and won’t change. Any player that comes into the first-team environment is signed-off by the manager.
"You can’t put a player in there that the manager’s not happy with, it just doesn’t work like that.
"But we never get to that point because the manager is involved in the process from the start.
"So if there’s a reason that the manager isn’t keen on a player that’s on a list or part of the process, it comes out much earlier than when you get to the deal end side of it.
"You really have got this balance between objective and subjective. We use data a lot but we use traditional eyes on the players just as much.
"I think one of the things that Covid has done has pushed video scouting a lot more because people couldn’t get to games.
"They’re watching the games but doing the same analysis on screen. We’re doing more of that now but we’ve still got just as many people going out to watch games.
"Martyn Pert, every time there’s a game, he’s out at that game, [head of analysis] Charlie [Turnbull]’s out at games, [director of football operations] Gary Probert’s out at games, they’re all out.
"But they’re watching the players that they’ve done work on, so there’s a real process behind it.”
Brexit has limited the scope for clubs, certainly at League One level, to sign players from Europe and Ashton says Town have looked into the situation in detail.
"We’ve done a helluva lot of work on this with our legal teams as well so we understand the Brexit rules and we’re clear on what can recruit and where are the more effective territories to be in,” he said.
"I go back to Martyn Pert, Martyn has a lot of relationships overseas and we’re using those. So do I, so does [chief operating officer] Luke Werhun, so does Gary Probert.
"We use our relationships in those key territories but it’s much easier when [manager] Kieran [McKenna]’s very specific on what he wants because we can match them up through the data, we can match them up through the scouting, match them up through trusted sources. We’ll be looking far and wide, that’s for sure.”
He added: "Kieran has really good humour, by the way. I talk to him in recruitment meetings and say, ‘So Kieran, do you want us to recruit to a five [at the back], to a three, to a 4-4-2? What do you want us to recruit to?’.
"He says, ‘Well, we’re really four and a half, Mark. That’s what we are with the way Wes plays’.
"I said, ‘You can’t go and tell our recruitment team to go and recruit to a four and a half, that’s never going to work!’”