As part of our new ongoing series, Leicester City’s head of technical scouting Rob Mackenzie discusses the tricky business of profiling young players with limited accessible data available to analyse their performance levels.
Monday 29 September 2014 19:34, UK
In this age of analysis it’s possible for clubs to gather vast amounts of data on potential signings.
At Leicester City, the summer acquisitions of Matthew Upson, Marc Albrighton and Leandro Ulloa have been supported by statistics. But what of young players with limited games under their belt? That’s where things can become more challenging.
“The problem is that with a lot of players available for loan they have only played under-21 football so there aren’t the statistics out there for that league,” Mackenzie tells Sky Sports.
“It’s difficult at that level so first and foremost we do a biographical profile. We look at their age and what would be expected of that player by that age. Have they played a substantial number of games either in the under-21s or at competitive level?
We download full games that they’ve played in. We have a specific template that we code players with and that information isn’t available through any statistics provider.
“Have they made any youth international appearances for their country? So you’re already getting a feel for the challenges this player has had in their career and how they’ve responded to them just by looking at that.
“It’s quite frequent now for young players from the Premier League to go out to lower league clubs on loan, play a few games and they’re on their way back. You’re already thinking something might not be right there because he didn’t like that challenge or something didn’t quite work.
“So at any level right through the club we always look at the biographical profile of the player. We then when possible look to generate a statistical profile. How does he compare to our players and to other players at that level?”
With Leicester’s signing of Jack Barmby, data was at a premium. The 19-year-old has good pedigree as a Manchester United trainee and the son of former England international Nicky Barmby, but his senior football has so far been restricted to a handful of games for Hartlepool.
Limited evidence doesn’t necessarily restrict the involvement of the technical scouts, however. In fact, it requires a more labour-intensive approach to gathering the data needed to evaluate the player.
“In the case of Jack Barmby, we download full games that they’ve played in,” adds Mackenzie. “We have a specific template that we code players with and that information isn’t available through any statistics provider. We have our own subjective definitions but it’s something that means something to us.
“Jack Barmby had been on loan at Hartlepool so we obviously looked at that. We went out to watch him live in the games he’d played there as well. We looked at how he was performing in those games in comparison to our own information we had on our under-21s.”
Of course, Barmby’s father played under Nigel Pearson at Hull City and was taken onto the coaching staff by the now Leicester boss before replacing him as manager when he returned to the Midlands. That has had an influence on securing Barmby’s signing as Mackenzie acknowledges.
“Obviously, his dad worked with Nigel at Hull so I think we demonstrated a bit more of a plan here than what other clubs maybe offered him in terms of our idea about how he could progress if he came here.
“But the important thing is that even players like that where there aren’t any hardcore statistics out there, we’re still able to create profiles of players and be able to say, ‘Look, if this person comes into the building this is what we think they are capable of’.”
Signing young players remains a risk. But with planning and research that risk can be minimised.
