Roy Clark Quotes

The key for scouting is trying to predict when the player is peaking.

An agent won't help you get drafted higher, won't make you win more games, and won't make you faster or stronger. They all say they can, but the people who do the drafting don't talk to agents. They talk to coaches, they watch film, they talk to the people who've worked with players. They don't talk to agents.

Obviously, drafts sometimes are good ones, or bad ones; I think you can get a good, quality player late in the lottery.

One of the things I noticed more in this draft than in any recent drafts was the importance of the character issue. Players who had baggage, like Justice, fell much farther than his talent dictated. But a lot of coaches didn't want to take the chance.

Judging ballplayers and turning in reports, giving my opinion of who will get to the big leagues and who will not... I think my baseball judgment was really good.

All of us that have teams want to pick the right people. I've thought a lot about that. In the NFL, we've got 13 scouts traveling the country. We're trying to pick 22 year-olds coming out of college who will be successful in the NFL. It's very hard to do. What I've learned is it's always character first.

I think I could take a job as an NFL scout.

So many guys come onto the scene who aren't supposed to be there. You pull for one, and then you see there's another and another and another, and you start to say, 'Who cares where a player was drafted? He can play football, and he can play at this level.'

I think a lot of personnel decisions come down to who's the best player today, like if we had to throw 'em in a game today versus what could their upside be 18 months from now. A lot of times, those are two different answers. That's the difficulty of player personnel.

You could have a player that gave you some iffiness but his talent would make a real contribution, but you had to have an overwhelming base of players so you know exactly what you had.

I think there's a danger in letting someone else shape how you're going to approach a player. Every person has somebody who's going to say something negative about them, you know? If you pay attention to all that stuff instead of seeing it for your own eyes, you can miss out on some opportunities.

When you're a general manager, you don't get to see every single player, so you have to rely on your scouts.

There is a specific mentality that is put into the young players at Barcelona, and from nine or 10 years old, you have to make good seasons because, if not, you are out.

I think the hardest part, and where we have to stay the most disciplined, as much as you want a player, you can't invent him if he doesn't exist.

We're always trying to evolve and find more efficient ways, more fluent ways to evaluate our players, evaluate our opponent and evaluate our prospects.

Perception is a big thing in football and people need to be more careful about how they choose to perceive young players in the first instance.

You look at the NBA: there's all these young kids that are drafted on potential. They go to bad teams, they're in bad locker rooms, and now we got this analytics stuff that doesn't teach kids how to play. We've got these workout coaches that don't teach kids how to play basketball.

When a scout recommends a brilliant right back or a coach recommends one from our academy, we want the manager to weigh up what is right for the team.

I've got a good set of eyeballs on me, so I can spot talent.

There is a big emphasis at Liverpool to have an academy that brings through young players.

Like any year, any year with any team, you're always going to look to the draft to help strengthen your roster and free agency.

My job is to bring in players I think can help this team, regardless of where they're playing.

Whether it's drafting or player development, the ultimate is putting a team together.

Don't worry too much on pathways programs: good players find a way to get through to play for their country.

I used to have a log on every corner in the league, what their strengths and weaknesses are.