Player Scouting Quotes

I think the teams know more than I do in the sense of where I'd best fit. I might be a bit of a unique personality, so hopefully they can pick me apart, and if a team really feels that I'm their guy, hopefully they'll go and get me.

How did Mike Bibby get on the team? Any Cub Scout with Boy Scouts can do Boy Scoutish things. When Bibby was in the Cub Scouts, he was a Cub Scout. When he was with Vancouver, nobody heard about him. Now that he's with Sacramento... he's on the team. I ain't going.

Americans are analytical in their sports, which are very stop-start, so the numbers tend to add up. That's why Moneyball works for baseball. It doesn't work so well for football because it's a fluid game.

When I was at Liverpool, I asked about Van Dijk when he was at Groningen and then at Celtic. But I was told he wouldn't be for us at the time. Van Dijk could have jumped from Celtic to a Liverpool.

Fantasy sports went a long way toward developing the sabermetrics formulas used not only by oddsmakers but general managers in hiring players. So the amateur fantasists ended up creating some of the algorithms that Oakland GM Billy Bean's statisticians used to win games with less salary money available for star players.

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.'

At West Ham, I was never able to buy the top-flight players. It was a case of looking around, trying to do deals. I was always taking a gamble.

Ajax have a set model, a defined youth programme - Barcelona have one too, and Juventus. And Atletico Madrid do too. Real Madrid don't - because they alternate developing their own players with signing talent.

In the NFL you get one first-round draft pick if you're lucky. You couldn't really outwork anybody else. In college I could recruit ten players with first-round talent every year.

General managers - I like to talk about the 'golden gut': general managers that not only can have a sense for the players that are going to perform beyond what people expect and get team chemistry right, but they also have to be able to make trades.

I've enjoyed my time in the game, whether it be managing Luton in the top flight, taking Spurs to Wembley or, as director of football, pinpointing players such as Jermain Defoe, Paul Robinson and Robbie Keane with real sell-on value.

Sometimes it takes a few years to land that special player.

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

Once you identify positional needs, then I think, then, what you do is, you be very selective on how you go about acquiring those players. You have to look at the resources available on how to acquire those players, and then, if you can, go acquire those assets that can best help this team get over the hump.

Carlo Ancelotti wanted me in Madrid and had bet on me.

I wouldn't want to go out six nights a week and watch somebody's reserves playing to check out a footballer to see if we're going to buy him.

The scouts are watching matches and we have a huge amount of data we purchase and a pyramid approach in terms of delivering that information to our chief scout and his team who are assessing it.

You can look at stats as much as you want - and we do - but you can have too much of it. You can spend too much time looking at computers rather than looking at the real thing which is out there on the pitch. I still think that being a good judge of players is the most important thing.

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.

I don't really like the business side of football, but I just like adding good players to our football team.

You have expectations always when you buy players. Mostly, you have positive expectations.

I've always been able to stay focused on trying to recruit good players and trying to develop those players.

If I have an idea of football, and I am the manager, it doesn't make sense for the club to find players with a different profile.

A winning model would mean trying to get the best possible players that you can, at whatever age they are; it doesn't matter.

I think the way City spends, I would say it's a lot of money. But they spend it in a responsible way. They attract good players, young players and they cost a lot of money.