Most Clubs Do Not Fail in the Transfer Market. They Fail Before the Shortlist.
Most clubs do not lose control of recruitment on transfer deadline day. They lose control months earlier, when nobody has defined what the team is supposed to become.
By the time a shortlist reaches the sporting director, a lot of the important work should already be done. The club should know how it wants to play, what types of players fit that model, where the academy connects to the first team, and how decisions are made when pressure arrives.
When that work is missing, recruitment becomes personality-led. One coach wants one profile. The next coach wants another. Agents fill the silence. Data is used to justify decisions that were already emotional. The squad slowly loses logic.
Recruitment should be a system, not a reaction
The transfer market rewards clubs that know exactly what they are looking for before the window opens. That does not mean every signing is predictable or risk-free. It means the club has a repeatable way of moving from football idea to player profile to shortlist to decision.
The best recruitment departments are not just asking: is this player good? They are asking a better question: good for what?
1. Define the game model before the player
A clear game model gives recruitment a target. Without it, a club can only describe players in generic language: strong, quick, technical, experienced, young, proven. Those words are too vague to build a squad.
The football idea should answer practical questions. How do we build attacks? Where do we want to recover the ball? What type of distances do our defenders need to defend? What does our number six need to solve under pressure? What kind of forward makes the rest of the team better?
Once those answers are clear, recruitment stops being a search for good players in general and becomes a search for players who solve specific football problems.
2. Connect the academy to the first team
A pathway is not a slogan. It is a set of shared principles, staff habits, language, and development benchmarks that make the jump from academy football to senior football less random.
Youth teams do not need to copy the first team in every detail. They do need to prepare players for the same destination. If the first team requires full-backs to invert, centre-backs to defend large spaces, or midfielders to receive under pressure, the academy should be developing those actions before the player reaches the senior squad.
This matters for recruitment because the academy changes the market need. A club with a real pathway can decide which positions to buy, which to develop, and where to create succession plans years before a crisis appears.
3. Build position profiles before player names
A shortlist should not begin with names. It should begin with role profiles. The profile is the bridge between the game model and the market.
For each position, the club should define technical actions, tactical decisions, physical demands, psychological requirements, age range, contract logic, wage range, and resale logic. Only then should scouting and data teams start building the list.
This protects the club from the most common recruitment mistake: liking a player before knowing whether the role actually exists.
4. Use data and scouting together
Data should not replace scouting. Scouting should not ignore data. They answer different parts of the same question.
Data is excellent at finding patterns, surfacing hidden names, comparing output across markets, and challenging bias. Scouting is essential for context: role, body language, tactical responsibility, adaptability, training behaviour, and whether the numbers are transferable.
The weakness is not data or scouting. The weakness is when they operate as separate departments that meet only at the end. A modern process should make them argue early, refine the profile together, and reduce uncertainty before the decision reaches ownership.
5. Create decisions that survive coach changes
A football club cannot rebuild its recruitment logic every time the head coach changes. The coach is vital, but the club has to own the long-term direction.
That means every major signing should pass through a decision process: strategic need, role profile, market scan, data screen, live scouting, financial model, character references, medical risk, and final football fit. The process does not remove judgement. It improves the quality of judgement.
Good process is not bureaucracy. It is protection against panic.
A simple diagnostic for clubs
Before the next window, a club should be able to answer these questions clearly:
- What is our football identity, and which parts are non-negotiable?
- Which academy players are genuinely on a first-team pathway?
- Which positions need a role profile before we discuss names?
- Where do data and scouting disagree, and what does that disagreement teach us?
- If the head coach changed tomorrow, which recruitment decisions would still make sense?
The real transfer edge
The real transfer edge is rarely one magic player. It is the ability to make better football decisions repeatedly.
A club with clear identity, academy alignment, role profiles, integrated data and scouting, and a durable decision process will still make mistakes. Every club does. But its mistakes will be smaller, easier to learn from, and less likely to destroy the squad plan.
The best clubs do not just buy talent. They build repeatable football decisions.