[St Charles Owl]

In a lot of ways American sports lend themselves to statistics better than football does so these sort of methods have been used over here a lot. In the NFL this week they have whats called the combine, where all the best college football players perform set physical tests in front of the pro-teams before the draft in April. I am a believer in using everything at your disposal to make a decision on a player but for me this should only be one of a few ways of assessing performance of the team or an individual player. I know Megson liked the eye test whereas Laws was more into stats, both have their place and one shouldn't be used at the expense of the other!

I do think MM started us down this track. He resurrected the scouting network and academy, key aspects for any club who wants to succeed at any level. He also made SG the head coach rather than the manager, I just don't think he wanted to spend the money to complete the project with a Director of Football and other personnel knowing he was actively looking to sell the club. Hopefully the new guys are open to more modern ideas, the days of Cloughy ranting at a player or Fergie throwing a tea cup are over, new methods need to be used to develop players and show them where they can improve. As you say MS, a lot of traditional method fans and managers will scoff at this sort of thing, but the information is there and if used correctly can improve player development/recruitment and team performance, even if it is only used at the first team level it will have an impact on the team.