Football Recruitment Analysis – The Importance Of ‘Knowing Who You Are’ As A Club

Player recruitment in football is never an easy process.

Even if you are recruiting for a club at the top level of the game and can choose from an almost unlimited pool of players, certain limitations still make the process more difficult.

Lets take Liverpool as an example.

With the exception of players at maybe two or three clubs, Liverpool is able to attract players from anywhere in the footballing world.

This does not mean, however, that there are no limitations in place on Liverpool in the market.

While almost any player would welcome the opportunity to play for the English club, very few meet the criteria.

To play for Liverpool, a player needs to be able to play at a certain standard and to be the correct age and position to meet the clubs impressive succession plan.

From a pool of thousands, we then come down to a pool of players around the 100 mark, and within that, the criteria will reduce the pool of potential players even more.

If we flip the spotlight slightly but remain in the top flight of England and consider the available player pool for a team like Brighton, then the picture is perhaps different; arguably, those 100 or so players that Liverpool could potentially target will be out of reach for Brighton.

The tier of players at the next level down, where Brighton could realistically shop, is much broader, though, with more variation and the potential to find a bargain.

My examples above may be a little facetious, though, as Liverpool have consistently shown themselves capable of recruiting from outside their apparent pool of available players and making interesting signings.

We saw this previously with the signings of Andrew Robertson and Georginio Wijnaldum, both of whom came from relegated clubs, and now with the signings of Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz.

I would argue, however, that Liverpool has developed its recruitment process to the point that it is now identifying and signing players who could be in that tier of 100 or so players. It has the bravery and trust in the process to sign players from outside the obvious market.

Liverpool is generally held up as an excellent example of a club that knows who it is from a footballing perspective and understands how to translate that information into a cohesive recruitment strategy.

What do we mean by this, though?

Lets take a closer look using two teams in the French top-tier as examples.

When recruiting players for the first-team level at any club, several important factors must be understood.

Firstly, what does our current squad look like? If we have three players capable of playing right-back, then that position is not a priority, while if we have only one recognised centre-forward, then that position becomes one that we have to look at closely.

What does our squad look like regarding player ages and contract lengths? Are there positions in which we have ageing players who have expiring contracts? If so then we need to put some work in there.

Then how are we performing and what do the budgets look like?

All of the above makes sense, right?

But what about the style of play and general tendencies?

For this, we can rely on what is verbalised in the media.

Coaches will say they want their team to keep the ball on the ground and work the ball into the area to create chances.

But does this kind of language actually match what we see on the pitch?

As we often do, we can use data to explain exactly a teams style of play.

As part of this case study, we will examine two clubs in the French top flight, Rennes and Lorient, and show how we would recruit a striker based on their performance on the pitch.

Lets start with Rennes.

Here we have a simple radar plot containing several key metrics in the games attacking and passing/ball progression sides plotted to show Rennes output and the league average for the French top-flight.

I should point out that this radar does not capture the specific metrics that I would use at my current club, but it does provide an interesting example.

The first thing to note is that when looking at the ball progr