Player Recruitment: Using Current Ability (Man Utd)

This is the original way to buy players and strengthen teams. You literally look at your team, see where the lowest stars are on the assistant report. You then use the scout reports to target players with better current ability stars. It’s as simple as that, and in the past it has worked. Has it worked this time around though?

This is an easy way to identify strengths and weaknesses in the team. I use it at basic ground level to create the frameworks for formations and tactics. The downside to using this approach is that your staff can be wrong. They can get it badly wrong on the grading of players. As well as that you can get a little over enthusiastic in replacing players that your squad is too good. As a result this then makes player unhappy as they are not getting the playing time.

Without further ado, read on to find out how we got on with this recruitment style.

The new Man Utd team

So the first thing with this style of recruitment is that the players you are looking at are ready made and as a result they are more expensive. The good news these players are ready to go, in their peak and may have already won things.

In the book Soccernomics, there is some research that players aged 20-22 are 18% cheaper than players aged 25-28. This is because they have not hit their peak yet.

To my surprise there are a lot of players who can fill the void at Man Utd. I mainly stick to the top 6 leagues in Europe, due to how competitive they are. With current ability they are all measured the same, so it doesn’t matter so much where they are playing. The big difference here though, you need great scouts who can be accurate with their data.

As you can see, we have had quite the clear out. I am pretty ruthless with the youth teams, and it seems to pay off. Anyone under a 2.5 star potential rating is gone, no point wasting your time.

Man Utd Results

So, this is where it gets interesting. We are half way through the season, I have bought a couple of players I have never bought before and spent most of my budget on a handful of players my scouts say are great.

It is an amazing start, I don’t think anyone can take that away. Top of the EPL, top of the Champions League group, are the biggest achievements. We are in the semis of the Carabao cup, and won the UEFA Super Cup. The FA Cup has just started too. To say that I am positive about this season is an understatement.

Conclusion

Buying players in peak form has really paid off. Once you look at the finances, we have bought less players and the ones we have bought are on huge wages and have cost more. This just drives home the point that teams with bigger wage budgets tend to win more, because they are players who have hit their peak.

In terms of problems, there are no fundamental problems with the team. I think the way forward for this squad now is to manage the squad across a number of different competitions while keeping up performance. It is a balancing act, but this something Alex Ferguson done really well.

I think we can look at improving this recruitment style now. We will look at the best scouts available and add as many as we can to cover more ground. Also we need to look at covering more ground, by having scouts either from or based in every corner of the globe.

I will continue with the season and blog about it, but overall this is looking good.

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