by From Despair To Where? »
26 Dec 2007 11:25
I find it increadible that Sunderland have no basic scouting structure. Surely that's a key part of the brick by brick approach that JM advocates. It's already costing Sunderland millions to not have one. It's the difference between spending £78,000 on an unknown striker from a minor European League and spending £5.5m on an average Championship striker.
I think we're following in the steps of Man Utd and Arsenal, scouting for young foreign talent. Stick a foreign youngster in your academy at the age of 16 and should uncle Sepp introduce quotas, he'll have gone through a Britsih academy system and be classed as British by the time he's 20. Ok, were not picking up Spaniards, Frenchmen or Italians but by concentrating on places like Iceland and Bulgaria, for a relatively small outlay, we could be uncovering the next Eidur Gudjohnssen or Hristo Stoichkov, meanwhile, Sunderland will be spending £3m on an average Championship defender because they don't know any better.