Chief Scout Important?

[Joey Numbaz]

I posted this to the stupid questions thread, but realized this probably doesn't apply as "tactics or training". Reposting here.

If you set your own scouting assignments do you need a Chief Scout? Is this role only cosmetic otherwise? Does it matter who you put there if you set your own assignments in terms of how he's rated? Does it matter if he's local to the country of your club?

[grasu]

I can't fully answer your question, but why would you not use a chief scout? He can tell you what players to scout, where to focus your scouting, when to cancel some assignments, etc. What's more, in all of my games I can get at least 1 very good scout that I could otherwise not afford by offering him a chief scout position. 

I really can't see any benefits of NOT using a chief scout as much as possible.

[XaW]

To me a Chief Scout are a DoF light. If I don't plan om using a DoF I often get a Chief Scout to take care of the scouting reports and setting assignments if I can't be bothered. If I do use a DoF, I often think of the role as an extra scout. It might be that I've missed something, but that's my general use of the role.

[gunner86]

They're also pretty handy at helping to unsettle transfer targets if sent to watch your "Top Target"

[Joey Numbaz]

Thanks guys that helps. I do use a Director of Football. I was mainly wondering if it was important to have my best scout in the Chief Scout role, I definitely agree on using one, since it's considered a separate line item on the list of positions I'm allowed to fill. My Director of Football suggests the scouting targets, etc. I was just wondering the specifics of the role.

I try to set my scouts up in a hierarchy, since I've got 26 of them, plus the DoF. And I try to mostly sign young (U18) players now that I've stabilized the first team.

I have the best scouts set up as "Cross Checkers" who go out and follow up on the best prospects the "Associate Scouts" find, the Cross Checkers scout them to 100%. Typically one Cross Checker for every four or five Associates, set up regionally. Since I'm in England I mainly scout EU countries.

Then the Director of Football and/or one Special Assignment Scout follows up on anyone before I sign them, or older players who might get signed straight to the first team. I think it makes most sense to make the Special Assignment Scout the Chief Scout based on what you guys are saying. The Special Assignment Scout also scouts players outside the EU or Americas if needed.

This all came up because I realized my current Chief Scout was making a ton of money and I figured I could probably save money and reorganize it some. Which made me think why not figure out what a Chief Scout actually does.

I even set up an org chart, maybe it will help some others manage their scouting teams, especially in England with the Work Permit restrictions. I've put together some pretty incredible U18 and U23 teams the last few years, I've found a lot of really good young players. Each box basically represents a scout. The cross checkers also roam their regions when not following up on players.

 

Edited September 28, 2017 by Joey Numbaz

[gunner86]

57 minutes ago, Joey Numbaz said:

Thanks guys that helps. I do use a Director of Football. I was mainly wondering if it was important to have my best scout in the Chief Scout role, I definitely agree on using one, since it's considered a separate line item on the list of positions I'm allowed to fill. My Director of Football suggests the scouting targets, etc. I was just wondering the specifics of the role.

I try to set my scouts up in a hierarchy, since I've got 26 of them, plus the DoF. And I try to mostly sign young (U18) players now that I've stabilized the first team.

I have the best scouts set up as "Cross Checkers" who go out and follow up on the best prospects the "Associate Scouts" find, the Cross Checkers scout them to 100%. Typically one Cross Checker for every four or five Associates, set up regionally. Since I'm in England I mainly scout EU countries.

Then the Director of Football and/or one Special Assignment Scout follows up on anyone before I sign them, or older players who might get signed straight to the first team. I think it makes most sense to make the Special Assignment Scout the Chief Scout based on what you guys are saying. The Special Assignment Scout also scouts players outside the EU or Americas if needed.

This all came up because I realized my current Chief Scout was making a ton of money and I figured I could probably save money and reorganize it some. Which made me think why not figure out what a Chief Scout actually does.

I even set up an org chart, maybe it will help some others manage their scouting teams, especially in England with the Work Permit restrictions. I've put together some pretty incredible U18 and U23 teams the last few years, I've found a lot of really good young players. Each box basically represents a scout. The cross checkers also roam their regions when not following up on players.

 

Please, please, please; do us all a favour and post this in the wishlist thread. This for me, is how scouting should work in game, as it is probably one of the most realistic models I've seen

[Joey Numbaz]

Sure ... what's the whitelist thread? :-)

Since I am going for mostly U18s, I basically modeled it off of how Major League Baseball teams set up their Amateur scouting. If I wanted to be more realistic, I could probably take a few of the scouts and make them what MLB calls "Professional" scouts and have them scouting the Premier/Championship Leagues, and the big European leagues as well.

Edited September 28, 2017 by Joey Numbaz

[gunner86]

4 minutes ago, Joey Numbaz said:

Sure ... what's the whitelist thread? :-)

Since I am going for mostly U18s, I basically modeled it off of how Major League Baseball teams set up their Amateur scouting. If I wanted to be more realistic, I could probably take a few of the scouts and make them what MLB calls "Professional" scouts and have them scouting the Premier/Championship Leagues, and the big European leagues as well.

https://community.sigames.com/forum/353-football-manager-feature-requests/

Not so much a thread anymore (used to be, still not used to change) - but a sub forum, but I'd create a thread in there.

Hopefully something they can look at for FM, as scouting right now doesn't feel.... quite right

[Joey Numbaz]

Sure, I can do that.

Another thing I'd like to see is templates for scout assignments. I send my scouts on two different assignments in each country. First I look for very specific players, minimum standards in each of 14 different attributes along with at least a 4 star potential. Anyone who hits that criteria is generally worth scouting, as long as they don't have a terrible personality, or a major weakness that somehow snuck through those categories. Then I send the scouts back out, with no attribute restrictions, looking for 4.5 star potential, which catches good prospects that might just miss on one attribute or something.

It would be great to be able to just click a list and have the template (or templates) for the scouting assignment with the ratings pre-set each time. Then I can just change the scout/country, etc. But having to click all of the categories, and update the minimum ratings each time I set an assignment is very time-consuming. Once I've done it for each scout and each country they scout I can restart the assignment, but with 26 scouts, it's *a lot* of time invested.

[Joey Numbaz]

Here's a link to the wishlist post you asked me to create. A little more explanation there too. Also, I was short coffee this morning and called "Area" scouts "Associate" scouts in my original post. Whoops. Associate scouts are generally unpaid types who are trying to become a paid scout someday, or coach youth/college teams, etc. who give tips and reports to Area scouts.

[Columnarius]

@Joey Numbaz

I do something similar but I've never really thought of my cross-checker scouts as tied to a given region.  I sign associate scouts with knowledge in the country (countries) they are sent to scout.

But once they uncover a player who *might* have 4 1/2 or 5 stars in potential, I just send any of my cross-checker scouts with high attributes in Scouting Potential Ability.

I ask because according to my experience and documentation like this, the club's "Scouting Knowledge" for the country along with the quality of the coach scouting  the player is what appears to maximize the chance of reaching 100% knowledge for a player.

Meaning that it doesn't matter what the scout's knowledge level of the country of the player being scouted is with regards to how effective that particular scout is at scouting that particular player.

Have you noticed that scouts with a higher scouting knowledge of the country of the player being scouted are more effective at reaching 100% player knowledge when scouting a given player?

Edited September 29, 2017 by Columnarius

[Joey Numbaz]

Missed this post back in September @Columnarius. That's great info and good to know! Thanks for sharing.

On 9/28/2017 at 23:59, Columnarius said:

Have you noticed that scouts with a higher scouting knowledge of the country of the player being scouted are more effective at reaching 100% player knowledge when scouting a given player?

I have not really paid that much attention ... the assignment always says "100 days" but it rarely takes that long to get the, 'has now acquired full knowledge" email.

[Joey Numbaz]

One other question, does knowledge of the country the player is playing in, or knowledge of the country he is from 'count'?

So if I scout a Polish kid who is playing in Spain, do I want my scout who knows Poland to scout him, or my scout that knows Spain?

[Columnarius]

2 hours ago, Joey Numbaz said:

One other question, does knowledge of the country the player is playing in, or knowledge of the country he is from 'count'?

So if I scout a Polish kid who is playing in Spain, do I want my scout who knows Poland to scout him, or my scout that knows Spain?

As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter - its just the club's knowledge (not the individual scout's knowledge) of the country he's playing in (Spain) and the ability of the Scout assigned to scout him.

Edited October 9, 2017 by Columnarius

[mrdanbartlett]

Great thread!

 

I usually work hard on the scouting side too, and in a similar way to how you do it.  Ideally I tend to have a scout on permanent duty for the main leagues in the big EU countries (plus Arg and Bra) - plus the same for the reserves/u23, and u18 leagues within those countries.   Then I have a few more doing the u19 international tournaments etc.

I set it to min 3.5 star potential, however I never set any other requirements (for attributes or such).

I then assign scouts to scout the players who look promising.

However my question is......when a scout is scouting a league the report he returns pretty much looks the same each time, why do they not start to develop a better knowledge of the players in the league they are scouting?  

If I was to set more detailed requirements would that start to happen?  

Hope that makes sense!

[samdiatmh]

Minimum 3.5* potential is what's tripping you up there

Most people can tell you who the brightest talents in a particular league is, which is why you're getting the same type of players each time (heck, everyone knows Aguero is a 3.5* [most likely better] PL player)
Personally, I prefer them to scout a specific country, and then filter it down from there

 

Unfortunately, you can't set it as "under" a certain current ability, so you'll have to weed out the Aguero's from the Pellegri's (the young star from Genoa)
Which I think would be useful for the players that are "projects" so you can loan them out and develop them, rather than rely on the academy

Edited October 10, 2017 by samdiatmh

[Joey Numbaz]

On 10/9/2017 at 16:45, Columnarius said:

As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter - its just the club's knowledge (not the individual scout's knowledge) of the country he's playing in (Spain) and the ability of the Scout assigned to scout him.

Thanks!

[vigourtortoise]

Hey I know this post is old, but this layout you have for organizing your scouts is fascinating to me. I recently started a Norwich save and the board's all about me finding young players, so I wanted to know if you still thought a setup like this was advisable for scout organization and if you have refined your system at all? Also, what do you look for in those scouts? Just player ability, player potential, adaptability, determination? Is there anything else? Finally (and sorry for all of the questions) what are the minimum acceptable values for all of these things? I have such a hard time finding more than one or two scouts at a time with high numbers in some of these areas, never mind all of them. Thanks!

[Joey Numbaz]

@vigourtortoise Just saw this, sorry for the delayed reply.

On 08/10/2020 at 11:44, vigourtortoise said:

so I wanted to know if you still thought a setup like this was advisable for scout organization and if you have refined your system at all?

I think it could work, sure! One nice thing if you have a big staff is that you'll get experts in each country/region over time.

On 08/10/2020 at 11:44, vigourtortoise said:

Also, what do you look for in those scouts?

Just high JPA, JPP, and adaptability if they are going to be needed in a country where they don't have knowledge. I guess determination is important too, but I have no idea if it really makes any difference.

I love it have a scout or two with knowledge of a ton of countries, even if they don't have the best ratings. Which leads to

On 08/10/2020 at 11:44, vigourtortoise said:

what are the minimum acceptable values for all of these things?

The best I can find! I care much more about JPA and JPP than anything else. The others are basically tiebreakers. And I try to find scouts with knowledge of different countries. I manage Everton pretty much exclusively so I can get pretty good scouts in fairly quickly. In the early going, since I play without first window transfer budget, I can only look for free agent scouts, since I can't pay the compensation.

I am finishing up the 2024-25 season now, and I have 25 scouts + the chief scout. I look for good man management in my chief scout as well as getting as close to 20/20 as possible.

The worst scout is I have is 15/16, but look at his knowledge.

 

I have three 20/20, one 20/19 (+ DoF is 20/19), two 20/18, two 19/19, one 18/20, three 18/19, two 18/18, etc.

I have a 16/18 but he knows all of this:

As for the setup, to save time, I don't really do it the old manual way anymore.

I let the Chief Scout run the assignments, and then I set the focuses up:

General is

And I set up repeating short term focuses:

I do them for 2 months at a time and every time they say they are done, I just restart it. I think I have 10 scouts assigned to the Europe focus and 3 to the UK. These help me spot players early. I get a TON of reports. I have it set to have a scouting meeting every 5 reports and nearly every other day I have 5-12 players to review in the meeting, but again I have 25 scouts.

I have a no Brexit save this year, so it doesn't do a ton of good to have a specific short term focus for youth from South/North America since they can't get work permits when they are cheap.

I don't know how efficient the Chief Scout is at getting the scouts to the right countries, etc. but it seems to be working.

I don't bother looking at anyone less than at least 4 stars (which is really 3-4 stars as a minimum). What's the point? I want to sign players who could some day start.

I will spend extra money to make my U18 teams better though. Like if I have a gap somewhere I'll sign an "organizational player" who will never play for me but costs like £1 million or something just to make sure that team is good (and my future U23 teams). That keeps them playing in the youth cups, etc. which gets everyone competitive experience, since I rarely loan out my good prospects.

I try to win EVERYTHING. All of the youth competitions, etc. So I micromanage those lineups. That's drifting out of scouting some, but you do need to scout some decent cheap youth to round out those teams. Even with State of the Art Youth Facilities, great HoYD etc. the academy can't do it all.

[yorkie87]

Really good thread. I’ve been looking through to find some advice on how thorough the countries are scouted if I delegate the assignments to someone? Would it take too long if I were to do the assignments myself to make sure most countries were covered? What’s your advice please?

[Joey Numbaz]

Hi @yorkie87 I would think you could definitely do better if you set the assignments up yourself. You started from scratch it takes awhile to get a scout full knowledge of a country, I would guess 2 seasons maybe? But I've never really looked at that that closely. Also not sure of how quickly it degrades once he's not scouting that country.

The time investment would be in the initial set up, once you get it rolling you could just restart the assignments once they are finished. So you tell John Doe to scout the country or countries you want him to scout for the max number of months, then just restart when it's over (you get an email that says the assignment is finished with a "restart" button at the bottom.

 

 

[yorkie87]

On 24/11/2020 at 01:47, Joey Numbaz said:

Hi @yorkie87 I would think you could definitely do better if you set the assignments up yourself. You started from scratch it takes awhile to get a scout full knowledge of a country, I would guess 2 seasons maybe? But I've never really looked at that that closely. Also not sure of how quickly it degrades once he's not scouting that country.

The time investment would be in the initial set up, once you get it rolling you could just restart the assignments once they are finished. So you tell John Doe to scout the country or countries you want him to scout for the max number of months, then just restart when it's over (you get an email that says the assignment is finished with a "restart" button at the bottom.

 

 

Hi @Joey Numbaz,thanks for your help. Would you put a limit on the time you send a scout to country for then? I tried it and the scout was there the whole season. He had full knowledge of the country too. I’m thinking of going with your set up of the pic you provided where you have some scouting regions and some on specific countries. But not if it takes them over a season to scout 1 country. 

[vigourtortoise]

@Joey Numbaz I just noticed that you replied to my reply almost two months ago, sorry not to notice and say thank you for your response! I've been kind of modeling my scouting system on yours. I've slowly worked my way up to 18 scouts, and have set mine up somewhat differently. Since I didn't have the bandwidth for regional heads, I just utilized one of my best scouts to serve as overall checker, not sure how perfectly it works considering he doesn't have specialties in every country, but figured it was better than nothing. Then for the remainder of my scouts, as you originally suggested, I focused on adaptability (or at least a diversity of country specialties) and tried to sign new scouts with different nation specializations off the bat.

One thing I do think that I have done differently is that I have been focusing on sending my scouts to scout only a collection of competitions in their country, so they'll end up scouting something like : U19s, U23s, U19 Champion Cup, Youth Cup, etc. My thought being that they will be looking purely at the potential youth stars that I might target so there's a higher likelihood that they'll notice someone interesting. Do you think this is a bad system or that there is a higher chance that I'm going to miss out on interesting options this way? Thank you again for the idea of how you set up your network.