Since Barrow’s recent return to the football league, the club have been beating expectations, not only staying up each season, but growing and competing for promotion. The club are currently in the promotion race amongst the top clubs in League Two.
This season Barrow were one of the latest clubs to sign up with Scout Mission, adopting our Scout Hub platform to sit at the heart of the scouting and recruitment department’s processes. We spoke with Joe Harvey, a recruitment analyst at Barrow who has been instrumental in the club’s scouting operations.
Scout Hub allows us to pull over information from our other tools, it’s become our central hub
Scout Mission: What does your scouting and recruitment workflow look like at Barrow?
Joe Harvey: We believe in the quality of the data that we use. We partner with the guys at Statsbomb and we power our own personalised recruitment search tool using their raw data. The first step is often that custom system. We call it the Barrow Index. It allows us to quantify players based on who we are, how we play and focus in on what it means to be a Barrow player. From there, I’m personally out at live games roughly 3 times a week, and several members of the coaching staff will try and get out to games where they can too. Our Sporting Director Iain Wood gets out to lots of games where he can, and that allows us to build a real portfolio of live work. We couple together our data and live work and complement it with video work from Wyscout.
From here I’ll put together presentations to provide insight, firstly into the Sporting Director, then into the first team manager and then potentially into the ownership group who ultimately hold the keys. Our Sporting Director is the decision maker and that process works really well for the club.
Our workflow probably isn’t a million miles away from the way that most clubs around our level do things. We do still put a huge emphasis on live scouting. Anyone who’s seen Barrow play will know that we have a hard-working group of players, everyone pitches in and it’s about the team not individuals. I think when you’re analysing for recruitment you need to see first-hand how a player fits into his current team’s environment. During warm ups, throughout the game and even on the bench. I firmly believe this emphasis is a huge part of the clubs recent success on the field under the management of Pete Wild.
Scout Mission: What are your biggest challenges in scouting?
Joe Harvey: The biggest challenge for me comes in trusting your own eye. In a world where data recruitment is so easy to lean on, you can find yourself second guessing what you see. It’s far easier to fall back on the “well the data says he’s good at this” adage if something goes wrong. This removes personal responsibility. But it’s not the way to get positive results. Focusing on live scouting, trusting what your eye sees and allowing yourself to second guess what the data says is vital. Adding context to data is really important. “Player X is only doing well in this area of the game because he’s playing for Club Y who are super focused on that particular trait.” It’s going deeper and deeper, not just falling back on what the computer tells you.
It’s a far riskier endeavour, where you’re putting your neck on the line to back a certain player or not, but football is a game of risk on and off the field.
Focusing on live scouting, trusting what your eye sees and allowing yourself to second guess what the data says is vital. Adding context to data is really important.
Scout Mission: How has Scout Hub helped your recruitment team?
Joe Harvey: Scout Hub has been a great addition to our software repertoire. We needed a focal point for all of our information that everyone could get to grips with using quickly. Not everyone can use complicated, intricate systems. Coaches want information as quickly as possible and they want to use software that feels familiar and isn’t clunky. The Scout Hub platform ticks those boxes for us.
Our ability to customise the workflow, the report structure and the notification system has been key too. We’ve got a specific way we want to do things and the team at Scout Mission have been great about aiding our ability to maintain that whilst switching over to their system.
Our output of written reporting has seen an upturn as more people at the club have bought in. Over time we’re using it more and more. Of course, the cost of the software was one of its huge selling points. As so many platforms pricing is going up exponentially, the offering from Scout Hub was reasonable and workable for us as a League Two club where every penny matters.
They want to use software that feels familiar and isn’t clunky. The Scout Hub platform ticks those boxes for us.
Scout Mission: What Scout Hub feature have you found most useful?
Joe Harvey: Being able to upload documents, images and videos to players profiles and player reports has allowed us to maintain our workflow of keeping players data scouting information tied in to their live scouting information. Because Scout Hub allows us to pull over information from our other tools, it’s become our central hub and that’s all we can ask for really.
Thank you Joe for taking the time to talk to us.
If you’re a club or organisation that want to know more about Scout Mission and how we can help your scouting and recruitment operations, please get in touch and contact us.