Swindon Town’s Head of Football, Jamie Russell, stated that he has worked hard this summer to build a detailed list of transfer targets. Town announced Mark Kennedy as its new head coach last week, but Russell stated that he has been working hard on recruitment for a long time.
The former West Bromwich Albion Head of Academy Recruitment revealed that he had developed a long list of targets for Swindon in advance of the head coach’s appointment. He stated, “[Not having a head coach] makes it harder because you are looking more and wider and doing more work to ensure that you are ready when we meet.
“When you talk about player x, we may not be able to obtain him because he is moving to League One, but we already have players y and z who have very comparable characteristics.
“It is really important that we have got an a, b, c, and d for each position and each type of player.”As Mark mentioned, we are not simply entering the young market; we are well aware of the experience that the first team requires and know exactly where it has to be strengthened.
Russell also stated that a significant amount of work had been done to establish a database of young players for possible loan movements.
He stated, “It is so difficult to judge under-21s football compared to League Two; it is so easy to have your lens focused on what an under-21s game looks like, but it can be completely unrealistic.”
“We currently have a database of current players ranging in age from under-17 to 21, as well as information on their experience.
“Building up a real holistic programme of that person so when they come in the door you know what you are getting.”Anyone can look great when they have a lot of time on the ball, but how do they look when they are under pressure? How do they view set pieces?
“We’ve built our own database thanks to some fantastic work by Baillie [Coupland, Football Operations Manager], which allows us to track players and build up a good library on a player over the course of a season.
“That means that if someone becomes available at the last second, we know if we want to take a dice roll on them, not as a main player but as someone who could be a game-changer for us.”
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