Ibrox Director of Football Mark Allen has explained how the scouting and recruitment process works at Rangers, as reported by The Scottish Sun.
Transparency is also a key thing for supporters to see from their club.
It’s important to know who is making decisions behind the scenes on critical aspects of life at Ibrox and when it comes to recruitment, it’s great to know exactly how it all works so we can come to a more informed opinion on how good a job everyone is doing.
Mark Allen has given us that transparency and delivered a very interesting update on how players are signed at the Gers.
As quoted by The Scottish Sun, he said:
I think the most important thing for me is there’s no single point of decision. Just to qualify that: I don’t mean it’s a committee, what I mean is we bounce off each other.
There are a number of targets who are identified by the scouting department, those targets are evaluated against what we believe we need and ultimately a list is produced.
Those lists are discussed at length – looking at clips, going to watch the players, finding out as much as we can about their background.
Then we’ll sit down with a very small group and plot through the priorities and almost rank the players in terms of first preference, second preference et cetera, because you’re never convinced you’re going to get a potential target over the line.
Then ultimately myself and Steven will land on a point, and I’ll say this candidly – I will not sign a player Steven doesn’t think he’s going to play in his first team.
We have a very open environment where obviously when you’re talking about signings you’re talking in terms of wages, transfer fees etc.
So it’s invaluable, the physical input from Jordan Milsom, the coaching aspects from Tom Culshaw and Mick Beale, and Gary Mac [Gary McAllister] is obviously vastly experienced in terms of players and playing at certain levels and being able to cope with the environment.
Those are all factors in terms of looking at it for myself and Steven, and obviously Andy Scoulding plays a big part in that as the head of scouting.
It’s information that fans might have assumed prior to his interview but rarely have we seen the club open the doors and let us into the decision process and how it works.
What’s also clear is that Allen and Gerrard have a very close, functional relationship that is delivering on clear, specified goals right now when it comes to recruitment.
Taking the knowledge of all their colleagues, they are going out and getting targets the club believe can help us win trophies. We’ve committed to a strategy and hopefully next season we start to see it all pay off.