Are clubs doing enough to psychologically analyse transfer targets?

Rigorous tactical, technical and physical examinations of incoming players doesn't seem to have extended to psychology.

A transfer strategy is arguably one of the important parts of a football club’s setup. With elite sides spending billions of pounds on players, the cost of failed recruitment can be crippling (just ask Barcelona). On the flip side, shrewd decision-making can literally be the difference between winning and losing league titles or avoiding relegation.

But despite the emphasis on data-driven recruitment - at least by clubs leading the way in the transfer market - metrics are seemingly dominated by technical, tactical and physical indicators. Psychological performance, by comparison, seems to take a back seat. The below quote, taken from an article in The Athletic which summarised Liverpool Women's transfer policy, is illustrative:

‘They (Liverpool’s coaching and backroom team) painstakingly pore over more match footage, data and videos using analytical platforms such as InStat and Wyscout. Meanwhile, the strength and conditioning coach assesses the players from a physical viewpoint...For each player, Liverpool are trying to identify a particular skill set informed by their style of play and what they demand in each position.’

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Whilst the extract doesn't explicitly exclude cognitive indicators - the 'demands' of a particular position could be defined by attributes such as focus and resilience - the inference is clear (at least to this observer). When it comes to data, the emphasis is on metrics such as 'interceptions, stopping crosses, one-v-ones, forward passes from an attacking standpoint', listed by Liverpool Women’s manager Mike Beard as examples of what his team looks for in a potential full-back.

The example isn’t intended as a critique of Liverpool Women, whose strategy (at least from the evidence presented in The Athletic article) seems to make the most of the information and resources at their disposal. It merely points to a focus that seems to exist at most clubs - and has done for some time.

Speaking in late 2021 to psychologist Geir Jordet, who has spent more than 15 years advising leading European clubs, it was notable that the Norweigan was relatively critical of the crude way in which some teams used indicators of cognitive skills, such as scanning frequency (a measure of how many times players ‘look over their shoulder’ in the 10 seconds before they receive the ball).

The statistic shows a player’s ability to visually perceive a situation – whether he or she will have time on the ball or is likely to be closed down quickly, for example – and make decisions, such as whether to make a first-time pass, control the ball or turn away from an opponent. Xavi topped the charts of players Jordet analysed, but he was conscious of clubs’ fixation on one measure of a narrow selection of cognitive skills.

“I’ve heard about clubs and people in the game who have used this research over the past 10 to 12 years, but they’re using it a little bit naively and not with enough perspective or knowledge in the way they interpret this data,” he said.

“In those cases, you can very easily interpret the data incorrectly. So, for example, one mistake that people can make is to assume that just because a player is scanning a lot, then he or she is a good scouting target.”

Shortly after speaking to Jordet, I talked to Antony Branco-Lopes, a neuropsychologist and co-founder of Spectre Biotech, whose brain imaging technology was trialed by RC Lens. He also believed that clubs were missing a trick when it came to psychologically evaluating transfer targets, referring to a Paris-based team he worked with.

“They bought a player but he was not doing well on the field and after conducting tests, we saw his sleep quality was really in the red,” he explained.

“So they talked to him and, because they knew that it was sleep quality and not anxiety or burnout or whatever, they opened up communication and he told them, ‘Yes, I have family problems and I’m not sleeping.’

“This meant they could intervene, but they could have done that before they bought the player.”

Away from the pitch, there are clubs that will conduct social media monitoring to analyse the behaviour of potential signings.

“It’s a great source of information which helps us understand people,” said ex-Wycombe Wanderers assistant manager Richard Dobson, when we chatted almost 18 months ago.

“We’ve turned players down based on their social media accounts. We look at that (a social media profile) and go, do you know what, that person doesn’t represent the values we have at Wycombe Wanderers.

“People are sometimes a little bit too quick in giving too much away [online], so what you see sometimes is the worst version of them when they’re not with you. So, they come in, they meet you with their agent and they say the right things because they want to come to your club and then you look on their social media and you realise what they’re like when they’re sat at home thinking no-one’s judging them.”

Dobson’s assertion that new signings have “been stalked like you wouldn’t believe over the last month before they are bought into the club”, while undoubtedly well-meaning, does raise an interesting question: should clubs be carrying out such assiduous monitoring of a transfer target’s social media accounts?

While football’s recruitment practices are understandably unorthodox, The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) advises employers to “avoid using information that’s on someone’s social media profile to decide whether you interview or hire them… you might be breaking the law, particularly if they did not agree to you using the information in this way or you looked at some applicants’ social media profiles, but not others.”

Nevertheless, with the game’s idiosyncrasies in mind, it’s difficult to argue with the reason for Dobson’s attention to detail: understanding a potential recruit’s mentality is crucial to developing or sustaining a positive club culture.

“There’s no way in the world that we are going to jeopardise the culture that we’ve built here by bringing in the wrong person or a bad egg or anybody that might cause us any distress,” said the current QPR coach, when discussing the environment at former club Wycombe.

“To walk through the door in the first-place players have done well and now we just want them to be themselves fully. We want them to contribute to it. They’re not here to join the ride, they’re here to contribute. They’re here to leave a legacy and to make this club a better place when they leave, whether it’s at the end of this season or whether it’s in 10 seasons’ time.”

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