Red flag

How social media monitoring can help clubs identify potential recruitment risks & dressing room friction

“Players are stalked like you wouldn’t believe over the last month before they are bought into the club…and 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.”

When I spoke to ex-Wycombe coach Richard Dobson in 2022, he spelt out the scrutiny his former employers applied when assessing potential signings.

But with advances in analytics apparent to anyone with even the mildest interest in the field, how are experts expanding the type of monitoring that Dobson was conducting three years ago?