New head of European scouting

[JUAN PABLO]

I thought we had employed the German film director for a moment .

But its not quite Michael Haneke

[JJ-AV]

Sounds very promising indeed. Could be the best signing of the Summer.

[Summers]

Fantastic.

[paul_e]

As much as I dislike the club, Man Utd have achieved great success over a long period of time by using almost exactly this approach.

Apart from the quite obvious "ohh He's good, I want him" way they do a massive amount of their transfers see Young, Berbatov, Jones, Carrick, Rooney, Yorke, Valencia, Tevez, Cole, Van Nistelrooy + Many more.

All clubs will have signings like that, a scouting network isn't to find those players, that's why the manager should have no part of it.

[Smoke]

As much as I dislike the club, Man Utd have achieved great success over a long period of time by using almost exactly this approach.

Apart from the quite obvious "ohh He's good, I want him" way they do a massive amount of their transfers see Young, Berbatov, Jones, Carrick, Rooney, Yorke, Valencia, Tevez, Cole, Van Nistelrooy + Many more.

All clubs will have signings like that, a scouting network isn't to find those players, that's why the manager should have no part of it.

Fair Point.

[London Villan]

Another thing that was mentioned in the SCG was how Villa now identify potential transfer targets. They look players across the globe who meet certain criteria... ie age, number of games player per season (it wasn't mentioned, but I bet price comes into this too). This list is constantly evolving as you would expect. What is re-assuring is that when Lambert came in some of the names at the top of his wanted list were at the top of Villa's list.

[Salsa Party Animal]

So when are we going to appoint Head of South America Scouting

[eamonn]

I would love to know which players he discovered I think we will be the English premiership version of Bayern Munich eventually.

Always bottling it in the finals of the European Cup to English sides? Fuck that...

Seriously though, if he does as good a job as Alan Carr's daddy has at Noocassil we'll be laughing.

[PaulWinch again]

Sounds good, this is exactly the direction we should be heading.

[Karlos96]

I think this is fantastic and great to see the club moving in the right direction.  This could be our most important signing of the summer.

[LeeB]

As ever the proof of the pudding will be in the eating but I like what he has said there, reinforcing Lambert's view about players needing to have the right character.

A point he kept making last night.

[Irish villain]

Just seen that.  Sounds like another step in the right direction.

My thoughts entirely.

[gervilla]

This is about as far removed we could get from the days of MON.

[not3bad]

Young, Berbatov, Jones, Carrick, Rooney, Yorke, Valencia, Tevez, Cole, Van Nistelrooy

... Van Persie...

[seanthevillan]

Interesting in that Henke's career to date has mainly been made up of co-trainer positions, apart from that he was the sporting director at a smaller club for one season and statistical analyst at Bayern for one year.

Getting a coach who has worked with the two biggest clubs in Germany to be our scout seems like quite a big coup, anyone else think this might be leaning towards a kind of sporting director role?