The big interview: Mile after mile on the road, 2,000 reports a season and data-laden laptops ... Rob Scott and Rotherham United's recruitment process

I’ve just asked Rob Scott how many matches he goes to in a season and Rotherham United’s head of recruitment is giving his reply.

‘Loads’ turns out to be around four a week, up to 200 during a single campaign. And he has three full-time staff, all covering different regions of the UK, putting in similar mileage as they submit a combined 2,000 reports a year on potential targets.

“If there are games on, the recruitment team go to them, it’s as simple as that,” he says. “The scouts are there to watch one, two, three, four players. They will also watch three or four games a day on video.

“My role is to put the players forward to the management team when the scouts have done enough favourable reports on them.”

The pair of us are talking in early May, 12 days after promotion from League One and a week before the club begin their summer activity with the capture of striker Conor Washington.

It’s the busiest time of the year for the man who, since his appointment in April 2019, has been instrumental in the signings of Chiedozie Ogbene, Dan Barlaser, Jamie Lindsay, Viktor Johansson, Josh Vickers, Wes Harding, Shane Ferguson Ollie Rathbone, Angus MacDonald, Georgie Kelly and all of the arrivals since our interview.

He and first-team boss Paul Warne have worked together to finalise profiles of ideal Millers players.

“We have them for every position,” Scott says. “They’re based on things like physicality, athleticism and technique and there are psychological and social aspects as well.

“I talk to the manager every day. Recruitment is always bubbling away under the surface — you keep in contact with agents outside of the transfer windows to monitor where you are —  but it heightens at this time of year. May to the end of August is pretty hectic.

“The volume of communication goes through the roof. I’ve noticed an upturn in the amount of agents who are contacting us. It’s not difficult to work out why: it’s because we’re in the Championship.”

The Epsom-born 48-year-old made his name as a talent-spotter with Brentford and Watford before becoming Warne’s main man. His business in this window so far has met with fans’ approval but striking those deals is rarely straightforward.

“Say you need a wing-back, you might speak to seven or eight players and maybe make offers to three of them,” he says.

“You put an offer to your top target and if it’s turned down you move on to your second target and so on. It’s very rare you decide you really like a player and a move just happens.”

On the morning we meet, Scott has yet to put the finishing touches to the office he’s just acquired on the top floor at AESSEAL New York Stadium so we’re sitting across from each other in the media suite.

His managing of his department is forensic in its attention to detail. “I’d like to think that if I got given the name of a player today two of our scouts would have already have watched him and logged reports at least once each,” he says. “I would then get another report done on them the next time they play.”

He and his staff work to scouting templates, rating potential targets in a variety of categories depending on the player’s position and then inputting the data into the club’s database.

“My team are brilliant. They work so hard,” he says. “I have a huge amount of trust in them.

“There’ll be ten to 15 reports on a Monday after the weekend’s games. They’re not text-heavy. I wanted an easy scoring mechanism. We have a tracking system and calculate a player’s average score over a number of reports.

“It’s almost like being the manager’s personal shopper. I put players in a certain position to him and say: ‘These are all the items you’ve asked for, you choose which one you like within that product range.”

Soon, we’re talking numbers again. As last season drew to a close, Scott and his team had a huge roll of potential recruits culled from a year of religiously filing and analysing their scouting reports.

“We then whittle that down to a list of more than 100 players and then down to about 70,” he says. “From November/December time, you’ll have started to gather information about the possibilities of getting them in.

“Some on the list are way above what we can pay but it’s very, very early in the window. It’s like selling your house. You put it on the market at maximum price but if you want to sell and someone comes in with an offer underneath that then you’ve got a decision to make.

“We’ve got plenty of plates spinning. We’ve looked at everything from permanent players on a free to permanent players for a fee. The earlier you go in, the higher the price is.”

Like many other clubs, the Millers use the Wyscout computer programme that offers videos and statistics on thousands of players but Scott is keen to advance the Millers’ personal collection of intelligence.

“I’d like an analyst to come in and create our own algorithms (software calculations) based around the profiles we’ve got,” he says. “The manager might say ‘I want a centre-forward who does this and this’ and we can put in all the data required — say, runs into the final third, expected goals, expected crosses, aerial duels.

“You can use your own data as well as Wyscout’s. You’re working smarter that way by finding players more suited to your style of play.

“I could have ten people working on a voluntary basis throwing all sorts of names at me but the amount of time it would take to go through those names would be counter-productive. You need to be more refined.

“I prefer a tight ship and that’s why I want to go further down the data side — you have a bigger reach with less people doing it.”

No matter how much the statistics add up, however, Rotherham never sign anyone who hasn’t been watched in person by Scott or one of his scouts.

“Stats and data are brilliant but not everything,” he says. “Marry them with watching the player and then you’ve got a decent platform to work from.

“The background checks start once someone of interest is confirmed. You’ll speak to players they’ve played with, coaches and managers they’ve worked with.

“You might find a really good player but then be told ‘Don’t touch them, they’re a d*ckhead’ so you leave that one alone and look elsewhere.”

He’s an assured talker, giving answers that are long on information and in length. There’s a quiet intensity about him that he breaks with flashes of self-deprecating humour.

In smart-casual black, he looks trim and athletic, like the ex-pro he is, but in his own mind he needs to shed a few pounds. “Too much junk food on the road,” he sighs.

Of all his successes, one stands out a little more than the rest: the little-known winger who has gone on to become a lethal Millers threat and a star of the Republic of Ireland international side.

“I’ve got a soft spot for Chieo,” he says. “Chieo was my first recommendation signing at Brentford. I saw him playing for Limerick and came back and said: ‘We’ve got to sign him.’

“They did and then he was one of our first signings when I came here. He fitted us better than he did Brentford.

“As a recruiter, you are probably the first person at the club a target will talk to. You have a bit of affinity with them.”

Scott moved from Fulham to the Millers as a defender in 1998 and never left the area. He lives with wife Isabel and their two children, daughter Verity, aged nine, and son Stan, two and a half, on the Woodlaithes estate near Wickersley. Even when he was employed by Brentford and Watford the family home remained in the north.

“For exactly half my life I’ve been in Rotherham,” he says. “My missus is from Sheffield. People tell me I’m a northerner and I feel like one, although I’ve kept the southern accent.

“I go down south and it’s more alien to me than the north. I know more people up here than I do down there. I like it up here. It’s friendlier. It’s home.”

Three hours in his company have flown by and he needs to get back to his work as the Millers plot a way to consolidate their new-found place in the second tier.

Suddenly I’m aware that I haven’t once heard his phone ring or ping. I’m surprised by that until he informs me he’s had it switched to ‘silent’.

He checks and there are close to a dozen missed calls. Meanwhile, the scroll of  texts and WhatsApp messages is so long it fills several screens.

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ROB Scott laughs when I tell him I’ve heard he’s anything but a ‘yes’ man.

Rotherham United’s head of recruitment has been a friend of manager Paul Warne since their Millers playing days together back at the turn of the century.

But two strong characters are known to cross swords at times when the topic of transfer targets is up for discussion.

“I’ve got an opinion,” Scott says. “You have to have an opinion in recruitment.

“If you’re just nodding your head in agreement all the time at what the man at the top wants... well, that’s okay if things are going well but if you’re still doing it when things are going wrong then how do you get to the point of changing things?

“I’m aware of what I am and, yeah, sometimes I do fall out with people. Warney’s not necessarily the confrontational type. I probably am.”

Another Rotherham figure unafraid to say what he thinks is assistant boss Richie Barker.

“I fall out with Richie more than Warney,” Scott adds. “It doesn’t come from a place of just trying to be an idiot, it’s for the best of the club. You argue your case.

“Everything that comes from my side is evidence-based. It’s forensically done — it’s data and analysis. There is an element of opinion but it’s not one person’s. I’ll ask three or four scouts to see the same player so I get a cross-section of views. Two might like him, two might not.

“That’s what the scoring system is for. Over the piece, you might have six reports on a player. If the average score hits the required mark then you have to put that player forward.”

Scott is aware that it’s his role to recommend names to Warne and that the final call rests with the manager.

He says: “I would never say to Warney: ‘You have to sign this player.’ It’s not my head on a block on a Saturday and a Tuesday.

“It’s my job to say: ‘Here’s a basketful of names with the facts and the data. Go through them, I’ll give you my opinion if you want it and if you want the opinion of another scout then ring them.’”

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ROB Scott wants to extend Rotherham United’s recruitment operation to the continent if the club can gain a foothold in the Championship.

The Millers are looking to stay in the second tier next season after three previous relegations in the last five years.

The head of their talent-spotting department believes further development of their player-data accumulation and casting their net across the North Sea is the way forward.

“We need to be using analytics as a starting point to get a bigger reach,” Scott says. “If we can become an established Championship club, we need to be looking into Holland and Belgium, ex-pats in Europe.

“We need to be looking further afield because there are better deals to be had and financially it’s more viable for us.”

Scott’s aim is to extend his workforce to include an analyst whose main role would be to monitor players abroad and compile a list of possible targets who could then be watched in person by Rotherham.

Few teams of the Millers’ size have operatives concentrating on Europe and it’s generally left to agents to approach clubs with overseas recommendations.

“That’s not how I want it to work,” Scott says.

“I’d like independent names produced by us to be coming in.”

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ROTHERHAM United’s burgeoning reputation as one of the best-run clubs in the EFL is helping them in their bid to attract new players to New York Stadium.

Under the management of Paul Warne the Millers have won three successive League One promotions and their player development has been so effective that several raw recruits have gone on to earn lucrative moves elsewhere.

At the same time, thanks to the leadership of chairman Tony Stewart, they are held up as a beacon of financial sustainability.

Head of recruitment Rob Scott says: “Agents put players to us, saying: ‘We like the style of your manager, you’re a good, settled club. We know you’re going to be fighting at the top end of League One or in the Championship, which is good. We want players to come to you and do well.’”