Leeds United: Mac’s expecting big things of Dowling

YEP 9/11/13
As a former chief scout himself, Brian mcDermott knows exactly what he wants from Luke Dowling for Leeds. Phil Hay reports.
Scouting in Brian McDermott’s world is as much a lifestyle as it is a career. Hours on the road, days and weeks away from home and phone calls running into the hundreds. You give yourself up to the job of unearthing rough diamonds for professional clubs.
Luke Dowling will be asked to do just that when Leeds United finalise his appointment as chief scout. The job has been a long time coming, first offered to him more than four months ago, but the remit of his post was clear from the moment McDermott floated the possibility of Dowling coming to Elland Road.
The delay in recruiting him is down to the terms of his pay-off from Blackburn Rovers, the club who sacked him earlier this year, but Dowling has been assisting McDermott in an unofficial capacity and alerted him to the availability of Dexter Blackstock last month. Leeds nipped in front of Brighton and signed Blackstock from Nottingham Forest on a three-month loan.
“It’s not sorted yet but we’re getting there,” McDermott said. “He’s working for us but his contract’s still not sorted out. Once that’s done we’ll get a good scouting structure together.”
Dowling will have a hard task-master in United’s manager, himself well-versed in the art of recruitment at Championship level.
McDermott was 38 when he became chief scout at Reading – a young age for that role at the time he says – and Dowling will join Leeds at a similar time in his life. His CV suggests that he and McDermott are chips from the same block.
Dowling was a professional player for many years, initially as a trainee at Tottenham Hotspur and later at Reading, but a knee injury forced his retirement at the age of 28. For a time he managed a non-league side in the Isthmian League in south-east England but ad hoc scouting led to a job at Wimbledon and another with Crystal Palace where Dowling became chief scout.
In the past year he has held the post of head at recruitment at both Portsmouth and Blackburn, though neither job was quite as advertised. At Fratton Park his initial task was to help remove 11 players from the wage bill of an insolvent club, four of whom moved to Leeds and Portsmouth were under a transfer embargo when he first arrived. His experience at Ewood Park was more surreal, lasting as long as the 67 days for which Michael Appleton survived as manager.
Those two spells of employment might explain why McDermott saw in Dowling – someone he knew of without knowing well – enthusiasm for an opportunity at Leeds which should prove more long-term and revolve predominantly around bringing players in, rather than forcing them out.
“He’s young, he’s hungry and he’s 30-odd years of age,” McDermott said. “He’s actually the same sort of age I was when I became chief scout at Reading. I was 38 at the time and that was quite young for a chief scout.
“But you know that in that job you’ve got to do some miles. I did hundreds of miles and hundreds of games, and I loved it. I did it for 10 years. For me it’s a young man’s job because it’s tough. You’re worked extremely hard. I know the job inside out and I know what’s required.
“I knew about Luke but I haven’t known him for long. I met him, I liked him and I could tell that he’s a grafter. If you’re not a grafter then you can’t do the job. But he is.”
Leeds were left without any discernible scouting structure after Gwyn Williams, their long-time technical director, left the club in July. Williams was once described by Ken Bates as having the “biggest contacts book in Britain.” He knew someone everywhere and tracked players in his own fashion.
Two of United’s former bosses, Neil Warnock and Simon Grayson, spoke negatively of his influence at Thorp Arch after their respective sackings, and though Williams and McDermott were naturally well-acquainted, he moved on before the start of pre-season.
Dowling was quickly identified as a suitable candidate to establish a new strategy and programme, and the process of adding him to Leeds’ backroom staff has been on-going ever since. A report in one national newspaper said Tottenham Hotspur had given thought to naming him as their technical director before turning to Franco Baldini.
One of McDermott’s most basic requirements was that he and Dowling understood each other and got on well. At Reading, McDermott’s first meeting with Steve Coppell was short and sweet – “find me some players” was all he was told – but Coppell trusted him and their relationship worked.
“In your role as chief scout, you need to be able to converse properly with the manager and have conversations on a regular basis,” McDermott said.
“Luke’s got a good personality and he needs to be able to speak to people, to find out who’s available and who’s not available. But the other thing you have to do as a scout is listen. You have to work out who knows who. You don’t necessarily have to know about a player yourself but you have to know someone who does.
“A lot of people out there have very good contacts, contacts everywhere.
“I found players who I’d never heard of myself but someone else did. I went to watch them just because of one conversation.”
The art of scouting as McDermott’s sees it is finding raw or untapped players whose value increases as their talent thrives. Jimmy Kebe was on loan in the French second division when McDermott persuaded Reading to sign him in 2008. He was central to their promotion to the Premier League in 2012 and raised a fee of around £3million when he joined Crystal Palace this summer.
McDermott said: “Chief scout is one of the best jobs in football I think – to actually find someone, see them develop and do as well as they can. Especially young lads. Matt Smith’s an example here. He’s come to us from Oldham and he’s got five goals in however many games. You watch him getting better and that’s what you want – younger players with value getting better.
“Look at our academy players too. Alex Mowatt’s come from nowhere – except he hasn’t. He’s come from our academy. It’s great to see and I’m sure that’s what the supporters want. They want to see our own players developing and getting better.”
‘No is as important as yes’ admits Luke.
In an interview earlier this year, Luke Dowling gave an overview of his methods for running a team of football scouts: “Michael Appleton and I worked together at Portsmouth and again at Blackburn.
“It wasn’t possible for him to go and watch in person all the players he wanted to sign while managing those clubs. Often the games you need to see are on the same day as your own so it’s important that I know what he wants.
“My role would be to identify players either for the first team immediately or up-and-coming ones for the long-term benefit of the club. I coordinate a team of scouts and they report back using a database such as Scout7, where there’s a scoring system to rate the players. We discuss that then present it to the manager.
“I always tell the scouts they are personal dressers for the manager. If the manager likes checks but you like stripes, you have to buy checks!
“The scout has to be a decision-maker. He has to have an opinion. Often ‘no’ is as important as ‘yes’. Just report on what you see.”

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