With many of our transfer targets this year being players from overseas, i feel this is a big year for our head of recruitment.
I know for a fact many of last year's domestic transfers were initiated by either Viviesh's knowledge on players whom he had either worked with our against whilst at Chelsea. Others from our league i also know Robins has known and been after for a while (Fadz, Godden etc.)
Chris Badlans role was previously head of European Scouting at Norwich, where i anticipate he has built up a huge personal database on overseas players and reading his piece on Kastaneer at the time shows how much influence he has in transfers, and puts together clips to persuade Robins to buy certain players.
'He shouldn't be in L1' - Lowdown on new Sky Blue signing
"Effectively, he shouldn’t really be playing in League One, he should be playing higher.
"He’s one where I know his agent really well and rang him up expecting him to tell me ‘no, we’re not interested because we’re going a lot higher.’
“But it was one of those phone calls where if you don’t buy a ticket, you don’t win the lottery. So it just materialised.
“I spoke to Mark Robins about him. He’s a player we have known for a long time and I just thought I’d call the agent to see if it was realistic before pushing it any further and we found out that, potentially, it could happen.
Gervane Kastaneer has signed for Coventry City from Dutch side NAC Breda
“So we sat down with the manager and watched lots of things on him and the manager explained the type of player he wanted and Gervane ticked all of those boxes and more, really.
“So the manager said, ‘yes, that’s the type of player we want to bring to the club to elevate it to the next level,’ so we then pushed it forward to try to get the deal done quickly."
Of course not all transfers are a success, and we ultimately had a successful season last season. However with the jury still out on Jobello and Kastaneer, i feel Hamer and DaCosta are likely Badlan's recruitment and sourcing. It is imperative that these players are a success in order to see us improve next season.
It really shows how key Badlan's recruitment needs to be this year.
I know for a fact many of last year's domestic transfers were initiated by either Viviesh's knowledge on players whom he had either worked with our against whilst at Chelsea. Others from our league i also know Robins has known and been after for a while (Fadz, Godden etc.)
Chris Badlans role was previously head of European Scouting at Norwich, where i anticipate he has built up a huge personal database on overseas players and reading his piece on Kastaneer at the time shows how much influence he has in transfers, and puts together clips to persuade Robins to buy certain players.
'He shouldn't be in L1' - Lowdown on new Sky Blue signing
"Effectively, he shouldn’t really be playing in League One, he should be playing higher.
"He’s one where I know his agent really well and rang him up expecting him to tell me ‘no, we’re not interested because we’re going a lot higher.’
“But it was one of those phone calls where if you don’t buy a ticket, you don’t win the lottery. So it just materialised.
“I spoke to Mark Robins about him. He’s a player we have known for a long time and I just thought I’d call the agent to see if it was realistic before pushing it any further and we found out that, potentially, it could happen.
Gervane Kastaneer has signed for Coventry City from Dutch side NAC Breda
“So we sat down with the manager and watched lots of things on him and the manager explained the type of player he wanted and Gervane ticked all of those boxes and more, really.
“So the manager said, ‘yes, that’s the type of player we want to bring to the club to elevate it to the next level,’ so we then pushed it forward to try to get the deal done quickly."
Of course not all transfers are a success, and we ultimately had a successful season last season. However with the jury still out on Jobello and Kastaneer, i feel Hamer and DaCosta are likely Badlan's recruitment and sourcing. It is imperative that these players are a success in order to see us improve next season.
It really shows how key Badlan's recruitment needs to be this year.