How managing loan players has become a scientific process
Gregor Robertson
October 7 2019, 12:01am, The Times
Were Manchester City the first club to employ a loans manager? “Probably,” says Fergal Harkin, City’s inaugural employee with that title — and Mohammed Abu, then an 18-year-old Ghanaian midfielder, was his first player. Abu was signed from Sporting Club Accra in August 2010, then immediately loaned out to the Norwegian club Stromsgodset — the first of six loans across four years and four countries for the player, now back in Norway.
“It wasn’t actually a role at the time,” Harkin recalls. “It was just: ‘That one went quite well, why don’t you continue managing the loan players?’ It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve actually got a team together. The role has completely evolved.”
Chelsea, with a similarly bulging stable of young talent, were not far behind in creating a department that now consists of a team of dedicated full-time coaches, analysts, player welfare officers and physiotherapists to monitor, in City’s case, 36 players across 13 countries this season.
One need only look at Gareth Southgate’s England squad to see the value of exposure to senior football on loan for Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham, to name but three — and as a result clubs throughout the Premier League and Sky Bet Championship are swiftly realising the value of looking after their players “as if they were in the building”, Harkin says.
Gone are the days when, as one Premier League loan manager and former player says, “My mum gave me 50 quid for a train to Colchester, and that was it, ‘All the best, you’re on loan,’ ” he says.
Loan managers now watch every single minute of their players’ match action, either live or on video, debrief after every game, either in person or by uploading match-footage to specially tailored apps or online platforms. They visit them at training, compile GPS and performance data which is compared with the club’s profiles for those positions — all of which is reported back to their club’s sporting or technical director.
City gather their loan squad for pre-season training and testing before they join their respective clubs. Harkin’s team meets monthly to plan their visits, which can consist of “coaches sitting down with their manager and feeding back on the performances of the player, it could be a player who’s injured, and there’s some sort of intervention that needs to be put in place,” he says.
Loans vary enormously but picking the right club is paramount and often planned six to 12 months in advance. Elite players are not short of suitors but for others, Neil Adams, Norwich City’s loan manager, says, the club tailor and distribute brochures containing their player’s video clips, data, and an invitation to clubs to come and watch or meet them.
Almost half of Norwich’s first team are beneficiaries from loan spells: Ben Godfrey spent 2017-18 at League One Shrewsbury and is now captaining Norwich in the Premier League. James Maddison, now at Leicester City, and Kenny McLean, both of whom spent time on loan at Aberdeen, and Todd Cantwell, who spent 2017-18 with Fortuna Sittard in the Dutch second division, all grew under the watchful eye of Adams. “Todd Cantwell was seeing all his contemporaries and all his team-mates going out on loan, and he was getting a little bit frustrated,” Adams recalls. “Two years ago he was quite lightweight, very good technically — if we’d have put him out to a League One or Two club, with the greatest of respect, he might have been beaten up. Todd was born in Norfolk, he’s a Norwich lad and he’s been at our academy since he was eight years old. To take him out of his comfort zone and into a foreign country was quite tough for him. The early weeks were difficult. But I was speaking to him virtually every day, going out there, watching him train, watching him play. He got into the team after a few weeks and he absolutely flew.”
A spell on loan in the Netherlands with Fortuna Sittard proved the making of Cantwell, the 21-year-old Norwich player, who has been one of the stars of their season so
Many loan managers pride themselves on building lasting relationships with the players under their watch. “I’ve known many of them since they were 14 or 15,” says Paul Brush, Tottenham Hotspur’s loans manager of five years. “So we have a trust, which is very important to me. What we discuss, we can do honestly. And I listen as much as I advise.”
“Some players can take care of themselves,” says Carl Fletcher, who was appointed Bournemouth’s loan manager in November 2018 and who counts Jermain Defoe, 36, and Asmir Begovic, 32, out on loan at Rangers and Quarabag, respectively, as part of his troop. “For some of the younger ones, though, it can be a case of having to help them find where their gas meter is when they’re renting a new property, helping them get the right food, making sure they’re living their life right outside of training. Just giving that helping hand, being a friendly voice.”
“A lot of what the boys experience when they go out on loan is new,” Harkin says. “A new country, new language, culture, different type of food. They’re often away from home for the first time, so they might suffer from homesickness. So we try to work out what the player needs, how can we support him, but also not give him too much, because he has to learn to deal with these situations throughout his football career.”
What, then, qualifies you for the role? Harkin spent 18 months on Leicester City’s books and enjoyed a career in the League of Ireland before studying for a masters in business studies at University College Dublin, then working for Nike and City’s recruitment teams. However an increasing number of familiar faces are populating the posts: Paul Konchesky at West Ham, Shola Ameobi, at Newcastle United, Carlo Cudicini and Tore Andre Flo at Chelsea, Seyi Olofinjana at Wolves, Joleon Lescott is part of City’s team of eight staff and all were appointed in the past two years.
A valid passport is a must. The week before last, David Weir, the former Rangers and Everton defender appointed Brighton & Hove Albion’s pathway development manager in July 2018, visited players in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Scotland in the space of seven days.
The profile of Brighton’s 21 players out on loan ranges from Alexis MacAllister, the highly rated Argentinian signed from Argentinos Juniors in January on loan at Boca Juniors, whom Weir has visited and closely monitors while the club work to secure the player a work permit; to Ben White, a 23-year-old defender who has been loaned to League Two Newport County, League One Peterborough United and this season has been a revelation in the Championship with Leeds United. “Part of the skill,” Weir says, “is monitoring the individual, what they need, who needs more attention than most.”
The loan market is of course big business too, with players not only being readied for their parent club’s first teams but, increasingly, for those of others. Cultivating relationships is key. For example, in 2016 Stuart Webber, then Huddersfield Town’s sporting director, signed Aaron Mooy on loan from Manchester City and they paid £10 million for him 12 months later after securing promotion to the Premier League. Angus Gunn played 51 games in goal for Norwich, whom Webber had joined, in 2017-18 on loan from City, after which he was sold to Southampton for £13.5 million.
Young players are now just as keen to venture out and experience senior football as their clubs are to develop, or display, them elsewhere. In August 2018 Crystal Palace wrote to EFL clubs offering their players on loan for free — provided they play. “At a couple of [Tottenham’s] recent under-23 games there have been over 40 scouts there,” Brush says, “and at least ten of them from abroad. And that’s before agents pushing, asking or probing places for their player to go and play.”
Another loan manager says that, increasingly, agreements are being structured with penalties — which can rise to seven figures — for clubs that fail to play their player in an agreed number of games. “It becomes so much of a business,” he says, “that some clubs would rather send a player to a club that can afford to pay a penalty, than send him to a club who can’t afford a penalty, but might develop him better.
“You see players going somewhere, not getting any game time, but they are at a club who can afford to pay a £1 million penalty clause. Some of the stories you hear are actually distasteful. What if the player just doesn’t perform? How could we expect a manager, whose job is on the line, to pick him, just because he’s scared of a penalty?”
It remains to be seen, of course, how Fifa’s plans to limit the number of loans from each club to six, seven or eight to prevent clubs stockpiling players and exploiting them for commercial gain will affect this burgeoning market but the role of the loan manager will always be the same.
“You’re just trying to improve the player, and hopefully he maximises his potential,” Harkin says. “But I think all of the clubs are putting resources into this now because they realise it is important for the players to be in a senior environment, and playing senior football, as regularly as possible.”
Players out on loan
Manchester City 36
Chelsea 28
Watford 24
Brighton & Hove Albion 20
Wolverhampton Wanderers 18
Southampton 16
Norwich City 15
Everton 14
Liverpool 14
Bournemouth 13
Sheffield United 12
Leicester City 11
Manchester United 10
Arsenal 8
Newcastle United 8
West Ham United 8
Aston Villa 7
Tottenham Hotspur 7
Crystal Palace 4
Burnley 4
Figures from transfermarkt.co.uk
