Re: Broomfield
I agree with this, but I actually think we already have a pretty excellent set of scouts. No one's is going to be perfect, but if you look at the players we've signed since Pleat was brought in by Sugar, given the wages and transfers we've spent, we've actually done really well in the transfer market. Pleat gets a lot of brick, but a lot of the players we signed under Arnesen were players we'd followed, once Pleat revamped our scouting in the early 2000's
Not sure this follows really. The Pleat era was also pretty much the entire Graham and Hoddle era (and a bit of Gross). Not many success stories in the transfer market over that period! And those that were, were very much established premiership players: Kanoute, Sheringham, Ziege, Keane, Poyet...Sherwood (at a push!). On the flip side, you've got Ben Thatcher, Perry, Leonhardsen, Rebrov, Freund, Richards, Postiga, Toda, Bunji, Redknapp, Acimovic, Blondel, Korsten.... I don't see much value there! To be fair, I'm not sure how much of that can actually be blamed on Pleat. Most of his supporters spent that era denying he had anything to do with most signings, apart from a grudging acceptance that Andy Booth on loan under Graham was properly his recommendation!
As for the players signed under Arnesen that had been 'followed' before - isn't that a bit of coincidence? We never signed that quality under Pleat for 6 years but he leaves and we do? Which just suggests to me that he was actually part of the problem. There is nothing to say those players would have signed had Pleat stayed. In fact, the opposite is true. Many others of a similar ilk had slipped through the net over the Pleat years despite the fact we were 'following' them. What is to say the same wouldn't have happened with Lennon, Huddlestone etc? I really couldn't give a toss about following. That should be par for the course for a club like Spurs. It is getting it done that is key and Pleat didn't. Except when the clubs we were meant to be competing with didn't want them, ie Etherington, Davies, Doherty, McEwan... can't think why they weren't interested! Hilarious, at the time, that we thought Pleat had landed a load of stars for the future for a knock down price.... and in the end, it was only thanks to Simon Davies that we didn't make a loss on them!