The next morning, I called a meeting with the club's head of scouting, a man named Tim Allen. He was a seasoned, seen-it-all-before scout in his late fifties, with a weary face and skeptical eyes.
He had been at the club for fifteen years, had served under a dozen different managers, and had seen more than his fair share of false dawns. He was, in other words, a man who was difficult to impress.
I didn't try. I just handed him a printed, multi-page dossier. It was a reformatted, anonymized version of the System's report. It didn't name a single player. But it detailed, in excruciating detail, the exact profiles I wanted.
"I need a deep-lying playmaker," I said, my voice calm and firm.
