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Newcastle’s new head of recruitment Steve Nickson tells a story about scouting a match that pretty neatly sums up his scouting philosophy.

“We ask our scouts to do things a little differently. It can feel contradictory to the technical side of things, to be honest,” he says.

“It might be an under-12 ‘keeper who comes for a cross in a sea of bodies and misses it completely. For me, the question is whether he comes the second, third or fourth time.

“Maybe a scout who doesn’t think the way I’m asking them to has already written him off. ‘He can’t come for crosses’ – there, he’s killed him. But you have to think of the process for that young player. If he’s only 11 or 12 and he’s got the attitude to come out again and again and he gets it right the next time you’d think ‘I can work with him’. I’d at least say ‘go and look at him again’.

“We’re challenging our scouts. We want to look at what desire or what commitment they have. You might see someone who has fantastic talent and relies on it – he peaks at 16 or 17 but can’t go on from there because he’s never been challenged. But we want them in our first team.

“It’s the ones with the character traits who will allow them to get better, to get them out of their comfort zone we want. We want to get the ones who will work well when they’re put under a bit of pressure or challenged – which will inevitably come – and show that desire to improve and push the envelope.

“Look at the Neville brothers. Perhaps they weren’t the best but they had a very good mentality. They were a talent that whispered rather than shouted – they probably were a bit of a slow burner and could have slipped off the radar. But they got better and better and better.”

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

They are illuminating words that cut to the heart of what the relatively unknown Nickson is all about.

United’s new head of recruitment is a hard-working Lancastrian who has pioneered work in how scouts can identify and quantify “character” – something, he says, all managers and coaches want to know about when they are taking briefings from their scouting departments.

“A lot of recruitment is done with the naked eye,” he told the Scout7 podcast in 2014. “But when you speak to a lot of coaches and people in the game there’s a consistent that runs through and that is about attitude and character.”

You can listen to the Scout7 podcast here

The problem was that scouts watching a game might be trained to look for certain things that don’t necessarily reflect that character. His example of the goalkeeper dropping a cross and being instantly written off was pertinent in his role in recruitment for the Academy at Newcastle and Blackburn.

At Newcastle, he has been part of the training process with Academy scouts. They are told to look beyond a player’s physical skill or talent to get clues about their character: that’s pyschometric tests or interviews for the older lads. For the younger ones, the scouts are told to watch for how they react in adversity – when the game is going against them, a bad refereeing decision has their team up against it or they have made a mistake. It is these At some point the talented kids will be challenged, he reasons – can they react?

(Image: Newcastle United)

It’s an interesting issue and one that will come to dominate scouting and Academy work in the coming years. Sensing that Nickson wanted to take it even further. Why was so much talent being lost in the system, he wondered? It is a problem many familiar with Newcastle United down the ages will recognise.

His conclusion was that while all the players in the Academy system had talent, their ability to adapt and improve was not a given. So he went out and researched performance psychology and devised a psychological profiling model to identify and address mental deficiencies in a player’s make-up.

Nickson was at the cutting edge of this stuff, working with Tony Faulkner – the head of medicine at Blackburn and a former colleague. They have toured sporting institutions around the world – including American universities and the Premier League itself – presenting their findings and promoting a model that intends to plug some of the gaps that Academy prospects fall through.

It is this interest in character and thirst for knowledge that has helped him work with Benitez, a former school teacher who retains that love of learning.

Benitez has always wanted to recruit men as much as footballers. His first tranche of recruits last summer had – virtually to a man – taken the path least travelled to the top. He wanted players with the right mentality to fit into the culture he was creating. Nickson, given his background in the mental side of the game, instinctively understands that.

The pair got on well when Benitez was holding meetings with the Academy and it was little surprise that he was given a chance – despite some talk of bringing in a figure like Frank McParland, Nottingham Forest’s current chief scout but a former confidante of Benitez’s from Liverpool.

Benitez wanted to streamline and simplify the power lines. There was too much politics, history and confusion when Graham Carr – good though he is at his job – remains.

Those familiar with United’s scouting operations have told how at times last season, Nickson and Carr were sometimes dispatching scouts to the same game. Carr having his base in Northampton – within a few hours of France, Belgium and Holland – suited the club perfectly when they were extensively mining those markets but a change in focus probably required a slightly different approach.

Nickson’s title – head of recruitment rather than Chief Scout – is also an interesting change. It implies he will head up recruitment across the entire club – under-23s and the senior set-up – rather than the jobs being split.

Those in scouting circles speak highly of the Lancashire-born talent spotter. “Honest”, “engaging” and “prepared to challenge people” were three of the character references on the circuit, where Nickson is well-known for 15 years of work in recruitment – first with Blackburn’s Academy before moving to Newcastle in 2011 to escape the Venky’s-inspired chaos that saw Steve Kean over-promoted to the manager’s role at Ewood Park.

Before then, Blackburn were a model of probity and their Academy – hardly helped by being on the doorstep of the two Manchester clubs, Liverpool, Everton and the rest of the North West heavyweights – generally punched above its weight.

At Newcastle, Nickson’s three biggest finds have been Rolando Aarons, Kevin Mbabu and – most notably – Ayoze Perez. All three were scouted for the under-23s but found a fast-track to the first team and it is Perez’s case that has probably convinced United’s powerbrokers of his readiness for the senior role.

Plenty had looked at Perez before Newcastle sent, among others, Norman Wooster to watch him. Nickson was the prime advocate in taking a chance on Perez, who was seen as too lightweight by other clubs and by Carr too. When he arrived for his medical, he looked skinny and there was fretting about whether he would be able to cope with the physical side of the Premier League.

But Nickson’s work on mental strength and character probably helped tip the balance in Perez’s favour. The way he responded to being a leader at Tenerife; the battle to forge a professional career after early setbacks: all convinced the United spotter he could do a job. Within months he was in the first team and he’s been around it ever since. Aarons will get more chances while Mbabu, sold to Young Boys in the summer, raised a transfer fee.

There is a bigger job to be done at Newcastle as Benitez simplifies the scouting pathway. Although Nickson’s new job is a major promotion he will not have anything like the influence Carr – a de-facto Sporting Director for a period – had. Benitez will take a major role in recruitment, using his own contacts and influence to identify and persuade potential players.

(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)

He also retains an influential lieutenant in the form of Owen Brown, the razor-sharp Scouser who has worked with Benitez for a long time and continues to advise him at St James’ Park. Officially his role remains undefined but he’s everything from advisor to a sounding board for the manager. A former assistant chief scout at Liverpool under Benitez, he has excellent contacts and his advice and influence on the recruitment front will surely continue.

Nickson’s appointment has been derided by some as evidence of the club doing things on the cheap but Benitez has been fairly consistent in his belief that talent already on the club’s books should be encouraged. He retained Dr Paul Catterson when it looked as if he would be a victim of the club’s poor injury record – now he is flourishing in a new culture.

Benitez wants more investment and numbers in the department, for sure, but he will give the existing staff chances. For example, Newcastle have Alex Smailes, Liverpool’s former North East scout and the man who recommended Andy Carroll and Jordan Henderson to the club, on their books.

In an era where Manchester United have 25 head scouts covering every region on the globe – and six scouting ‘bosses’ doing the equivalent of what Nickson does – there is work to do to reconfigure the scouting for the 21st century. But there is talent there: not least Nickson, who deserves this promotion.