I’ve said it before, I think Freedman is a bit lazy. His go to sources are his old celt mates in Scotland and Ireland or he simply looks at the best players one league down. Very rarely do we stray into leagues where you and I wouldn’t know the up and coming players.

I’m pretty sure I could watch all the championship matches on tv and identify who are the best players. Trouble is with that policy, is we tend to pay too much money and we never seem to pick up bargains.

If you look at the Scottish and Irish buys, this is where we are exhibiting more risk with lower price youngsters, but none have made their way through into the first team as yet, so is this really working? I’m willing to give this side of it another season or two to bring players through, but to be honest he’s now had a substantial period of time to get it right and there hasn’t been anyone of note other than an English lad (AWB) and I’m not sure what influence Freedman had in that deal.

I'm kind of ok with the Scottish and Irish kids. We obviously have a youth scout in Ireland, that is sending some lads our way. Hopefully 1 or 2 develop, but its a relatively low risk strategy.

As you mentioned, my bigger issue with scouting is our first team buys, all IMO recently are good. But didnt take a top class scout to scout. EE, MO, MG all standout performers in the Champ. Its the equivalent of someone scouting Zaha when we were in the championship, the football press have labeled him as the next best thing.

So if we have 1 youth scout in Ireland, another watching Championship highlights. What's the rest of the function doing?