Writing in her Sun football diary the Baroness addresses an issue over which most become very hot under the collar.
And she also points out that West Ham have seven scouts in Europe and a video analysis department.
Brady writes in the Sun “Agents and scouts are the propulsive figures. From desert sheikhdoms to Pacific atolls the obsession with football, accelerated by TV and its ladles of cash, is bringing all sorts of countries into play. Son Heung-min from South Korea scores goals for Spurs while Marko Arnautovic was tempted to leave West Ham because a Chinese club were dangling wads of Yuan. This is not necessarily all good, clean fun but, unless if breaks the law it is no use complaining. After all, my club does plenty of scouting abroad and it would be a dereliction of our duty not to. We have a director of football who has set up a system which employs seven scouts in Europe.
And I mustn’t forget our video unit, people who scan tapes of prospective footballers, delivered in hundreds every week.
The attraction of football really is eye-popping.”
Claret and Hugh Opinion:
For the transfer market to work, players must be scouted and enticed away from other clubs to join West Ham. It works both ways, sometimes agents try to turn the heads of our players to join another club like the case of Marko Arnautovic to China while at other times it agents who do the head turning on behalf of West Ham. I am sure no Lazio fan wanted to let Felipe Anderson go and probably resent Premier League clubs coming in to steal their best players. Agents are a necessarily evil and here to stay. It is all a game of swings and roundabouts.