Spurs on rare scouting trip to Portugal

SCOUTING TALK

Paul Mitchell revamped the Tottenham Hotspur scouting network which relied too heavily on agencies to find players that met our specified criteria.

Paulinho was reported to have been found by an agency and he seemed only to be here for the money. If you think of his style of play, the expectation was that he would b the next Frank Lampard, a late arriving goalscoring midfielder. Sadly it didn't turn out that way.

Move forward and now we have Dele Alli who looks twice the player Paulinho was, a player found by our own scouts. Mitchell appointed an Iberian scout and he spent most of his time in Spain. He has left his post. We are infrequent visitors to Portugal even though there are a few players we have been interested in.

We did however, send a scout over to watch the 6pm kick-off game between Vitória de Setúba and Sporting Braga that finished 1-1. We were not alone, Arsenal, Manchester United, Everton and Middlesbrough were also there.

There is no indication of who we were watching, but we didn't just go over there to watch a game of football for the fun of it so the trip is an interesting one. No doubt stories will emerge and it will be interesting to see what other games we are reported as attending as the Portuguese release lists of scouts attending to the press. It would be nice if that happened everywhere for us supporters.