How does a transfer work?

The summer transfer window has become a frenzy of excitement and impatience, a three-month stretch where titles and survival can be decided before a ball is kicked.

But the business of transfer dealings remains out of reach for fans, a guessing game where transparency is close to nothing.

So, how does it work?

From the scouting to the signing, we take you through the anatomy of a transfer, told by those on the inside…

The scouting

A manager’s success can hinge on his scouts, and the process is not taken lightly. While the time between an approach for a player and him signing can be days, everything that goes before can take months, even years.

“Scouts are out there in all weathers, at all times,” says Michael Calvin, author of The Nowhere Men, the story of football’s talent spotters. “The ones at 1am driving down the M1 with a pork pie in one hand and the wheel in the other. They get 40p a mile, that’s all.”

Speaking on The Footballers’ Football Show in 2013, Calvin revealed how David Moyes would want 50 lengthy reports on top targets written between 10 and 12 scouts while at Everton.

“Moyes has what he calls his ‘MOT checklist’ which is up to about 12 criteria for each position in an optimum situation,” Calvin said. “He has around about 5,000 reports on about 1,000 players.”

A game of Football Manager this is not. Footballing ability comes first but is sometimes only half the reason a player is approached, and scouts have been known to bin a recommendation purely on poor body language in a warm-up or when celebrating a goal.

MK Dons boss Karl Robinson told Sky Bet’s Art of Scouting series: “There’s no good scout who has only watched 10 games and knows what they’re doing, I can promise you that.

“I trust them myself to do the large parts of it, and I just go to the end and hopefully tick the boxes.”

A Premier League club will have around 10 to 15 scouts in total, but a chief scout’s bond with the manager will be as strong as any at the club during transfer activity, a clear shared vision of what they are looking for, the same common goal.

Thousands of miles, thousands of games, thousands not fitting the bill. Is there an easier way?

Most clubs use statistical databases parallel to a pool of scouts; Prozone, WyScout, Scout7, DataScout, even a souped-up version of Football Manager, but will computers ever fully replace pen, paper and a scout pass?

Scout Mel Johnson told the Art of Scouting series: “You must go to games, you must have gut instinct, you cannot have that watching a game on a laptop, it is impossible.”

Even camera views can influence perception, as Sky Sports’ Gary Neville explained to Graham Hunter in his Big Interview: “A lot of people watch the game, but don’t see the game.

“When we do Monday Night Football, we use the boot room camera, the bird’s-eye view of the pitch. That’s how a manager would look at the game.”

The enquiry

Scouts utilised, player targeted. What next? More digging. “We phone the manager and ask, we get a background on him, we phone an agent and find out what his personality is like,” says Dons’ boss Robinson. 

The agent and the player will be aware of a club’s interest long before an offer goes in; rarely in modern football does a bid surprise …

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