Gillingham to ditch 'old-school' transfer approach
· Yahoo Sports
Gillingham's American owner Brad Galinson wants the League Two club to place greater emphasis on analytics in their recruitment this summer.
The Gills have slumped to four successive defeats and are marooned in mid-table in League Two after what Galinson admits has been a frustrating season.
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But he is hoping some smart recruitment will turn Gillingham into a promotion-chasing team next season.
To make sure the club get their transfers right he has ordered a modernisation programme.
"We have good scouts. We have a good network of people that can watch players and watching players is important but it's a bit old school," said Galinson.
"The thing that we've been missing - and this summer will be the first time when we really jump on it - is the analytics side of it.
"There's so many systems now where over thousands of minutes they can see movements and they can see strengths and weaknesses of players. You see physicality now. You can see speed. You can see top speed. You can see distance.
"What we've done is we've relied on old school - 'I know this guy who knows a guy who saw him play one match and he looks really good'.
"The problem with that is the probability of success is a lot lower than when you combine that with 2,000 minutes of analytics.
"This summer, which is the first time we can really significantly recruit, we are aggressively merging those two.
"We've been definitely remiss and very weak at that."
Galinson, and wife Shannon, took over the club midway through the 2022-23 season and their investment helped to keep the club in the league.
But having gone through four managers since then in Neil Harris, Stephen Clemence, Mark Bonner and John Coleman, he remains convinced Gareth Ainsworth and assistant Richard Dobson are the right men to oversee the rebuild.
"This is not a leadership issue," added Galinson. "They inherited a squad that had a certain purpose and they need time to switch that squad.
"It takes time and you have to be patient. I have no doubt about these guys."