Scowcroft: Palace the Blueprint For Town to Follow
Tuesday, 3rd Dec 2024 13:29
James Scowcroft is a man with connections with both clubs ahead of this evening’s game between the Blues and Crystal Palace at Portman Road and the former striker believes the Eagles, where he now works as a European scout, are a club Town should look to emulate now they’re back in the Premier League.
Scowcroft, 49, came through the Blues’ youth system and went on to be part of George Burley’s side which won promotion to the Premier League in 1999/00, a season in which he was the club’s Player of the Year, and then finished fifth in the top flight and qualified for the UEFA Cup the following year.
The Bury St Edmunds-born forward was with Palace as a player between 2006 and 2009 before rejoining their recruitment team in 2018.
“You could probably say I’ve got a foot and a half in Palace’s camp and half a foot in Ipswich’s,” he told TWTD considering on tonight’s match.
“I’ve been employed for six years as a European scout and three years as a footballer, so nine years I’ve been connected with Crystal Palace, so that’s quite a connection, really.
“It is a big game, certainly from a Crystal Palace point of view, they wouldn’t have expected to be where they are in the league and they’re desperately trying to get higher up the table.
“Two very good clubs. I’ve seen Ipswich four or five times this season, all home games and apart from the Everton game, they’ve been very, very competitive in every game. I think they’ve done very well.
“I think they’ve got an unbelievably strong chance of staying up, but it’s tough. I’m not sure it’s the strongest Premier League its been this year, but from where Ipswich have been, it is a big step up and I think every single person can see that.”
Outlining how his current role at Palace came about, he said: “I used to play with Dougie Freedman and always kept in touch with him and six years ago, I spoke to him a couple of times and he approached me to come on board. Dougie had come back as the sporting director having been a manager of the club and playing for so long, an icon of the club.
“He set up a scouting department, which I’ve been part of, and that department has been excellent to work for with the knowledge that has been built up and gained.
“You look at Crystal Palace, they’ve done 11 seasons in the Premier League now, which is an incredible achievement.
“If you gave the Ipswich owners 11 years in the Premier League, they would bite your arm off, as would the Leeds Uniteds, the Norwich Citys, the Derbys.
“Crystal Palace have done it and the success they have achieved has been to battle against the odds every single season and overachieve. I think it’s one of the most overachieving clubs in football.
“I’ve seen how that’s worked and the recruitment on the whole has generally been very, very good at the club. I think Dougie deserves a lot of credit on that, I think he’s one of the smartest sporting directors around and I think [co-owner and chairman] Steve Parish sees that in him.
“Between those two, they’ve run the club very, very successfully in the last seven or eight years. Similar rise to Ipswich’s, Crystal Palace were on the verge of going down, they didn’t drop to League One but they had been in administration and might have done again.
“Steve Parish has not only saved the club, he’s put it in a position where it’s a sustainable Premier League club, which deserves a lot of credit. Together, Dougie and Steve are one of the best partnerships in the Premier League.”
He says Parish is in some ways an owner of the old school: “From day one he has managed to keep the club sustainable. It does go close to the wire, at times it does lose money, but they’ve been able to sell players at the right time to balance the books.
“When he’s needed it, he’s got a little bit of investment from the outside, but Steve Parish first and foremost is a huge Crystal Palace fan, he used to go when he was a kid, so he’s got the balance of business and that emotional connection.
“He’s one of the last of a dying breed, maybe Tony Bloom’s a Brighton fan, Steve is a home and away Crystal Palace fan and was before his business was very successful and he was able to along with others buy the club.”
Reflecting on his time as a player at Town and the multiple play-off frustrations before finally winning promotion, he recalled: “It was slow progression of heartache. The team was for four or five years there or thereabouts and then probably the last couple of years it should have got over the line and finished in the top two. Even the year we went up, we beat Charlton, who ran away with the league, home and away.
“I don’t quite know why we didn’t, I think we just fell away a little bit at the end, but we were more than good enough to get out of the league. People then had 200 games under their belt, everybody was ready for the step up and the challenge.
“It was a different Premier League then. I think the top was as good as it is now, the top was very, very good, but I think the bottom end, the gap between the Championship and the Premier League, there wasn’t much in it. I think the gap now between the Championship and the Premier League is massive.
“The bottom of the Premier League now is very strong, a lot stronger than when we were there.
“And that’s basically what happened to the club. The club tried to bridge that gap and buy players and they went down the foreign scouting road and it failed spectacularly.
“That’s one thing that we’ve done at Crystal Palace. Generally, when we’ve recruited abroad it’s been very good, when we’ve recruited in the UK it’s been very good. There have been a lot of hits.
“And that will be Ipswich Town’s next challenge if they stay up. It will be the foreign scouting road and where they buy players because you just won’t be able to afford English players, it will just be too expensive.”
He says scouting isn’t a case of one individual being behind the recruitment of a player as might have been the situation a few years ago.
“It’s a team, it’s a club, there’s not that kind of that one person is responsible for bringing in one particular player,” he said.
“It’s travel all around Europe, to numerous countries watching games, youth tournaments and everything and just building a knowledge of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of players, and putting those players forward to the club.
“The club will then see what they feel is the most natural player that they want that fits the manager and the club and the structure of the club. There’s a lot of work that goes into it, a lot of work, a lot of travel.
“A lot of my work has been based in France and what you have to do is just uncover more than other clubs do. You can’t watch enough games of football and you can’t find enough information about the players and the teams you’re watching as well.
“I think that’s the balance of work and what they uncover is very, very good. They’re very smart in how they operate.”
While plenty of Scowcroft’s time is spent looking into players on laptops, nothing replaces running the rule over them from the stands.
“When you watch a game on TV, you can see a third of the pitch, so if the full-back’s got the ball, you can’t really see what the centre-forward’s doing,” he explained. “You cannot beat going to live football.
“Other clubs have different opinions but if you’re at the game you’ll learn far, far from more than watching it on a computer. You can get an idea, you can see the basics but you’ve got to be in the ground.”
Among the players he has kept tabs on over the years was Blues midfielder Jens Cajuste, who is on loan from Serie A Napoli for the season.
“I scouted Jens Cajuste, I used to go and watch him when he played for Stade Reims,” he recalled. “A standout player, I always liked him, always felt he had huge potential.
“I thought Napoli was probably a step too far for him, but I can remember watching him numerous times.
“A lot of people would have looked at him and that is the kind of area Ipswich have got to go, they’ve got to go overseas.
“You could have got him for £6 or £7 million probably a few years ago or you pay a lot more for an equivalent English player.”
Scowcroft, who moved on to Leicester at the end of the 2000/01 season ahead of the Blues’ return to Europe, has fond memories of his time at Town.
“Really good,” he said. “I’m a Suffolk boy, still based in the area, I was 11 when I went into the club and I saw it all. I was an apprentice the first year of the Premier League, which was amazing to be part of.
“And then I was lucky a few seasons later that I got my chance. I was very, very lucky I was at a club which believed in youth, that had to believe in youth, that had to play young players.
“George Burley had to sell his best player every year and I don’t think he really got the credit he deserved for having to do that. And he had to throw in a youngster to replace that best player. At times it was tough for him but it paid off.
“And also back then, George would do training and then get in his car on a Tuesday night and drive to the other end of the country and scout players, which I doubt a Premier League manager or a Championship manager now would have time to do.
“George was the hardest-working manager I’ve ever come across. I think every manager is different, everyone had different qualities and different strengths, management I don’t think is easy whatsoever.
“But I think the work and due diligence George put in and what he achieved [was a level higher than most], he was very, very highly motivated and everybody around him had to buy into George as well. Ipswich was his club, George is a big, big Ipswich man.”
With the teams going into tonight’s game in 19th in Town’s case and 17th in Palace’s, Scowcroft hopes both will pull themselves clear of the danger zone over the course of the season.
“It’s brilliant to see where Ipswich are now, it’s now a proper football club again, which it always was when I was growing up,” he said.
“And then when I first joined the club as an apprentice it was at that level, and I saw the level myself when the club was at the top tier and at the top table. It is at the top table again.
“It’ll be hard but I do generally think they’ve got enough. Injuries are a big worry for them, they’ll possibly have to strengthen in January but I hope both teams will climb higher than the situation they’re in.
“But it’s tough, you only go a few places up and there are some big, big football teams there.
“As Ipswich fans have probably learnt this year, there is not one easy game in the Premier League and sometimes the bigger games with the bigger teams might be a little bit easier than the teams around that are fighting.
“Crystal Palace is full of international football players, in the current squad they’ve got five lads who have been in the England squad. That is the level. That’s where it’s changed from 20 years ago.
“The biggest criticism of Ipswich is that it’s never established itself as a Premier League club, never been able to do it and recruitment will be the key to it, either the success or the downfall.
“It will be foreign scouting and foreign knowledge that will be the key to Ipswich in the next two or three years, a massive part of it.”
Photo: Action Images
Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
DinnernotTea added 13:38 - Dec 3
Shocked he has just half a foot in the Ipswich camp. Raised in Suffolk and this football club gave him pro football to which is why he's got his job now. My top 10 ITFC players of all time is Scowie.||
||
You need to login in order to post your comments