Falling down a Michael Kayode rabbit hole

Welcome to the revamped SCOUTED Stats newsletter: Rabbit Hole.

For readers who never made it to the end of Monday Night SCOUTED, I start each week by abusing Stathead to find the under-23 single-game stat leaders across as many leagues as possible. We add these prospects to the SCOUTED database and, hopefully, your radar.

I guess this is a branch of data scouting. It’s certainly not complicated; anyone can do it. But if you don't have time, I'm cutting out the middle man.

By reading Rabbit Hole each week, I hope you will build a subconscious awareness of these prospects so that if or when they appear in the mainstream, your brain will send a signal to jolt you into life. "Wait, I’ve actually heard of this guy," you'll think, and then you'll try to remember where, and you'll realise: “ah, yeah, I saw him on SCOUTED." Fingers crossed, anyway.

This newsletter is a demonstration of how my brain processes all the data I parse. It should be very obvious when I have fallen down a… wait for it… Rabbit Hole, and I hope you enjoy tumbling down them as much as I do. We might just find the next generation of footballers having a tea party.

Whether it’s collating a list of names to scout on FM26 or building your own shortlist to investigate further, this is the jumping off point. I love it. I hope you do too.