23 Jun 2026 22 min read

The team's reflections on 25/26

Archetypes, processes, and what the boys have learnt this season

25/26 is, can you believe it, over - at least where the clubs are involved. To mark the passing of another season, I sat down with Jake Entwistle and Llew Davies to discuss how SCOUTED's processes have changed over the past ten-or-so months. What trends have they noticed? How have their ideas developed? How have they deepened the way they work together as a mini recruitment team?

Below is an edited transcript of the first half of our conversation, covering Archetypes, the rise of ball carrying, the subsequent revival of line-breaking passing, and a bunch of really fascinating insights the team have taken from the past year. It's always so interesting for me to really dig into the nuts and bolts of how they boys operate day to day, and the way they see the game - I hope you feel the same.

You can listen to the full conversation as a podcast if you prefer, available on all good providers. I thought getting these ideas down onto paper was really valuable regardless. Enjoy.

Tom Curren: “I’d like to start with some general reflections on the season as a whole — things you’ve noticed as you’ve been watching the game and going back over it. I’ve been through the stuff that we wrote during last pre-season, and early during the first few weeks of last season, to see if I could pick out any themes. And one of the things that jumped out to me immediately was that Ashwin wrote a piece called ‘Revenge of the Dribbler’ in September about how he expected ball carrying to become the vogue skill set. And then, Jake, a few weeks later you wrote about Noni Madueke going crazy against Nottingham Forest and breaking a load of carrying records.

"So I just wanted to get any general thoughts on how you’ve felt that has developed. Have you seen it reflected in the games and the data that you’re perusing over? How has it changed? Has it changed relative to your expectations?

"And then, Jake, you raised on Slack that you’d felt you’d maybe over-indexed into ball carrying. And there was something really interesting at the end of Ashwin’s analysis where he said that tracking data isn’t fully capable of capturing what a good carry can do to a defence yet. So anyway — that’s a lot of stuff — but what have you been thinking about?”

Jake Entwistle: “The point you made there — about how maybe we’ve been indexing into those type of players subconsciously, or maybe they’re the most obvious when you’re watching football — is: we’re working on a World Cup watch list that, obviously, will be out by the time this is out. And one of the subsets of the functions of a player… we’ve split the data into: moving, which is off-ball movement and being available to receive the ball; passing, obvious; physical stuff — which phase of play they’re confident in, or they appear the most in; what they do when they’re under intense pressure, high pressure; and then carrying, which is sort of a synonym or adjacent word for just having the ball. So what do you do with it when it’s at your feet?

"A lot of the metrics there are: long carries forwards; what speed are you carrying the ball at; things like that. And essentially, a lot of the players that we picked for this watch list — they were sort of middling and average and look good in some subsets of the other stuff — but nearly everyone we’ve picked is a standout in one of the carrying variants.

"Which can be: Possession — the ability to just retain the ball, hold the ball, stay on the ball. Progression — which is obviously the long carries forward. Penetration — which, for the carrying stuff, is indexed into the speed at which they do it. So you’re not just carrying the ball forward, you’re attacking the forward space at high speed, which is obviously going to offset people more quickly. And then the final one is Production — so: when you have the ball at your feet, how often does your team generate a shot from your possessions?

"So the point I was making is: in terms of it being a valuable skill set, we certainly seem to enjoy players that carry that gene, if you will. But the problem that then it raises is: yes, the tactical meta is probably conducive to seeing more of these carriers because there’s larger spaces when you do break through presses and things like that.

"But is there a danger of only focusing on this trait as something that stands out when trying to watch a match? It’s an interesting concept for scouts in general. If you’re sitting down to watch a match and you don’t have a specific player to watch, you’ve got to really train yourself not to get completely infatuated by the person that’s doing the big long carries — because that one action looks incredible, and it is effective. But there are so many more things going on in that game. Did someone move to create the space for him — and that was really clever? Was there a particular tackle or interception before that launched him onto his carry? Was the pass that found him initially clever in itself?

"So it was more, in terms of reflecting on stuff, trying to train myself — when watching games specifically — because I’m very prone to falling in love with a ball carrier. So I don’t know if you, Llew — from watching many more games than I have, and watching it from the scouting lens and trying to evaluate players and their potential — I wonder if that’s a problem, or something you have to correct yourself on at times.”

Llew Davies: “I think what you’re mentioning there is just context, isn’t it? And the context in football is ever-changing. It’s not like baseball where everything’s set. That’s the beauty of football — it’s so nuanced, so intricate. One little movement here can define a movement elsewhere, like you were mentioning. So, yeah, you’ve always got to have that in the back of your mind.

"And just to come back onto the theme of ball carrying: what gets everyone so excited about it is because it’s so obvious. Because when you watch someone like Yan Diomandé get the ball in his own half and drive it all the way up to the opposition box and get a shot off — that is probably one of the most obvious skills you can see on a football pitch.

"And it’s not just pigeonholed to the elite level. If you watch someone at Sunday League level, you’ll see dribblers, you’ll see ball carriers — people that can run with the ball. So I think that’s why ball carrying has become so ingrained — particularly from a data aspect — like: if this guy’s really good at ball carrying, this guy must be a really good player. It’s not as black-and-white as that. It’s so much more contextualised.

"But, yeah, I can see why ball carrying has become such a dominant feature in the modern game. And again, I don’t really want to look forward when we’re going to be looking back on this podcast, but I can see it changing — that meta changing pretty much from this World Cup into next season already. I can see certain skills that will get prioritised more than ball carrying, and it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out over the next months or so.”

Tom: “Like what? That’s interesting.”

Llew: “I think progressive passing — line-breaking passes — will become a much more important aspect. It was an important aspect. It sort of phased out to this more ball-carrying, dribbly meta. But with the modern game going now, with the rise of the likes of Vitinha and that sort of popular profile, I can see it shifting more back towards people that can get on the ball and play through lines as a passer rather than a dribbler.

"And with the way the tactical landscape is shifting as well, I think that is probably the skill that will be more effective, and more scalable as well.”

Tom: “Jake, you got any thoughts on that? I’m just thinking about Elliot Anderson — he’s about to become a £100m player — and you did that profiling exercise on Anderson and Wharton earlier in the year. So I think maybe that would tie in a little bit into the discussion of trying to remove team-context noise and getting more granular with the profiles.”

Jake: “Well, yeah — in terms of passing, the Anderson stuff is different because I think Llew's talking about: Elliot Anderson can pass the ball in those pockets, but then his appeal is that he can also carry the ball, and can do it all — which we spoke about on the podcast with Jon, and why he would be the £100m midfielder of this summer. But then the big discussion — and we’re perhaps biased to an extent, in the fact that he was the cover star of Volume II — the reason we’ve been so keen to do lots of Adam Wharton stuff is because we’re all taken aback by how forward-thinking he is in every action that he does.

"His passes are obviously so good because he hits them with both feet, first time, really quick, through every line you can imagine on the pitch. And again, doing these data exercises, he is the premium midfielder for both progressive passing — breaking the first and second line — as well as penetrative passing, breaking the last line. But then that brings us on to: to what extent is that his skill, and to what extent is he the best at it because he’s asked to do it almost every time he gets the ball at Crystal Palace?

"In a team that has one of the best off-ball running attacking midfielders / wingers / forwards in Ismaila Sarr. Mateta is someone that is a big embodiment of the Power Forward Archetype in the sense that he runs in behind more than his size would have suggested he would have done if he was playing 10 years ago — or maybe people wouldn’t have realised he did it as much.

Tom: “Adam told us a really lovely anecdote about chatting to Brennan Johnson during a game, and how they just discussed where on the pitch the space was that Johnson was going to attack. And Adam was like: the minute I get the ball, I’m just going to put it there. I’m not even going to look, because I know Johnson’s going to be running into that area.”

Jake: “Yeah — I was going to bring that up. The anecdote was specifically about spacing behind, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like: ‘give it to me when I pull in.’ It was: ‘I’m just going to run towards the box.’ And again, Brennan Johnson — for all of his perceived flaws — he’s a very good off-ball runner and very good at attacking space. Whether he’s efficient enough when he gets it is another question.

"But that’s the thing now. So, this passing — and what’s a good exercise potentially — if passing is going to become the meta, or if ball carrying is the meta, either one of those, how do you take away the team context that says: we ask this player to just run the ball all the time? Does that make him a good ball carrier, or does that just make him a voluminous one? And the same for passing. Adam Wharton, we can see, is not just putting the ball into space. He is an excellent passer. That’s not in discussion.

"But when you’re looking for Adam Wharton 2.0, or when you’re looking for less obvious players — like we’re talking about Adam Wharton, Morgan Rogers, Elliot Anderson — it’s not hard to say that they’re good players because they’re playing in the Premier League and they’re excelling. When you scout for younger players especially: how are you saying, right, this player is obviously just being asked to spam the ball into space — what indicators make him good at that, or what indicators make him just someone that’s following instruction?

"In a data context, I’m finding that really difficult to do. How do you separate Crystal Palace’s play style from Adam Wharton’s passing? The Athletic posted a good graphic about Bournemouth’s XI: especially the front five positions, everyone runs about 10–15% more high-intensity distance than their positional peers in the Premier League. So when you’re scouting Bournemouth players, to what extent are you scouting Iraola players, and to what extent are you scouting good players?

"Alex Scott, for example, is someone we’ve liked for a long time. He was a really good partner to Anderson in the U21 Euros. What skills are more obvious because of the Iraola system — and what ones are we not seeing as much that he can still do? Those are the questions that become extremely difficult to separate and ask. And finding those hidden powers — which definitely are difficult to find in data, which literally just tracks things that happen — is why video scouting is so key to anything you do as well.”

Llew: “Yeah. Well, I was just about to put in there: what Jake is describing there is video scouting. It’s more traditional scouting. It’s more granular-level scouting. I’m not massively into data — I do look into it — but like Jake was saying, it’s impossible to find that sort of scalable skill when it comes to data.

"When it comes to more traditional scouting — where you’re actually watching the mechanics of a player — that’s where the value is. That granular level. In the case of Adam Wharton: why is he so good? Is he so good because he plays every single pass — well, not every single pass, but most of his passes — he’s unbelievable at taking the ball and just zipping it through lines almost on one touch? Little bits of that you can probably get from data with certain models — I think I’ve seen a lot of people do that on Twitter already, adding that extra nuance.

"But when you’re watching a player, those are the little traits you notice — and those are the traits that are scalable. What Adam Wharton is doing now, he was already doing at Blackburn. I’m not sure whether that comes out in the data, but it definitely comes out in the eye test: I’ve seen Adam Wharton take the ball on the half-turn and just wrap it through a line countless times with Blackburn. So it’s not a surprise that he’s doing it for Crystal Palace.

"That is the beauty of it. That is the yin and yang — the harmony of: OK, I can see that this guy’s really good at progressive passes on the data, but what sort of progressive passes are they? Is he hitting them — say, if he’s playing a big switch out to the right wing — is it quite loopy? Does it take a while to get there? Or is it driven into the player’s feet and it sets up the next action really quickly, rather than having to take another touch to settle it down? Little bits like that. That’s where the harmony of data scouting and video scouting is. And that’s where the nuance and granular detail is so important, I think.”

Tom: “This is definitely in danger of becoming predictions rather than reflections, but I think they’re kind of tied together. I want to ask a more general question about how our understanding of that yin and yang has developed this year, and whether you guys have learned anything new about how you work together during processes where you’re trying to find a player. I remember very clearly — I guess it was towards the end of last season or over the summer — the Yan Diomandé thing. Remind me how that went: Jake, you spotted him first doing something crazy in the data, and then…”

Jake: “Yeah — that’s an example of what Llew’s saying. All I said was: there’s an 18-year-old kid that’s played, I’ve never heard of before, who’s now… because that was when FBref was available, and it was just shot-creating actions. So this is an example: a shot-creating action, as defined by FBref, was just the two preceding events to a shot. And you could get awarded for two. So you could dribble past a player and then pass it a yard and get two actions — or you could take on five players, but you’d still only get the two that preceded the shot. So all I said was: he’s creating a lot of shots for a bad team. So let's check him out.

"The process where data will help is: Llew’s always watching games and spotting players through the eye test, which is always going to be the best way. What I’m trying to do is reverse engineer these skills as robustly as possible so that I can then search countries and leagues that we either can’t watch live, or can’t watch quickly or consistently, and say: I don’t know how good these progressive passes are, or how good these ball carries are, but there’s someone doing 50 of them at a time at the fastest speed I’ve ever seen.

"And then what we trust Llew to do is be able to say: it’s literally because the league is rubbish and he would never get that much space anywhere else. Or in Diomandé’s case: instantly, a little message pops up in Slack — ‘Yeah, and Diomandé is good.’ And when Llew says that, it’s usually a sign that they’re going to become the player that he’s become.

"So I’m fully aware that data should never — and is never going to — find players and that should be the answer. But I think I’m getting quite good at being able to look at the key indicators that should at least tell you: you need to watch them. And then there should always be a final verdict on that.”

Tom: “Is anything — I know it’s quite difficult to remember exactly when things happened — but do you think anything’s changed in the way you guys work together this year? How do you think it’s developed?”

Llew: “It’s interesting that you bring up that Yan Diomandé process again. I think it’s something that, going forward, we definitely need to do more of. We probably didn’t do it as much in that really focused level this season, for numerous reasons — a lot of them outside of our control.

"But going forward as a team, that is definitely something I’d love to do more of, because it is the recruitment process. It is: OK, Jake’s found this guy on the data, he’s flagged a number of key points for us. I dig into the video, I have a look — OK, yeah, Yan Diomandé is really good. He ended up going to Leipzig like two weeks later. And again, we’re not reinventing the wheel here. This is what clubs do. This is the process that found Diomandé. I think RB Leipzig are on record of saying: ‘yeah, this guy hit so many key performance indicators for us as a profile — we had one look at him and he was immediately our man.’ So we’re essentially like a little club operating in and of itself, repeating what has been the process across the world for the past 10 years or so.”

Tom: “Before we move on: is there anything else you guys want to talk about in terms of — Jake, anything you wanted to add on filtering team context out of the data noise, anything on processes?”

Jake: “The big thing I want to work out is… whenever I say it out loud, I feel like it’s too much, but the little framework I’m trying to work on when I scout a player — and again, I’m very much becoming a fully fledged data scout. I try to watch matches, but I’m spending a lot of time trying to get these ‘perfect’…

"If you have: Style, then Effectiveness, then Efficiency, and then Responsibility — I feel like that is a really solid framework to apply to when you see a metric. Using progressive passes, Style would be: what percentage of their passes are progressive passes. Adam Wharton, for example, is really high ratio on that. Effectiveness is: how often do they play the pass — or you could say: how many successful line breaks a game. Someone like Rodri will do lots of them a game, but it’s because he has 100 passes to do it. So his Style isn’t as high as Wharton, who’s doing Effectiveness and also high proportion. But then there’s still team context.

"Rodri’s doing 100 passes because he plays with Man City in the centre of midfield at the height of their control-through-possession phase. Then you look at Efficiency — that’s success rate. When they’re trying the passes, can they hit the same target all the time? But then Responsibility is my way of trying to say: how much is Style and Effectiveness influenced by team context?

"As someone still learning ways to use the data and interrogate it in different ways — because you usually get a player dataset and a team dataset — it’s hard at the moment to get that Responsibility part absolutely nailed. But a lot of the work I’m going to be doing this season — because of what has happened throughout the season just gone — is looking at how to evaluate team style’s impact on a player’s output. That will help find more players that are perhaps hidden.

"Because yes, you can find a really good ball carrier in a team. There’s an Egyptian winger that’s going to be at the World Cup — French-born — I always get his name wrong, but it’s Hassan, I think. Haissem Hassan. He is basically a one-man carrying machine for Real Oviedo, who finished bottom of La Liga.

"They’ve got a really good dribbler that’s probably the only dribbler in their team, and they just give him the ball and get him to go up the whole pitch. Now, he’s obviously good at dribbling — but the reason he’s beating more players in possession than anyone in La Liga, and the reason he’s got more progressive carrying distance, is because he’s playing for a bad team that rely on him to do any progression.

"So as a scout, you’d watch that and be like… he would look so good on data, he would look good when you watch his individual carries because he’d be beating five players. But the thing I’ll never be able to capture in data, I don’t think, is whether that would scale to a different environment — where he’s positioned higher, he’s not receiving as deep, he doesn’t have as much pitch to run into, there’s not as many players in the gauntlet that he needs to beat.

"And then it looks at the efficiency of his end product — and Madueke provided a nice example against Costa Rica: excellent running behind, really good skill to go round a keeper. That last action will go down as a shot, which again he’s good at getting. The run will be very dangerous. The touches will be good. But when you watch it, you have to score that. And those flags — I doubt — will ever truly come up in the data. So, yeah: Responsibility is the biggest thing I’ve wanted to attack for this season because of everything I looked at last season.”

Tom: “Those frameworks help you build Archetypes as well. Maybe we could talk a little bit about how that project has developed this year. From my perspective, it’s been less about widening the scope of the different Archetypes and adding new ones, and more about refining processes — getting them more granular and accurate. Is that fair?”

Jake: “Yeah, definitely. We’ve probably got the midfield ones — and again, because midfield is everywhere and anywhere you want — the midfield Archetypes feel the most robust and the most obvious. Although Pathfinder was initially a full-back one, but there’s five that are very obvious.

"But even then, finding them within data is the whole process this season. We had more access to more data — then it got removed. So then how do you develop Archetypes with nothing? And then we’ve recently been given more access. And as more metrics are available, each time I get a new suite available, I have to look at all of the metrics, interrogate which ones could be valuable for this profile, rebuild the profile.

"So I think we’re getting in a position now where I’ll be able to do that and have a couple for each area on the pitch. But even the Power Forward, for example — I read back the introduction to that and it’s quite limited data-wise. It’s literally just runs in behind. But watching Gyökeres this season — who was the Poster Boy — prompted me to evaluate: is he even a Power Forward in the sense that he can bulldoze through people and get shots away, or is he more of an outlet that spins, runs hard, and doesn’t have the actual ability to be the full-blown Power Forward that he looked like at Sporting?

"So it’s trying to find new metrics beyond just ‘he runs in behind’ — which flags a lot of people like Bryan Mbeumo, Ismaila Sarr… they’re not Power Forwards, they run in behind, they create depth. So it’s refining the Archetypes into finding this Terminator-like striker that can run in behind and does it at speed. That’s an Archetype that was exciting to develop at the start, but since I’ve learned more, I know less about what that looks like in the data — which is always the way.

"And what I’d like to do this season is get even more cues from Llew about what are valuable skills. Some of the best definitions we have of Archetypes are from Llew’s pieces because they’re born out of watching players. So the more we can get from him — the more different players he can watch — then I can take his football-literate definition and try to turn that into data, rather than trying to turn data points into these fantasy names that I’ve been developing.”

Llew: “Obviously this is very much Jake’s baby. I’m sort of like his little consultant on the side that he comes to now and again. I do influence it to an extent, but this is very much Jake’s thing.

"What I’ve been trying to do over the past season is familiarise myself with what each Archetype does so I can get better at: when I watch a player — say, at the U17 Euros — I can flag this guy as a potential Developer, a potential Roadrunner, little bits like that. That validates the process: Jake’s built this profile — can I spot it from the off?

"It’s difficult because you start second-guessing yourself. And as with everything in football, it’s contextualised, it’s nuanced. One role in one game can completely flip in another, or even in different phases of play. So we have to stress-test it and refine it and whittle it away — really drill down to the essence of each Archetype.

"And that’s as much on me as Jake: can I spot what this player is from the off? Because otherwise, there’s not really point in having these profiles. If it takes 10 games for you to spot what the profile is, then it doesn’t really work as a concept. So, yeah — getting it where it’s like: bang. Yes, he’s a so-and-so. He’s a Berserker. Little bits of that. That’s where I’ve been focusing my effort this season.”

Jake: “You’ve mentioned something important there. Data will tell you what role they’re playing currently. So when we do the scores and cross-reference it with data, that’s still only telling you what they’re doing. What I need to nail down is: I almost need to not try and make them through data first. I’m really confident with the Superpowers / skill set stuff. So if you see someone that’s fast and good at ball carrying, they might not be a Roadrunner in that context, but we should be able to say their Archetype is this — because that skill set, across watching seasons and seasons of football, has been conducive to that.

"Whereas if they’re someone that can consistently get shots, that is the skill that should be celebrated. They might go back to the data and they’re playing as this platforming midfielder at the moment — but if they’ve shown a proclivity for shooting and generating opportunities in tight spaces, we need to get better at saying: it almost doesn’t matter what the data says; this is what we think they are, and what the skills you’re seeing are.

"Like progressive passing — you said Wharton was doing that at Blackburn. Whether it shows in the data or not, Wharton is always going to be our Pathfinder. And whether he’s the same as Trent Alexander-Arnold… you second guess yourself because Pathfinder was meant to be the progressive passer that consistently batters lines. But Trent does it in a more reserved quarterback style. Wharton does it almost 360 degrees.

"So do we now need to evolve it? Wharton’s quick penetrative passing might be a new Archetype born out of that concept. The big thing for me is not being led down the road of: the data says he’s this, so that means he isn’t what I thought. We need to trust ourselves. Like: the Power Forward is someone that attacks the last line of defence, runs hard, and shoots hard. Erling Haaland, for example, doesn’t actually get to be very powerful at Manchester City because they’re so dominant. So a previous index I had meant he never came up as that. But I feel like Haaland is the embodiment of it.

"So it’s about finding a balance between capturing the essence of what Haaland does better in data, but also not being dissuaded if we don’t see players being what we think they should be — because at the end of the day, we’re trying to say: this player is good at this. If you bought him and made him do this more, it would be better — rather than saying: this is what he’s doing now; you should continue doing that.”

Llew: “Just to butt in, to flesh out that point: it boils down to what a player’s instinct is. What is their instinct on a football pitch? Do they want to come to feet and receive it and turn? Do they want to stretch into space? Do they want to stay on the ball and find a solution, or do they want to drop it off and make another angle? Does a centre-back want to squeeze a striker from behind, or sit off and be more retrospective and stealthy?

"I think it comes down to instincts. And this is something that’s really popped up in my Twitter timeline this season. Callum Saunders — I know him as @Saundzo on Twitter — is a guy that’s really got that term in my head: instincts. I did it subconsciously. I do it as a coach. I build my teams on: OK, if this guy wants to come to feet, I’ve got to pair him with someone that wants to stretch in behind on the last line. Little bits like that.

"You do it subconsciously, but to have it verbalised that way — you’re looking for players’ instincts. If his instinct is to stretch into space, then you can profile him as someone like a Power Forward — that’s what you’re looking for. It all boils down to that: what does a player want to do in any given moment on a football pitch? You can see it in data. You can definitely see it in the eye test on video. That’s what you’re looking for: instincts.”

Jake: “Maybe we need to change… this is why these podcasts are good. We didn’t lose our way — everything we’ve been doing is good — but in the same way that Responsibility is removing team context data-wise, pairing up these functions with instincts…That’s why I split them into: Possession — instinct is to come to feet, be safe, get the ball first and then do stuff later. For movement: Possession is coming short to get the ball; Progression is moving ahead of the ball but not breaking the last line; Penetration is breaking the last line; and Production is a measure of how often that generates a shot.

"So we are all discussing the same things. And verbalising it: when we build an Archetype, you’re building the Superpower in terms of attribute — what do they do best and most effectively — but also the direction of travel: the instinct of how they’re looking to affect that action. So maybe if you replace ‘style’ with ‘instinct’, it becomes even more vivid when discussing a player’s skill set.”

The full podcast includes further discussion on markets, particularly Africa, SCOUTED50, and a microphone disaster. But this article was getting much too long. Enjoy.