Middlesbrough: Kieran Scott says everyone is pulling in same direction

Perhaps that should not be a surprise. As Scott himself has suggested, the appointment of Michael Carrick marks the moment at which he can actually begin to fulfil the role he was initially installed to perform in the summer of 2021. Up until now, he has been pulling in one direction while two of the key figures he was supposed to be working with were tugging in the other.

Scott is too respectful to name names, or perhaps too canny an operator given his impressive achievements with Norwich City, Wolves and Burnley prior to moving to Teesside, but either way, the inference of so much that he says, or does not say, is clear.

It must be extremely difficult, if not nigh-on impossible, to overhaul a football club’s recruitment programme, moving to much more of a long-term, data-driven and cohesively-structured model, when you’ve got Neil Warnock or Chris Wilder banging on your door every five minutes wanting to sign a 31-year-old striker from one of your Championship rivals.

Scott, along with the rest of Middlesbrough’s reshaped recruitment team, wanted to start heading in a different direction in the summer of 2021, identifying a range of potential targets, most of whom were players with the potential to be improved. Warnock wanted to sign Uche Ikpeazu. This summer, when Marcus Tavernier was sold to Bournemouth, a host of different options were assessed, some at home, some abroad, with a particular focus on midfielders who could be developed by Boro’s coaching staff. Wilder was adamant he wanted Alex Mowatt, and eventually got his way.

The model was not fit for purpose, a situation that was tacitly acknowledged when Wilder was dismissed a couple of months ago and replaced by Carrick, a completely different type of head coach than either of his two immediate predecessors. Whereas recruitment has been something of a battleground for much of the last two or three years, along with the ideal model for the development of young players, now there will be much more of a collaborative approach.

Carrick will have a significant input into the signing and sale of players, but Scott will be responsible for the overarching strategy and is keen to move away from the damaging model that has seen Boro lurch from one style of play and one type of player to another whenever the manager or head coach has changed. He will be able to create a vision, safe in the knowledge that the person in charge of the first team will also be willing to buy in to it.

“I think, 100 per cent, it’s going to be more practical to do the things we want to do now with Michael in charge,” said Scott, whose role also stretches to overall control of the academy and the appointment and development of all football-related staff. “You can see from all the signs, Michael is not just here for a quick fix or, ‘Thanks, that’s great, now I want to leave as quickly as possible’.

“Michael is here to put something down, build, and you can tell he’s got a real passion for developing younger players. He had that experience going to West Ham young, and we’ve had conversations about how that was for him and, because of the experiences he’s had, he’s so passionate about helping the young players here.

“He asks questions about Josh Coburn and Hayden Coulson out on loan, he wanted to know straight away about Hayden Hackney. It just feels, straight away, like this is someone who does want to build.

“I would say I’m as excited as I have been in the time that I’ve been here because I really feel that this is the time we can build because it’s flowing as it should now. I took that for granted because I was so used to that being the case at Norwich. It feels hard to articulate that because it was just normal for me there. But it just feels like a club should now, with this staff in place. Everyone wants the same thing now.”

What is that same thing? Clearly, the end point is promotion and the re-establishment of Middlesbrough as a Premier League force, but there are an awful lot of staging posts to pass before you get to that point.

Signing a different type of player is clearly a priority, and the fruits of that goal might become evident next month, along with ensuring a much better pathway from the academy to the first team. There is also an understandable desire to move away from the ‘quick-fix’ mentality that was evident under both Warnock and Wilder towards a longer-term, more sustainable approach which will involve the development of players over a number of seasons rather than a blinkered focus on short-term goals. Results will clearly remain hugely significant, but you’re not really developing a long-term strategy if you abandon it the minute things begin to get difficult.

“I love the strategy question because it’s not the most difficult question to answer, but it’s the most left and right, branches everywhere kind of question,” said Scott. “Ultimately, the biggest cog in that strategy wheel is Michael coming in – a head coach that actually wants to do the things that you want to do.

“So, we want to look closely at our academy players, our players out on loan, looking at foreign recruitment, lower-league recruitment, all of that. All of these strategies are there, it’s just about now having a man at the front who buys into all of that and goes, ‘Yeah, I’m all in, that’s what I want to do’, and allows that to happen, whereas previously that wasn’t quite the case.”

Clearly, Scott views the appointment of Carrick, a process he was heavily involved in, as integral to Boro’s future development. He sees the 41-year-old as a bright, innovative coach, brimming with plans of his own, but also receptive to ideas and approaches that others might bring to the table.

There will be inevitable ups and downs in the next few years, both on and off the field, and there will have to be tweaks to the way in which the club are currently hoping to do things. Crucially, though, those tweaks should have the support of all involved rather than being kneejerk moves that create conflict rather than cohesion.

Middlesbrough head of football Kieran Scott (Image: MFC)

“Strategies evolve,” agreed Scott. “As you start to have success, as you start to implement certain strategies, things then evolve from that. So, as an example, say we have some success from foreign scouting and recruiting from Portugal, we might then set a new strategy to focus more on Portugal. That’s just an example, but things like that can happen in terms of the strategy being ever-changing.

“Certainly, at the minute, the strategy is all of the above that I mentioned, and the important factor is we now have a head coach in Michael who is willing to work with me to implement all of those various areas.”