At Ibrox and Celtic Park, the gatherers and sifters of information share many similarities. Both Ewan Chester, the Rangers chief scout, and Tom O’Neill, his Celtic counterpart, played at modest levels throughout their careers and have deep affinities, as supporters, for the clubs they now work for. When they stopped playing, both went into coaching harbouring managerial ambitions, but stumbled upon new careers when their aptitude for scouting was encouraged.
The current Old Firm managers, Alex McLeish and Martin O’Neill, are considering potential signing targets, and both will be relying on dossiers delivered months ago by their chief scouts. But it is an ongoing process, with Chester and Tom O’Neill having to maintain their extensive knowledge of domestic and international players while at the same time evaluating the Old Firm’s possible opponents in the Champions League qualifiers. They have a network of scouts and contacts they rely on throughout the UK and Europe but spend much of their time in a solitary world, travelling to games on their own.
“Instinct is the key word,” says Chester. “You like to see a player a number of times, but the best advice I was given was by Tom Saunders, one of Bill Shankly’s backroom staff at Liverpool and a very wise man in the game. He said, ‘Don’t go to see a player too often because you’ll start to look at what he can’t do instead of what attracted you in the first place’. There’s a fine dividing line, but a high percentage of the time your first instinct is the right one.”
O’Neill agrees that initial impressions generally tend to prove indelible, but both are keenly aware of the different character traits revealed when players and teams perform home and away.
“Last season, Basel’s first match was away to Zilina, in Slovakia, and they were unrecognisable from the team that played any other game after that,” the 47-year-old says. “In the home leg they were different class and in subsequent games they proved how effective they were.”
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A midfielder, O’Neill began his career at Motherwell before following Craig Brown to Clyde. He went on to become assistant manager at Stirling Albion, but after being sacked spent two years playing amateur football with Newstevenston Thistle. He returned to the senior game when Vinnie Moore, a former teammate, offered him the assistant’s job at Albion Rovers, a gesture which O’Neill remains indebted to. He then moved to Falkirk as a coach — he was involved when the Brockville club defeated Celtic in the 1997 Scottish Cup semi-final — before Eric Black took him to Celtic Park as under-17 coach.
Chester, also a midfielder, spent much of his playing career in England’s lower leagues and was brought to Ibrox in 1987 as a community coach by Graeme Souness.
Despite Rangers’ debt draining the transfer funds, Chester is still scouring the European leagues, but he is on the lookout for bargains rather than top-rate buys. “There’s probably more players available now than when we had a big budget,” he says. “But I spoke to Alan Shearer about Newcastle reaching the second group stage ’s Champions League and he said that this, in effect, bought Jonathan Woodgate.”
When personal judgement is involved, there is always the danger that individuals’ opinions will differ. When Dick Advocaat signed Marcus Gayle for £900,000 in March 2001, he admitted he had not seen the striker play but was trusting Chester’s recommendation. Gayle played only four times for Rangers and moved back to England five months later, but Chester looks back on the experience as “part and parcel of football”.
Some players come, some go, and there are many in between. Chester recalls watching a Carlisle match several years ago when the No 10 caught his eye. The player was Matt Jansen and Chester secured first option on him, but at the time Rangers were not looking for that type of striker and Jansen went on to Crystal Palace then Blackburn. “I just look at my job as accumulating knowledge,” he adds. “Agents will come to me, they’ll come to Alex, we pool our knowledge. Obviously, Alex would make the final check, but it’s really a collective thing.”
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O’Neill, too, often works closely with his namesake, but their shared surname occasionally causes misunderstandings abroad. “I’ve had people running to the door to open it for me then saying, ‘Mr Martin O’Neill’, and I say, ‘No, it’s Tom O’Neill’, and I see the VIP ticket they were going to give me shoved in their back pocket,” he laughs.
Both O’Neill and Chester play key roles at their clubs, watching and listening for their managers, but they will always remain in the background.