Crewe travelled to MK Dons for a vital League Two promotion game last Saturday but one man central to the club’s resurgence in the past two years, the head of recruitment, Josh Kennard, was not present. Instead, he travelled 70 miles further, to watch a National League South game between Chelmsford and Bath, a vital scouting trip he hopes could yield results just as productive as a win on the pitch.
Crewe lost at MK Dons, but that they are even in the promotion picture in an ultra-competitive season alongside the big budgets of Wrexham, Stockport and Mansfield owes a lot to Kennard’s meticulous and data-assisted philosophy. The Alex operate with one of the smallest wage bills in the division and the squad consists almost entirely of academy products and signings made by Kennard. Not one cost a fee.
Kennard, however, is keen to play down the data angle. This is not Moneyball and he is not Billy Beane. “I would describe my approach as holistic,” says the 29-year-old. “I’d like to think if there’s anything we can use to help our decisions, we’ll use it. If there’s good data, we’ll use it. If there are good scouts, we’ll use them, and we want good character references too.”
When Kennard arrived at Crewe in April 2022, after similar roles with Millwall and the football agency World in Motion, the club’s relegation from League One had just been confirmed. David Artell left after five years as manager citing a “season to forget” and, by Kennard’s own admission, “the squad was nowhere near League One standard.”
It seemed as if Crewe were stuck in a cycle: a flourishing academy allows them to usher through an exciting generation of homegrown players who help them win promotion to League One, before the vultures circle and the players are sold to keep the club above water. Relegation to League Two follows. Repeat. To have a strong academy system is one thing. But to make smarter recruitment decisions was the next piece of the puzzle for Crewe.
There is no formal transfer committee. Kennard and his recruitment analyst, Joe Peach, collate information from scouts and spreadsheets before vital input from the manager, Lee Bell, decides a signing. Kennard shows Bell videos of each target, with everyone involved happy to trust the numbers – to a degree.
“Some clubs I think can go too far down the data rabbit hole and just sign players off the back of it,” adds Kennard. “But what if the player can’t settle in the area? There’s a human being to consider and data doesn’t cover that kind of thing.”
Kennard accepts Crewe cannot match their promotion rivals when it comes to financial muscle. Some are able to offer salaries three or four times that of Crewe’s top earner. But he says: “If you’re smart, the gap between the bottom end of League One and the top of League Two isn’t huge.”
There are still plenty of League Two clubs that don’t have a recruitment department, instead relying on recommendations from agents, their manager’s contacts book and the odd scouting report. It’s old school, but it still works for some teams.
Crewe could not gamble on such an approach this January after five league games without a win in December left them outside the playoff places. Signings were necessary even before Newcastle recalled the loanee Joe White and Connor O’Riordan was sold to Blackburn for £500,000.
In came Ed Turns and Lewis Leigh, on loan from Brighton and Preston respectively, with Charlie Kirk signing on a six-month deal after leaving Charlton and Josh Austerfield loaned from Huddersfield. Pivotal to persuading these young players to choose Crewe over other loan options was an extensive presentation showing the player and the parent club’s loan manager the benefits of signing for them. Crewe also have deals with a couple of local Airbnb rentals to help players settle in.
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“These are young lads moving far away from home,” says Kennard. “You don’t want them just to be left alone in a Travelodge and have to figure everything out themselves. You’re not going to see the best of them out on the pitch without a bit of humanity.”
Crewe’s geography helps. “Players can travel in from Liverpool, Manchester or Birmingham, there are lots of nice towns around Crewe and Cheshire they can live in. I think that’s partly why the academy has been successful over a period of time too.”
So what about that trip to Chelmsford? Kennard and his team regularly work long hours at the training ground and this was just another example of their exhaustive recruitment process.
“We’ve got a whole database of players and they’re all ranked on how urgently a scout should go and watch them,” says Kennard. “The data is essentially what took me there, for the eye test.”