A scouting intelligence platform we built with the recruitment department of a leading English Premier League club. Notes from the stand, scout reports, player data and AI checks, joined up in one place.
A typical top-flight recruitment department: a scouting database, three data providers, more than a hundred scouts on the road, and nothing joining them up.
The verdict lived in free text, filled from different fields on different report forms. The same decision was spelled several ways.
Where are the scouts deployed? Which regions, leagues and positions are well covered, and which are thin?
Scouting records, event data, tracking data and season metrics did not share a player ID. Nobody could put the eye test beside the numbers.
Match-day observations sat in notebooks and phones, typed up days later. Nothing checked that a report's words matched its verdict.
A phone app scouts use live: line-ups, voice and text notes on the match clock.
Notes become a structured report draft the scout edits, grades and submits.
Built from event data and the club's records, with shirt numbers and positions.
Every report form read into one ranked scale, so verdicts can be counted.
AI reads each report against its own grade and flags the ones that disagree.
Event, tracking and season data matched to each player across providers.
Player pages, shortlists, shadow squad, coverage and calendar in one place.
Plain-English questions across every report, with the quote that answers them.
Who uses what, every week, so adoption is managed rather than guessed.
One player ID across every provider. Duplicate fixtures folded into one game; a scout's several logins counted as one person.
One grade vocabulary, watch windows, position baselines, and percentile rules that never rank “did nothing” as elite.
Consistency verdict per report, a synthesis across scouts, game-model evidence with exact quotes. Incomplete answers are refused.
Scribble is the scouts' match-day app. It installs from the browser, runs on any phone, and keeps working with no signal.
At full time the notes become a report in the scout's own language and house style, ready to edit, grade and submit.
Direct left winger who wants the ball early and attacks the full-back at every chance. Beat his man on the outside three times before half-time and delivered early off his right foot. Work without the ball dropped off after the hour; twice lost the runner in transition
A grade is an action crossed with a level the player could reach. Every spelling on every form folds into it, so verdicts can be counted, ranked and trended.
One definition, every app. The same scale drives the dashboard, the phone app, the AI pipeline and the chat assistant. A value it cannot read fails loudly instead of being guessed.
| Player | Grade | Move | Scout |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teo StrandholmFIRST SIGNLW · Olympique Calvenne · 21 | Sign · Squad | ▲ Monitor | O. Prideaux2 days ago |
| Iker OlaberriRB · Real Corvena · 23 | Monitor · Squad | ▲ Review | C. Whitlow4 days ago |
| Kwabena Asare-LindCM · Aldmoor Town · 19 | Monitor · Potential | New | F. Adeyinka5 days ago |
| Viktor SorvikCB · Esterburg SV · 25 | Review · Squad | ▼ Monitor | P. Natarajan6 days ago |
Every observation cites the scout's exact words. Season data sits beside it, read the right way round, with its sample size shown.
Beat his man on the outside three times before half-time and delivered early off his right foot.
Line-ups, events and tracking data are linked to each player, so the page shows what he did and who saw it.
| Game | Minutes | Value added | Sprint distance | Reports |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| v Sporting Lessa3 Nov · First Division | 90' startedline-up · event data | ▲ 0.42 | ▲ 612 m | Sign SignO. Prideaux · R. Penhaligon |
| at Brenhaven Athletic27 Oct · First Division | 90' startedline-up · event data | 0.18 | 488 m | MonitorH. Gaskell · nobody booked |
| v Aldmoor Town20 Oct · First Division | 71' subbed offline-up · club records | 0.05 | 395 m | Video dueC. Whitlow |
| at Castelmar FC13 Oct · Cup | 64' subbed offline-up · event data | 0.31 | ▲ 540 m | MonitorF. Adeyinka |
| v Esterburg SV6 Oct · First Division | Unused substituteline-up · event data | – | – | – |
| at Real Corvena29 Sep · First Division | 90' startedline-up · event data | 0.27 | 571 m | SignP. Natarajan |
Every report is read against the club's grading guide. When the words and the verdict disagree, staff see it, with the reason.
Bright first half, drifts inside well and links play. Still needs a full season at this level before he is ready for more; decision-making under pressure is a work in progress and he faded badly after the hour. One to keep tracking through the winter.
Our read: the text describes a player still developing, not a starter now. Three phrases point to a squad or potential level, and none supports Starting 11.
Bookings, coverage and shortlists read from the same data, so the department sees who is watched, who is missed, and who could step in.
| Person | Reports filed | Games watched | Platform days | Last 12 weeks | Mostly uses | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owen Prideaux · scout | 31 | 24 | 17 | Scribble, player pages | ||
| Martin Ashdown · scout | 28 | 22 | 1 | – | Scouts hard, rarely opens it | |
| Hanna Gaskell · analyst | 12 | 9 | 14 | Search, shadow squad |
Every AI step has a narrow job, a fixed answer shape and a guard. When it fails, the work falls back to the person, never to a guess.
On one grade scale, searchable in plain English and checked for consistency against their grade.
One page each: every report and grade together, beside on-pitch data wherever it exists.
Covered by a scouting report, each real game counted once, however many times it was listed.
Reporting in the last year, every one of them on the same scale.
The grade on the form matches the verdict scouts write in their own words.
On the dashboard, in one month against the month before.
Scribble opens on the day's games before a scout reaches their seat.
For voice notes and typing, composed into one report for the club.
Everything in this deck, configured around how your recruitment department already works.
Your workflow, grade scale and game model.
Your scouting database and data providers, linked player by player.
Dashboard for staff, Scribble for scouts, trialled on video first.
Usage analytics show what to build next.
Everything in this deck runs today inside a leading English Premier League club. We would like to show it running live, and talk about how it would fit your department.