QPR last night launched the revolutionary scouting system that brought the Premier League title to Manchester City.
New technical director Mike Rigg has been tasked with making sure lightning strikes twice when he hires up to 100 coaches and others to find a production line of players that lasts for the next three decades at least.
The man lured to west London from City unveiled the plan that sees a top to bottom clean sweep of the existing system at Loftus Road.
A one-off glimpse at Rigg’s laptop showed 45 pages of information on just one former City target that detailed everything from where he shopped to whether or not he liked tennis.
But the simple premise of Rigg’s revolution is to leave QPR the plan, essentially a database in four sections, long after he and boss Mark Hughes have left.
He said: "You should find players and buy them on the back of a great depth of due diligence.
"I would say 90 per cent of clubs pay lip service to that. It’s sloppy scouting.
"I have come here to put in place a structure which, regardless of whether I’m here in the future, will carry on for the next 15 or 20 years."
Rigg’s four tiers start with 10-year-olds at QPR followed by academy hopefuls leading to those just beyond the first team before arriving at the Premier League stars at the top.
Each layer is tightly cross-referenced with coaching, development and sports science monitoring – and the crucial ingredient is that everything about everyone gets recorded.
Rigg added: "Why other clubs don’t do this I have no idea.
"I should have walked into QPR and known what our target list was, but there was no structure. How can a club like QPR not have an identification, recruitment and development strategy?
"I’m currently doing an audit of what we need in the way of extra people. But if I can have the entire programme in place by the end of next season, then maybe three years from now, we can talk about how successful it has been."
