Does the fact we all recommend the same players means data scouting works, or is it pointless?

 A little dash of post shot xG per 90 (adjusted for game state), a pinch of deep progressions, a soupçon of final third passes......data scouting can often seem like writing a recipe for a player.

Out comes your list, a quick eye check, adjust for the strength of the opposition, restrict to <24 and voila *chef kiss* a list of the next big things in football.

And....it pretty much works. Data is good, it shows you how well players are playing, in the role they have, in the system they are playing in.

It is also really easy if you have a reasonable grasp of football and access to the data. It doesn't, of course, tell you everything. That eye check is vital even with the best data you have. It won't easily pick out players who are good but are in poor form, in the wrong role, in the wrong system or playing in leagues without good data coverage. And that is where the eye is the only proper tool to use.

But over the years data scouting has consistently picked out up and coming players before the wider media have seen them as rising stars.

Late last year I used Wyscout data, and video clips, to scout some leagues I knew little about. Ligue 2 and Segunda Division.

And a few weeks later the official Ligue 2 website ran an article on the "revelations of the season" which was pretty much the same list. This either shows that French second tier league officials are trawling obscure blogs to plagiarise, or that good players are obvious whether data or eye scouted.

But my data scouting took about an hour from my living room rather than taking in every game of the season.

Furthermore the player from Cadiz I identified, Manu Vallejo, was offered a new contract with a £15m release clause a few weeks ago and has been picked in the "team of the year so far".

Basically my scouting picked up a good player, in good form. 

And my Nigerian striker, David Okerere from Spezia Calcio, was today linked with a move to Juventus.

Would data scouting have picked him up before he had this breakout season? No, because he was in the reserves, or on loan to lower leagues with no coverage.

So would it be worth a club paying a data provider to capture lower league footage for their exclusive use? To find these players before they are flagged up by other data scouts? Possibly. Or maybe just scouts who can make contacts and hear who is being talked about as having potential. You'd need to do a cost/benefit analysis.

So does the fact most of the data scouting people I follow on twitter end up liking the same players mean we are doing something right or something pointless?

Unsurprisingly I think right. When you see clubs signing players for big fees the data tells you are average, and they turn out to be average in their new club (Bolasie, Sigurdsson, Klaassen for example) you wonder how much attention clubs are paying to the analytics and how much is driven by the "gut feeling" of the manager. This isn't a bad thing, some of intangibles (good for the dressing room, a leader) aren't obvious to us outsiders. But at £70k a week for a PL player they had better be worthwhile.

So does this all mean that a player with amazing data, who passes the eye test, and a buying club who know exactly how to get the best out of a player will succeed? 

Almost certainly no. These are human beings. 

A new league, dressing room culture, personality clashes, poor on pitch communication, refereeing differences...and plain old variance, can have a huge impact on how you are perceived as a player.

But all you can do in sport is maximise your chances of good things happening. And for me that means having a recruitment department who can make good use of data, and a management team who understand it.