Luton chief executive Gary Sweet has explained the role that data had in selecting Matt Bloomfield as new Hatters manager.
Town swooped to tempt the 40-year-old away from League One promotion contenders Wycombe, confirming his appointment yesterday.
Bloomfield’s attacking style has seen Wanderers go toe-to-toe with the third-tier spending power of Birmingham City and Wrexham, outscoring both (with 50 goals) and helping to point him towards Town’s thinking, once they parted ways with Rob Edwards last week.
Like the Chairboys, Luton have traditionally had to find other solutions than throwing cash at their quest for success, even despite a money-spinning season in the Premier League.
The Hatters are exactly one month shy of the fourth anniversary since hiring Jay Socik as their head of recruitment analysis which, at the time, was billed as part of their long-term operational plans for establishing themselves in the Championship. The football data analyst’s appointment was part of a new scouting and recruitment department, many of whom were also involved in picking Bloomfield.
When it came to replacing Edwards, the bookmaker’s list of candidates included names that have managed in the Premier League, such as Sean Dyche and Steve Cooper, but it was Bloomfield who topped the odds and Town’s hit-list, despite never having even managed in the Championship,
Sweet emphasised the club’s reliance on data as an integral, though not exclusive, component of their decision-making process.
“From a football perspective, we have our own footballing DNA at Luton Town,” Sweet said. “We’ve got a group of footballing guardians as such that identify that, or set that, and it sets the tone for what kind of candidate we were looking for.
“Data, which we’re big on here in terms of not necessarily leading, but contributing to that selection process, was a big part of identifying the right type of manager, that plays with those types of characteristics.”
The CEO added: “There’s data on more than a thousand potential candidates that was assessed in the process to begin with.
“It’s kind of the same sort of process that we do on players, where we actually capture certain data characteristics within players that we can do across Europe, for example, or even other other areas of the world, which then identifies or picks out a small handful of players that really appeal to us.
“And this is the same thing really with this particular situation and with managers generally. So, whilst we don’t sit there looking at manager statistics every week, it’s something that we are very respectful of the man in the job.
“We are loyal to that person and faithful to that person, as you probably saw with Rob. We stuck by Rob for a long time, and that was absolutely the right thing to do, by the way, and will be the same here.
“But there’s almost like this machine churning in the background. So when that information is ready to be called upon, it’s there.
“And it doesn’t take an awful long time for our skilled guys to know how to pick the bones out of that. And that’s basically how it all operated, mostly.”
For Sweet, Bloomfield’s alignment with the club’s identity became clear as they delved deeper into his playing style and personality.
“It’s amazing to see the synchronicity between Matt’s previous playing style and actually what our identity was, it’s just unbelievable,” he said.
“When we were looking at that, we were just thinking, well, we just hope he’s a good guy. And then, when you start to look at some of the interviews and the human side, that’s when the pieces start to fall together pretty quickly.”
The club’s culture and ethos, built over a decade of success that took Luton from the non-league to the Premier League, remain central to its operations, and Sweet underscored the importance of finding someone who could uphold those values.
“The environment is critical. The culture is critical. How people behave, how people respect each other is really critical. Everyone seeing each other as equal. That providing the platform for what is a good team ethic. That’s been the foundation of our success in the previous ten years, so that can’t change. That wasn’t negotiable, for anything.
“Fortunately, we’ve got somebody who also believes in exactly those principles. We feel very, very lucky, I have to say.”
The parallels between Bloomfield’s background and the club’s philosophy ultimately made him stand out in the selection process. Sweet noted the focus on potential and the future, rather than past achievements, as key to their decision.
“We identify talent, whether it be a player or a manager, in a very similar way. And actually, it’s what they’ve got ahead of them, not what they’ve had in the past. We see huge opportunity and potential in Matt, in his career at Luton. Huge,” Sweet said.
“Literally, the parallels between Matt’s background and our culture and Matt’s playing style and us, and Matt’s personality and what fits here, is really quite amazing. It’s incredible. We’re lucky to have Matt here, right now and, without being disrespectful to anybody else, it was almost a case of, as soon as we started to see those characteristics and we met him, there wasn’t really anybody else.”
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