After more than 30 years in the game, now he’s written a book about it. Anyone walking around with a desire to become a scout will do well grabbing a copy of “The Scouting Game”.
Robinson spent more than 10 years with the Chelsea academy in a time where their youth department churned out talents on a virtual conveyor belt.
Now head of academy recruitment at Southampton, Robinson also is part of a company that prepares potential scouts for entry into the professional game.
Speaking to Tribalfootball.com about "The Scouting Game", Robinson offered some great anecdotes on his time at the very top in football.
How did Jamal Musiala slip Chelsea net and find his way to Bayern Munich?
“I was sat in St. Mary's Stadium down in Southampton last week. Just behind the ground, I could literally see it over the top of the stadium roof, is a block of flats. And it literally overlooks the ground. Levi Colwill lived in that block of flats and Musiala lived in the building alongside it. So, the first question is, why didn't Southampton get them?
“It was a first steal, in a sense that Chelsea got them from under the nose of Southampton just by good scouting. But Jamal's family were from Germany and there was always that feeling that he might go back to Germany. When he got to 16, offers were being made. At that time, I can remember Neil Bath saying; “we can't just keep paying these kids more and more and more. We've got to have a structure. We've got to bring some sense to this because it's getting crazy.
“So, he introduced three tiers of payments to try and get some sort of structure and Jamal was obviously offered more to go elsewhere. As was Samuel Iling-Junior who went to Juventus about the same time. You're going to lose some players if you do that. Now, under the new ownership and the new structure they are offering amazing contracts to young kids of 17 earning 20 grand a week. At that point they haven’t even been in the first team yet. It's just crazy but they obviously feel they need to do that to compete.
“I get contacted now by parents of kids at Chelsea saying we want to come to Southampton because we want a pathway. And I say, well, you know, we don't pay anything like they do at Chelsea. No, we're not worried about that. We want a pathway. We've got to progress in the game. So, it begins to swing around the other way.”
Was there a better academy than Chelsea's between 2010 and 2020?
“No, I don't think so. Obviously, you've got places like Barcelona who have a very strong tradition of producing talent and other clubs like Bayern Munich and Dortmund. But when you look at Chelsea you have Reece James, Mason Mount, Conor Gallagher, Trevoh Chalobah, Nathaniel Chalobah as well, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Marc Guehi, who's at Palace, Michael Olise, who's now at Bayern, Jamal Musiala, now at Bayern, Levi Colwell. These all were Chelsea from when they were seven or eight years old.
“It is an incredible production line and Chelsea won the FA Youth Cup, seven times in nine years through that period. It wasn't just a question of one good crop. It was an extraordinary place to be with great talent and literally homegrown players from seven, eight years of age.”
There's that great photo with the likes of Mason Mount, Chalobah, Reece James, Tammy Abraham with a Champions League winner's medal in 2021. What was the feeling amongst the staff at the time experiencing such a moment?
“The funny thing was that all through the time when we were winning the FA Youth Cups, we couldn't get a player in the first team because managers like Jose Mourinho, who's never played young players whatever club he's been at, knew they're only going to be there for 18 months, two years perhaps. They knew they were under such pressure for results that it was difficult for them to play young players.
“Thus, it was a very frustrating time. We had really good talented players coming through, Ruben Loftus-Cheek was a good example. He just couldn't break in and when he did get opportunities in the first team, he didn't really take them that well. Which is the other side of it. The players have got to be ready.
“The big change came when we had the transfer sanctions. Frank Lampard was the manager and all of his staff were academy people and it was a very close-knit team then. He was ready to give the young players like Mason, Reece and what have you, the opportunity. And they took the opportunity, that was the thing.
“But they had been prepared for that point with all of their development over years and their loan-spells and it was just the right time, right place. At that point, when we started getting a lot of players in the first team, it was tremendous satisfaction."
Is there any disappointment in seeing all those academy graduates now sold off?
“Yeah, it was frustrating at the time. I remember when we needed a centre-back and we had Fikayo Tomori and Marc Guéhi but they were both going to get sold. I can remember the senior people like myself in recruitment were saying, why are we buying other centre-backs who are a little bit older but are no better than Fikayo or Marc? It didn't make sense.
“It wasn't really because of the financial fair play or needing to balance the books. There wasn't really that excuse. I think it was just the requirement of certain managers when they came in. We were hiring big ticket managers with big egos and they all came in with a shopping list.
"They wouldn't necessarily know our academy players. It was like the magpie looking for something shiny somewhere else rather than the diamond in the roughs that we already have. As a club, Chelsea could have done even better with the talent and that was repeated again recently with Connor Gallagher.
"He's a great lad and he did so well for Chelsea through that season when Pochettino was there. But no, he had to be sold off to Atletico Madrid. Some of the players that have been bought at big money aren’t as good as the players that we sold for less money. In my opinion.”
The book “The Scouting Game” is out now with Pitch Publishing and can be purchased in the web-shop, at assorted bookshops or right here.