Ofcourse that would be the case. But in this case Poch has his own scouts (friends) out there following potentials very closely.
Makes sense as it's his home country. I hope he decides, and is allowed, to take a punt on a couple of them, as there is a lot of talent in Argentina and Brazil (maybe his mates can scout Brazil too for us!). We need to start taking a chance on players before they have a good season and then become too expensive for us.
We used to be quite good at identifying young talent but it seems to have fallen by the wayside over the past few years. As much as Poch doesn't like a Director of Football, I think we need one to help identify and purchase these young and up coming talent. Poch likes working with young players but I think he's scared of someone buying players for the club and not having control.
We seem to flirt with some of the big talents e.g. Martial, De Ligt, De Jong etc but never get any of them as "bigger" clubs are always interested. Clubs like Leverkusen, Lyon, Dortmund etc find and attract young players, most of which make immediate first team impact. I think we identify them but wait, wait and wait to "consider" a bid but by then the big boys are interested. Next years De Ligt or De Jong will probably be players like Chilwell, Maddison, Palacios, Plea, Haidara, Diawara, Lozano etc.
It just seems as though we have no transfer strategy or succession planning (e.g. for Dembele, Verts etc), except for flirting and "considering a bid" but buying no one.
p.s. Still peeved at how we didn't get Sancho last year. He's a London boy and wanted to leave with us supposedly as his preferred destination. They wanted Walker, who wanted out (as did Poch) so we bent over but allowed them to get away with it. Seems like we were happy that they overpaid for Walker and paid a transfer record for a defender at the time but didn't think of our own needs. 12 months on and he's already worth more than Walker. What crap negotiating.