Everything Paul Heckingbottom said on Preston North End transfer process, use of data and thing he 'hates'

Paul Heckingbottom will wait until the summer transfer window concludes to fully assess Preston North End’s recruitment process.

The Lilywhites, as per the manager himself and CEO Peter Ridsdale, are anticipating around 10 new signings ahead of the 2025/26 campaign - with loan players returning, contracts expiring and fresh blood required in the squad anyway.

It will be a first summer window for Heckingbottom, who only had one-and-a-half weeks left to wheel and deal, after being appointed as boss in August. The structure of a lot of football clubs nowadays sees the manager very much take a back seat with transfers, but PNE’s boss is very much at the heart of it all.

“Yeah, I'd rather not be!” said Heckingbottom. “I'd just save my own energy and relax all summer, but that's not going to happen. So, yeah, finger on everything with it. It's been good; the process is good. But the proof will be in the pudding... are the players delivered? Are we getting what we want? Ultimately, it'll decide if the process is good enough or not.”

North End continue to work with recruitment analytics company MRKT Insights and have leaned on data to recruit the likes of Milutin Osmajic, Mads Frokjaer and Stefan Thordarson in recent transfer windows. It is, though, certainly not the driving factor behind the players Preston sign.

“Data has got to be along with other things,” said Hcekingbottom. “Some clubs, it's purely data. Sometimes data is big but unless you're watching players, data says what that player's doing in that team. You don't know what he's been asked to do. You don't know what his role is in that team. So, it's good in terms of showing a player's capability and it’ll paint a picture.

“But the same player that produces that data, we could really fancy him as a player and play him in a totally different role in our team. He could be our player of the season, but his data might look totally different. So, yeah, it's one-dimensional way of doing things.

“Some people do it all on that and I get it. I do get it, because they may not be able to see beyond that. It's reassuring when the numbers are there, black and white, but I wouldn't be comfortable doing that. That's not to say that that’s never happened to me; you work at a club where that's how they do it, then that's how they do it. But almost then you just forget about it, and focus on coaching.”

“I think they’re failing.”

There has been talk of North End aiming to sign younger players in the upcoming windows, reduce the average age of the squad and therefore develop more assets for the club. It’s something PNE had success with around the time they gained promotion in 2015, from League One. Heckingbottom admits it’s getting tougher to recruit that type of player, from top flight clubs, on a permanent basis though.

“Costs fortunes,” said Heckingbottom. “It's business. Very few of the top, or so-called top, academies get players to enter their first team, which I hate. I think they're failing. I say it all the time, I think they're failing. Get the best resources, the most amount of money and the best talent, you should be producing the most amount of players.

“But it's done in another way, where if they're not identified as someone getting in their team then they've got to make money on them, simple. And you put a certain badge on the kit, and they're worth a lot of money, you know? So, yeah, that's definitely not how it was.”

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