Tottenham to hire away Leicester City's Head of Technical Scouting

According to a tweet from the Leicester City Youth Academy, Tottenham Hotspur have hired away Rob Mackenzie, Leicester City's Head of Technical Scouting. The news has yet to be confirmed by Tottenham Hotspur.

Good luck to Head of Technical Scouting Rob Mackenzie, who has moved on to take up a similar role with @SpursOfficial. #LCFC #THFC

— Leicester City Youth (@FoxesYouth) January 31, 2015

According to the Leicester City website, Mackenzie's job at Leicester City was described thusly:

"Rob is responsible for complimenting traditional scouting methods with analytical insights. He highlights and profiles prospective transfer targets based domestically and abroad as well as assessing them subjectively in live matches."

This would indicate that Mackenzie would serve as a staff member under recruitment director Paul Mitchell, who is known for using advanced data and statistics to highlight potential transfer targets. This hire would seem to corroborate a continued attempt to identify and develop youth talent in the Tottenham academy, as well as find perhaps undervalued values via advanced statistics. Mauricio Pochettino has a proven record of giving promising youth players chances with the first team, and has stated that he would rather develop talent from within the academy than purchase expensive talent.

It's always best to wait for confirmation from Tottenham about any new staff hire, but this tweet from Leicester's official youth account is a pretty strong indication. By all accounts, this is a good hire.