REPORT: Tottenham to re-hire Rob Mackenzie as chief scout

Tottenham Hotspur are set to welcome a new face to their recruiting staff, and it’s a familiar one. According to several sources including Matt Law, Spurs are set to appoint Aston Villa recruitment director Rob Mackenzie as their new chief scout, reuniting him with Spurs’ new technical director Johan Lange who begins his new job at the club today.

This would be Mackenzie’s second stint at Spurs — he served in a recruitment role for a few years during the Mauricio Pochettino era under Paul Mitchell after Spurs poached him from Leicester in 2015. I honestly couldn’t tell you much about what he did at Spurs during that time; a quick google says the only pieces I ever wrote mentioning him was announcing his arrival, and a nervous piece about Tottenham’s recruitment after he and Mitchell left the club in 2017.

What I can say is that he has a history of working well with Lange, and if nothing else Mackenzie’s appointment suggests a further development of an ongoing recruitment structure at Spurs. That started with the (eventual) appointment of Scott Munn and his hiring of Lange as technical director and is filtering down now into recruitment. We can get into the weeds about what Lange and Mackenzie have actually done at Villa, but having an actual recruitment structure in place rather than relying on Fabio Paratici’s rolodex is a good thing.

We know Spurs are now very interested in data analytics and have built up some staff to really dig into that area. It makes me curious about this coming January transfer window and what Spurs’ strategy for new acquisitions will look like.