Manchester United have been quietly building a huge worldwide army of new scouts

Manchester United should have decided to overhaul their scouting system the very second they signed Bebe in 2010.

Something had clearly gone drastically wrong. However, Alex Ferguson had delivered so much success, and had his own working process, the club were hardly going to attempt an overhaul while he was still in-charge and winning trophies. According to reports in 2014, David Moyes was planning on restructuring how United identify talent before he was sacked. Chief scout Jim Lawlor allegedly kept the scouting information "in his head" and the club were seeking to upgrade their database of information on players. Moyes made two signings during his brief stint at Old Trafford, Marouane Fellaini, his former player at Everton, and Juan Mata, the Chelsea playmaker. Intensive scouting wasn't required in either case. Louis van Gaal's recruitment wasn't much better - we're looking at you, Marcos Rojo - but it looks as though United are finally beginning to modernise how they scout players. The club have recruited 50 new scouts as part of a global scouting network, according to The Daily Mail. The process reportedly began in January, with the club hoping to identify the best young players in world football. United's academy is famed for bringing through the Class of '92 and Luke Chadwick, but in recent years, Marcus Rashford aside, the number of players successfully making the jump from youth-team to the first-team has diminished. According to the report, United's army of scouts on every continent will fly into the team's training base twice a year to brief the club on players they've scouted.