Blackburn Rovers' footballing department underwent a major restructure in the summer.

The club moved away from a Director of Football model and instead formed a senior leadership group. That allowed for those responsibilities to be divided across different staff whilst continuing to alleviate the burden on head coach John Eustace.

One of the newest faces in the Brockhall Senior Training Centre was Adam Owen. He adopted the role of Head of Technical with his focus on aligning the different departments in terms of strategy, philosophy and processes.

A brief glance at Owen's LinkedIn would tell you that he'd also big contact network to Blackburn Rovers. Having worked across the globe and at some of Britain's largest clubs, his expertise would be most welcomed across every department.

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Even if player identification is not his sole focus, those skills paid off in the summer to unearth one of Rovers' best recruits.

It's early days but Rovers seem to have unearthed a hidden gem in Yuki Ohashi. Owen was central to the scouting and characteristic checks on the Japanese forward.

"My experiences of working around the world can have their benefits at times!" Owen told RoversTV.

"When I joined, we were part way through the transfer window. There were already processes in place and everyone had their own opinions on what was being done.

"I was just here to try and support that. We tried to get different opinions on players that were in the system and were being looked at. 

"One of them was Yuki Ohashi. A friend of mine is the manager of one of the teams over there. It's a market that's very interesting.

"I was in Scotland for a period, we coached against Postecoglou when he had the Japanese lads (Yokohama Maronis). You look at their characteristics and we'd had a good experience previously at Celtic. 

"John had a really good experience with a Japanese player (Koji Miyoshi) at Birmingham. When Yuki was flagged up, we dived a bit deeper. The feedback we got was exceptionally good. 

"What he offered in terms of physicality, it seemed a great opportunity to bring him in. It really is a global game now. When you all look in the same markets, it can be quite difficult.

"The challenge is when you compete with teams that have significantly bigger budgets, you need to be smarter, clever in the way you recruit. I think that's where the people involved in our leadership group could come together to identify him.

"We married up the finances, the player, characteristics the manager wanted. That's the key to moving the club forward."

Every football club nowadays has a style and a philosophy, that is nothing revolutionary. But getting those to marry up and withstand strain when results aren't always going to plan; that's the difficult part.

Fortunately for Rovers, it has been a very positive start. That gives breathing room for processes to be put in place and a vision to be carried out.

Owen's focus is to find synergy between the departments. That's for the long-term benefit of the club but whilst also being present for the here and now.

"I was lucky in the last few months before I joined to work with a company called Double Pass, who are involved in the Elite Player Performance Programme as well as the Bundesliga and other federations around the world," he explained on player development.

"I got to see how things have evolved in a club environment. It was very interesting to see and be part of that and it will help inform the process we are putting in place.

"To be able to do that here was a very strong pull for me. It's about aligning to strategy in the club and that's fundamental to the reason I have come in. I mean that from every different department so we have a bottom-up approach where we can strategically align things from a football business and performance point of view.

"The senior leadership group has different attributes from people with different backgrounds. Different experiences within the game.

"The opportunity to bring my knowledge and expertise to that group was something I was excited to see for the long-term benefit."

He added: "I am settling into the club but we have aspirations on how we want things to be developed from the Under-9s to the senior team.

"We have to do that over a period of time. It's a challenge everyone faces to marry the long-term development at a club with the need to support management to get results to move forward.

"It's a balancing act. Where we are, we've made a good start with John, Matt and Keith. There have been very positive results and players' application has been superb.

"Ensuring expectations within the club and stable and realistic is the key. For me, however I can support the management team in the short-term is my target.

"Long-term it's about development processes, the Academy structure. The different departments. That's something that'll challenge me but I am very excited to do it."