6. What would convince you that a role-fit or league-translation model works for our market?

Interview objective: Separate descriptive similarity from a validated prediction of performance after a move.

Put to: Sarah Rudd, Arielle Dror and the supplier’s modelling lead.

Why it matters to buyers: A cross-league modelling paper published on 26 August 2026 reports held-out transfer evaluation but explicitly limits its framework to Premier League destinations. That stated boundary is important: evidence for one destination does not itself establish applicability to MLS or NWSL. (journals.sagepub.com)

A strong answer should cover:

• The actual prediction target: style similarity, future minutes, specified actions, role suitability or another outcome.
• Training and evaluation populations, including leagues, seasons, roles and the treatment of women’s competitions.
• Testing on later, genuinely unseen cases rather than information available only after a transfer.
• Comparisons with a simpler baseline, uncertainty ranges and results for relevant subgroups.
• Low-minute players, unsuccessful moves, players who never move and other selection limitations.
• Conditions under which the model declines to rank or requests more evidence.

Sharp follow-up: Give us a documented failure and explain whether the limitation was data coverage, the predicted target, context change or the model itself.

Request this artefact: A model card and validation table matched to the club’s recruitment market. Where evidence is insufficient, label the output exploratory and use it to prioritise further assessment—not to imply a calibrated probability of success.

Proposed expert interview; not yet conducted. No expert quotation is attributed.