Swindon Town Head of Football Jamie Russell said that he is always looking at potential when signing players for the club.

During the January transfer window, Swindon added three players with little to no first-team experience in Paul Glatzel, Pharrell Johnson, and Sean McGurk.

Russell said that he believed that all transfers came with a large element of risk and so it was about projecting those with the best potential upside that dictated his decision-making.

He said: “I am always looking at potential and I think that some clubs will go and spend £30 or £40 million on a 25- or 26-year-old and it won’t work.

“Any player that is coming into your environment is a gamble and you have to do as much work as you can.

“We have known Sean from when he was at Liverpool, I have known him from when he was at Wigan, how he is as a person, and how he dealt with the move to Leeds.

“I know other players around that group that he has been with and everyone speaks very highly of him.

“He has got huge potential and for us to get him and for him to be our player, it just made absolute sense to go ahead and do it.”

Russell added that he and his staff were always trying to learn different things about the players they are interested in beyond just their ability on the pitch.

He said: “If I go to a game, if Les [Caffery] goes to a game, or if Gav [Gunning] was going to a game or anything like that then there will always be a comment added on.

“Even if they [the player] are a sub and they are not getting on the pitch, there will be a comment about how they warmed up before the game, how they conducted themselves on the bench, what did they do at half time when they came onto the pitch, were they getting out and warming up.

“So, even if you go and watch a game, and we have sometimes, and the player doesn’t play or gets limited minutes then there is something you can take about them as a person.

“Then we have staff around the football operations who will research the social media and go through all of that because we want to make sure we are bringing in the right person.”