The 'encyclopedia of football' challenged with saving Portsmouth's season in January's transfer window
The head of recruitment has overseen 35 signings at Fratton Park since arriving in May 2024
You won’t recognise the face, you could well know the name - yet you will definitely be familiar with his Pompey signings.
Now the Blues’ ‘walking encyclopedia of football’ is challenged with saving their season in the January transfer window.
Brad Wall arrived at Fratton Park as head of recruitment in May 2024, coinciding with the club’s first season back in the Championship after a 12-year absence.
With the long-serving Phil Boardman having joined Everton as their senior European scout, Rich Hughes turned to Wall, who had been serving as Manchester City’s Northern UK scouting manager, having previously worked at Wolves, Glasgow Rangers and Liverpool.
Such is the nomadic nature of a role spent primarily on the road, there is little reason why any of the Fratton faithful would be able to identify the former England under-19 analyst so their paths cross.
Nonetheless, Wall occupies a pivotal position, working beneath sporting director Hughes and tasked with targeting the 3-6 players John Mousinho is adamant he requires to climb away from relegation danger.
‘Smart, diligent, good at his job’
Certainly Hughes has spoken glowingly about his head of recruitment, at the time of the appointment declaring Wall as ‘smart, diligent, good at his job, well connected, and has a really good eye for a player’.
In September 2025, upon the culmination of a transfer window which brought in 11 players, the sporting director told The News: ‘Brad has been huge and invaluable to me and John.
‘He’s a walking encyclopedia of football. I sat next to him at a Brighton Under-21s game during pre-season and he knew the backgrounds of their 16-17 year olds, having tracked them through.
‘Without the work of the unsung heroes of the recruitment operation, John and myself wouldn’t be able to do what we can do.’
Such is the collaborative approach to recruitment, it is difficult to pinpoint the players Wall has been directly responsible for during his 20 months at Fratton Park.
With Hughes and, latterly, Mousinho also having a strong say in signings put forward to them, who precisely has the definitive vote is often open to much debate.
Abdoulaye Kamara
Nonetheless, in September 2024, Wall was credited with identifying Abdoulaye Kamara, the recent signing from Borussia Dortmund.
‘So Abdu is a player we have seen live and we really like some of his tools. Part of our recruitment model predicates on situations, Dortmund let a lot of their B-team players leave this year because they don't think they’re quite at this next level of progression.
‘Abdoulaye was a player we spoke about earlier in the summer before the Dortmund situation changed and landscape was different.
‘Then, because we had done the work initially, it popped up in a different set of circumstances - and we were able to work within it and get the deal done.’
Nicolas Schmid
That summer, Wall’s first at the club, also saw Jacob Farrell (Central Coast Mariners), Elias Sorensen (Esbjerg) and Nicolas Schmid (BW Linz) also arrive on the south coast.
Pompey’s Australian links were already well established, the fruits of predecessor Boardman’s labours, having initially utilised the market to bring Kusini Yengi to Fratton Park in July 2023.
The August 2024 signing of Schmid has been credited to Joe Prodomo, with Hughes telling The News in May 2025: ‘There’s a part of me that can just sit here and take all the credit for Nico, but Joe Prodomo, our goalie coach, is one of the biggest badgers in football. He knows everyone.’
Although last summer, the ever-modest goalkeeping coach refused to accept such recognition for a player who last month signed a new deal until the summer of 2029.
‘I guess I did a lot of legwork with that, but, ultimately, I don’t think it was ever really in our plans to spend money on another goalkeeper, we knew Will was going to start the season.
‘When we were going through it from a footballing opinion, myself, Brad (Wall), John and Rich all felt Nico was a really good Championship goalkeeper in the making.’
‘It’s very much a team effort’
Having secured their Championship status with two matches to spare last season, Pompey signed 11 players last summer, including Adrian Segecic, John Swift, Florian Bianchini, Yang Minhyeok, Josh Knight, Josef Bursik and Makenzie Kirk.
Speaking in September, Hughes highlighted Wall’s contribution in the recruitment of Le Roux and Kosznovszky, although clearly there are also many others he was behind that summer.
‘John and myself have a lot of other roles as well as recruitment, but we have full trust in the (recruitment) team that when they say this is worth following up, we will get in a car and watch them at the nearest opportunity,’ he told The News.
‘He has been heavily involved in watching players like Luke Le Roux and Mark Kosznovszky because the travel falls until his time, but he is heavily involved in everything.
‘We have some really fiery - but healthy - conversations and debates around players when we have them up on the screen, pulling it all apart and then putting it together. So his fingerprints are on everything which is good and the bad. It’s very much a team effort.’
Wall, who has also served as Glasgow Rangers’ head first-team analyst and Liverpool as a performance analyst, has to date overseen 35 signings since his arrival as Pompey’s head of recruitment.
It’s a period which has seen the arrivals of the likes of Josh Murphy, Matt Ritchie, Andre Dozzell, Freddie Potts, Rob Atkinson, Isaac Hayden, Segecic and Schmid - yet there have also been significant failures.
Now Pompey’s ‘walking encyclopedia of football’ has a huge January transfer window to negotiate. Their Championship future depends on it.
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