Director of Football
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He keeps saying he will not bore us with details / information that it becomes really suspect if he even knows / understands / has them.
He directs Football - Oncey covered it already.
2004 article 😛
[article=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/4015605.stm]Former Leicester director of football Dave Bassett said: "You're a buffer. The director of football is answerable to the board but there to assist the manager. He's experienced in football and there to help the board members who don't have that experience.
"It means the manager is left to look after all the professionals at the club, the teamwork, tactics, fitness, medical side and picking the team.
"The director is responsible for the budget to be spent on wages and makes sure it is adhered to. He should be above the academy level to ensure that the money on youth level is not being overspent.
"Secondly the director of football has to be involved in the selection of the manager so that when the manager gets the job he knows the director of football is fully supportive because he selected him.
"That means to some extent the director of football's head is on the line because it was his decision."
Italian journalist Giancarlo Galavotti of Gazzetto della Sport newspaper said: "The system in England is exactly the contrary to Italy.
"In England for over 100 years it's all about the manager but in Italy we have a general manager or a sporting director.
"It is an established fact that the transfer market is the domain of the chairman and the general manager.
"The coach has to do with whatever the chairman and general manager bring in. They may be able to say 'I want a striker or a defender' but it is up to the chairman to decide who they get.
"The involvement of the chairman historically has been of primary importance throughout our history."[/article]
Ask Comolli (from 2:15 onwards)
From 2008:
[article=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/7693806.stm]Frank Arnesen is talking from experience when he warns of the dangers that come with handing one man total control as manager.
"Tottenham have chosen to go back to the old-fashioned English system and it could work fantastically," Arnesen, 52, told BBC Sport.
"The problem comes when a club gives all the responsibility to one person, results go against him and he leaves.
"He takes his chief scout with him and all of a sudden the club's knowledge and information is gone.
"The new man comes in, spends a lot of money changing everything and takes the team in a new direction.
"A sporting director brings continuity. In over 45 years at PSV they had about 25 managers but only three sporting directors who covered that whole period.
"The sporting director should be the one consistent piece in the jigsaw so that information, knowledge and structures remain in place for the long term and help ensure sustained success."
Historically speaking, English clubs have indeed placed all responsibility in the hands of one person, the manager.
At many clubs on the continent, the coach is made aware from the outset that his job is simply to coach, prepare and select the team.
He will hold regular discussions with the sporting director about players he wishes to sign and positions he needs to fill, but recruitment itself is the job of the sporting director.
"Club presidents and their management teams build the clubs knowing the coach won't be around for very long," said the former Fulham director of football Les Reed. "To last two years at a European club these days is a long time.
"So to give that person huge amounts of money to spend on players who will probably be around for longer than the coach himself would be ridiculous.
"In England, the manager has traditionally recruited players - becoming a cross between a coach and a director of football.
"In that respect, we are the odd ones out and we are finding it very hard to make the transition."
Ramos was familiar with the continental system, having worked so successfully alongside director of football Ramon Rodriguez Verdejo at Sevilla.
The Spaniards shared a strong working relationship but Ramos did not know Comolli before his move to north London.
"At a number of English clubs people have just been thrown together and told to get on with it," said Reed.
"In England there has to be a massive element of trust before it works.
"But there is now an anti-feeling growing and so most managers will want to have complete control over what they do."
Reed believes the "anti-feeling" could result in Spurs and other clubs employing an experienced chief scout to work alongside the manager and chairman.
"The interim way forward is the way Harry Redknapp will work with Daniel Levy where, to all intents and purposes, Levy becomes the sporting director and he talks with Harry on a daily basis," added Reed.
"They have an extremely well-connected chief scout, who sifts through all the information, presents it to the chairman and manager and says, 'This is what you requested and these are my recommendations'.
"The manager and the chairman talk through their shopping list and then the manager gets out of the way and the chairman does the shopping."
For all the public scepticism towards the continental model, many believe sporting directors have successfully existed for some time at English clubs in all but name.
Before his departure from Arsenal, vice-chairman David Dein had a tremendous relationship with Arsene Wenger and the Gunners manager trusted Dein implicitly in the transfer market.
A similar bond has been struck up at Manchester United between chief executive David Gill and manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
Since appointing Lennie Lawrence (director of football) and Paul Trollope (first-team coach) in November 2005, Bristol Rovers have moved from the lower reaches of League Two to within two points of the play-off positions in League One.
Reading named Nick Hammond as their director of football in 2003 and reached the Premier League for the first time in 2006.
Director of football John Rudge and manager Tony Pulis have helped to oversee Stoke City's rise to the top flight for the first time in 23 years.
There has been a sense in English football that a sporting director is merely brought in as ready-made replacement for the manager when he is sacked, which turned out to be the case when Avram Grant replaced Jose Mourinho at Chelsea.
"If the manager is fearful, thinking you want his job, that is a problem. If he's resentful and frightened you are trying to get his job, it won't work," Rudge told BBC Radio 5 Live.
According to Arnesen, this situation is most likely to arise when a manager comes into a club before the sporting director, as happened with Martin Jol and Comolli at Tottenham and Mourinho and Grant at Chelsea.
As things stand it seems more and more coaches want to guide their clubs forward in the traditional English way.
But Reed thinks this is simply not possible in its purest form and that more managers need to experience the continental system if they are to succeed.
"With each club employing more and more staff to cover the first team, the academy, player recruitment, fitness and conditioning, sports medicine and so on, in the long term I don't think you can be a manager in the traditional sense," he said. "There just isn't enough time in the day.
"When Bobby Robson was at PSV he loved the system. He had a great relationship with Frank Arnesen because he just wanted to coach and have someone else take care of the rest.
"He had a great relationship with the players because he never had to negotiate contracts with them or deal with their agents.
"Maybe one of our problems is that our English coaches don't get enough, or any, experience outside of England.
"Bobby spent 20 years on the continent and is a great English manager and coach. If he can do that the rest of us can but it's going to take a shift in attitude." [/article]
Check this website with news relating to Sporting Directorship: http://sportingdirectorship.com/news/
From 2015:
[article]Arnesen, speaking ahead of attending the world’s first Sporting Directors’ Summit at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester on April 29, said: “If you have the right organisation, the highest in the hierarchy should be the football director. It is the way it is in Germany, Spain and Holland.
“England doesn’t know yet exactly how to make it work. They don’t know how to make it gel with the manager and director. If the manager is the highest in the hierarchy, then the sporting director is just a head scout and that is not what you want.
“The manager should be a head coach in charge of everything around the first team. He picks the team and the squad. He makes the players better every day.”
[/article]
Thanks for that Stevie. Yeah I did see Oncy's reply and indeed I am very appreciative of it.. However, it may have been the way he worded it, but I just didn't get a sense of understanding from it. In other words it explained nothing to me.
I've never rated Steve McLaren as a manager and I think the problem could be that he is SO knowledgeable about the game that he thinks he needs to keep proving it. He is forever making unnecessary substitutions and line up changes and never knows when to leave well alone.
But, there are enough top people in the game who say that he is a great coach and I am a big fan of most of the signings he's made as manager and so maybe he'd be better suited to the Football Director role i.e. he's a very astute and knowledgeable man who recognises talent better than most but can't be trusted to be in charge on matchday.
I know there's little chance of us approaching him as it seems his reward for fucking up in the Championship last season is to be made manager of Newcastle!
But, there are enough top people in the game who say that he is a great coach and I am a big fan of most of the signings he's made as manager and so maybe he'd be better suited to the Football Director role i.e. he's a very astute and knowledgeable man who recognises talent better than most but can't be trusted to be in charge on matchday.
I know there's little chance of us approaching him as it seems his reward for fucking up in the Championship last season is to be made manager of Newcastle!
Thanks for that Stevie. Yeah I did see Oncy's reply and indeed I am very appreciative of it.. However, it may have been the way he worded it, but I just didn't get a sense of understanding from it. In other words it explained nothing to me.
I can see where it might be confusing - he's prone to understatement is our Oncey.
[article=http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/manchester-united-chelsea-should-copy-sevillas-miraculous-economic-masterplan-1492094]"We assume that, when it comes to money, Sevilla can not compete against the wealthiest clubs. Neither can we pay €30 million for a single player. So there is no other option.
"We have to accept our player-seller condition. But without competitiveness, without the UEFA titles, our buys and sells in the football market would be secondary".
Monchi acts as if he was a trader on the stock market. "We buy players when they are almost unknown and are in the middle of their full development. After that, we sell footballers when they reach their top level. I understand that from a financial point of view, we are a model of profitability in modern football. But our speech is accepted buy our supporters because we win regularly".
The four pillars of Sevilla's success are': youth academy, low-profile signings, fearless sales and on-pitch success. Other clubs in La Liga such as Real Sociedad have earned more than €70 million due to the sales of Griezmann, Illarramendi and Bravo. They followed Sevilla's steps, but they lack the most important part of the master plan. A sporting director who knows even the most unattractive tournament like the back of his hand.
Like the Coca-Cola Company, Monchi has his own secret formula. "I consider myself a tool for the manager" he says. "Unai Emery tells me the profile of player he is looking for. Then, my scouting team starts working.
"Coordination with the manager is very important. Coordination in the scouting structure as well. I lived part of 2014 in London to improve my English and I was able to watch the daily activity of English clubs on site. Whereas the Premier League smashes us when it comes to organisation, TV rights, relationship with the supporters, etc, they can improve their scouting structures".
Sevilla's ´King Midas´ elaborates on his formula. "Our scouting team analyse players thoroughly here and there. Still, we do not have spies anywhere. We are a 16-people team based in Sevilla and we travel a lot from the south of Spain. We watch football everywhere: Belgium, France, Chile. Do you think that, nowadays, you need to have spies in South America when you can watch football anywhere on the telly?
"We do not always make the right decision, but our success selling players gives us a wide margin of error".
Under Monchi's direction, Sevilla spent a total of £11.65 million on Ivan Rakitic, Dani Alves, Baptista, Federico Fazio, Gary Medel, Seydou Keita and Geoffrey Kondogbia. They performed extremely well and after that, they were sold for a grand total of £145 million. If we add the sales of former youngsters Ramos (£22 million), Reyes (£25 million), Jesús Navas (£15 million) and Alberto Moreno (£15 million) - the earnings turn into £222 million, and a profit of £210 million. A football version of the miracle of the seven loaves and fishes.
Sevilla keep on finding bargains. They smell opportunities. Stephane Mbia arrived as a free agent due to QPR's financial problems and in this season's squad, the Colombian Carlos Bacca is shining. He is La Liga's top scorer after Ronaldo, Messi and Neymar. But, in contrast to Barcelona's Brazilian winger and Real Madrid's 'franchise player', he just cost £5 million.
Monchi does not want to "waste time" talking about his future even though his name is linked with clubs such as Tottenham Hotspur and even Bayern Munich. "Nothing is forever, whatever will be, will be, I just focus on the short term".
Sevilla's trophy cabinet would weigh even more than Messi's and Ronaldo's if Fifa awarded financial golden balls. Some clubs, such as PSG, Manchester City and QPR are being fined because they spend more than they earn. Some others, like Chelsea or Manchester United, are able to balance the books, but can't match Sevilla's capital gains. If football was a financial issue, not even Guardiola's 'jogo bonito' could beat Sevilla.[/article]
He's a head of department which means he has people working under him, mining all those data which in today's world are done pretty much by technology. He's probably got some complex big data setup with data scientists doing all his work. Not to mention you could easily obtain ready-mined statistics and data from companies like Opta.
So in other words, he does absolutely nothing.
But he didn't realize his team was better set up for 3-4-3 when he identified the positions he needed strengthening in did he?
I would be interested to know whether the 3-4-3 came about as a way to improve our defending, a way to improve our chances of scoring, or a bit of both. Certainly I get the impression that he hasn't quite grasped that playing 4 at the back currently leaves us exposed because the midfield offers no protection and it's far too easy for our defenders to get isolated. There's no doubling up, no shape; half the time Lucas plays he's lost at sea because of the amount of fires he's having to put out (dodgy mix of metaphors, sorry).
I did think the 3-4-3 came out of the realisation that a) our full backs couldn't provide enough defensively and b) our centre backs were facing wave after wave of attack because there was no protection from the midfield; but he's gone back to four at the back without any change to the midfielders. It's weird. Rodgers has often referenced mistakes made in one-on-one situations without addressing why we face so many one-on-one situations.
This is probably off-topic, sorry.
According to a few journos, the change in system came from a review earlier this season when Mike Gordon questioned why the new signings were not featuring and they devised a system that would bring them in with Can, Moreno, Markovic & Lallana brought back into the side.
It looks exactly like that as well, a system designed to accommodate individuals yet the whole point of the TC was supposedly to do the opposite - to find players who matched the specific positions and profiles that the manager laid down.
It's sounding more like that old daytime show Ready Steady Cook, where some spotty herbert would turn up with a bag of stuff for a chef to make three meals, and he'd open it up to reveal one carrot, a tin of pineapple, a cabbage, a piece of fish and a pot of yoghurt. Rodgers is probably going to get another bag like that.
It sounds like the committee is giving Rodgers players and then telling him to coach and play them. It doesn't sound like they are recruiting players to fit profiles set by the manager. Whomever is at fault there seems to be a lack of co-ordination.
Would Shanks have stood for any of this doft shit.
Which sort of makes you wonder what his problem was with having a Director of Football in the first place.
Thanks for that Beejay. It's absolutely no wonder were in the mess we are reading that. I shudder to think what would happen if that system was used to run an NHS hospital Oh wait.
I wonder about that TBH, macca. I strongly suspect Rodgers is little (if any) happier with the arrangements as they stand - there have certainly been a few straws in the wind to that effect in some of his interviews. FSG's biggest mistake was not making their minds up 100% whether their priority was to implement their preferred DOF/coach model or to appoint Rodgers specifically. Instead they've tried to have their cake and eat it by not directly appointing a DOF but still adopting a structure which reined Rodgers in somewhat. That IMHO was never likely to work any better than it has.
[For example, if you are after a quick, dynamic striker, there is no point being offered a big, slow target man simply because he happens to be available.
But our Transfer Committee did exactly that
Equally, those in charge of recruitment will have to know exactly what quality of player they already have in the club’s academy, and where those players are in terms of their readiness to step into the first team. There is simply no point spending millions of pounds acquiring players who are inferior or only fractionally better than the players the club are already developing.
Why did we buy Markowicz when Ibe was coming through. £20m wasted when a better player was in place. Why isn't the director of the Academy on the Committee?
But our Transfer Committee did exactly that
Equally, those in charge of recruitment will have to know exactly what quality of player they already have in the club’s academy, and where those players are in terms of their readiness to step into the first team. There is simply no point spending millions of pounds acquiring players who are inferior or only fractionally better than the players the club are already developing.
Why did we buy Markowicz when Ibe was coming through. £20m wasted when a better player was in place. Why isn't the director of the Academy on the Committee?
because that would be productive everything they have done so far has been to hamper and obfuscate.
And yet his role is considered the most important on t'committee. It's staggering. I know I'm old-fashioned and my formative years of watching football were in the 70s and early 80s but seriously, can you imagine Bob Paisley taking advice from some geek like this?
simple he was given the job then they moved the goalposts
Said the same four posts back.
Oh and i completely agree.
Just spotted that...and you're right of course!
I think I've become invisible or png so forgiven.
I could've written that transfer committee article..
The only interesting points that arise, he squashes saying it'll bore us mere mortals and or take him too long to type..
I had a goosey through some of his other pieces, they are much the same. I imagine the guy is a bit of a bullshiter
The only interesting points that arise, he squashes saying it'll bore us mere mortals and or take him too long to type..
I had a goosey through some of his other pieces, they are much the same. I imagine the guy is a bit of a bullshiter
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