You Schmad?
- Thread starter rurikbird
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I can't help the feeling that Henry has taken the pulse on the general feeling.. and has done his usual.
PIVOT!! PIVOT!!
Maybe waiting for our preferred long term target for the DOF role to finish serving gardening leave/contract to run out?
Sounds like it. If he falls out with anyone or not doesnt really bother me if he's good and can contribute for 3 months.
midfielders?
All jokes aside, what the fuck is going on at Liverpool these days?
For a time it felt like there was a group of people with a unified vision on what to do with the club and had a handle on how to achieve that. We got the right the people in place after a few misfires and it felt like we were finally in a good place.
These days it feels like nobody quite has a handle on things and the club has been allowed to just drift along. Now I'm left wondering whether the appointment of Edwards, Klopp and co was more by luck than design and we're back to an era of Commolis. Hope I'm wrong but it's hard to ignore the evidence.
For a time it felt like there was a group of people with a unified vision on what to do with the club and had a handle on how to achieve that. We got the right the people in place after a few misfires and it felt like we were finally in a good place.
These days it feels like nobody quite has a handle on things and the club has been allowed to just drift along. Now I'm left wondering whether the appointment of Edwards, Klopp and co was more by luck than design and we're back to an era of Commolis. Hope I'm wrong but it's hard to ignore the evidence.
Owners want to sell but didn’t get the offer they they wanted and all the while they took their eye off the ball on protecting the club’s value which is linked to club’s immediate performance on the field.
I assume now their time is split between new shinny other acquisitions rather than focussing on their crown jewels.
I assume now their time is split between new shinny other acquisitions rather than focussing on their crown jewels.
Agreed. The problem I have with them is not that they don't know what they're doing, but that they've stuck to it too rigidly. Their approach has worked very well indeed in getting us back to the top level, but needed - and still needs - to be relaxed sufficiently to enable the club to build on that achievement.
Comolli hired Edwards, so that was always a fortunate one that their paths crossed at Spurs in a sense. The decision to advance him up the ladder was likely pretty straightforward when he was on the books. As you say, it adds weight to the idea that it was more fortunate than a club precise headhunting the latest talent available.
It could also be that the club is actually taking the necessary steps in ensuring that Klopp has the right backing and support this summer, if as Binny says our top target and preferred Sporting Director wont be able to contribute until after the summer.
If that the case it makes sense with a 3 month consultant role.
At some point we surely have to learn and change our course and strategy in terms of how Klopp is supported and the club run.
If that the case it makes sense with a 3 month consultant role.
At some point we surely have to learn and change our course and strategy in terms of how Klopp is supported and the club run.
100% - what got us there is not what will keep us there.
It used to feel like we had the smartest guys in the room, but now it smacks of management dysfunction. I started to feel it when that eejit Pep L did that promotional video for his book onwards. I thought it was weird the club allowed it.
I was hopeful we would regroup our smarts after a season of transition, but this Schmadcap hire feels like another disaster with implications beyond himself.
....sounds like the love child of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown dodged a career in politics and has taken up football.
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I can imagine LFC being a bit of an unappealing project right now for a sporting director.
- We've already got someone who a massively consolidated power base in Jurgen Klopp.
- We don't want a lot of work doing to the first team because a) we don't have the money and b) we want to attempt to get back into challenging asap.
- We don't have much in the way of creative long-term operations because we lack the finances and IMO the ambition.
- We operate in a league that is awash with money and zero regulation.
Money talks... If we pay the salary they will come. You are right Klopp it's Klopp who is choosing the shortlist
[article]When Wolfsburg sporting director Jorg Schmadtke “retired” at the start of the year, his local newspaper decided to ask the great and good of German football for their memories.
The accounts – published in Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung in January – make for fascinating reading.
Oliver Bierhoff, the former director of the German football federation, recalled the time they were both on military service and playing for the army football team and Schmadtke stood up to a particularly intransigent sergeant who threatened him.
“He is a special person and someone who says things clearly and doesn’t shy away from the consequences,” he wrote.
A few themes emerge. Time and again his former colleagues speak of his sharp mind, willingness to innovate, his eye for a player, directness, honesty, thirst for debate and inclination to address difficult issues “head on”.
His former assistant Dieter Hecking recalled a 30-minute argument that got so loud that their secretary knocked on the door with a couple of chamomile teas to try and douse the tension. “We argued like crazy but three minutes later, we were friends again,” he says.
At the top of the page there was a testimonial from Jurgen Klopp, recalling how – as a 19-year-old who was all “thin bones and long hair” – he had a trial that he “flunked with a bang” at Schmadtke’s former club Fortuna Dusseldorf.
“Jörg has probably remembered that to this day. He never offered me the chance to become a trainer at any of his clubs,” he wrote.
“He probably thought ‘If Klopp can’t play soccer, he can’t be a good coach’. I would have loved to work with him at some point. I’m sure it would have been a very good fit because for me, he’s a great personality.”
In a few days, all that will change and with it a new era at Liverpool will be ushered in.
i understands that Schmadtke has agreed to replace Julian Ward as the club’s sporting director and will begin work at Anfield on 1 June, a shock appointment but one that those who have witnessed his work believe could end up being an inspired one.
“He said he wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren and travelling but few of us thought a guy like him who is so obsessed with football would stay retired,” Andreas Pahlmann, a reporter at Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, tells i.
“Even though Klopp spoke so highly of him, no-one saw Liverpool coming so it will be interesting to see how he does. He is certainly smart enough, he’s a special character. He looks further ahead than other people – some people are thinking about the first or second step, he’s already onto the fifth or sixth.”
The appeal to the Reds, then, is obvious.
While Liverpool’s current winning run illustrates the team is in more robust health than many imagine it shouldn’t cloud the bigger picture. Substantial change is required if they are to return to English football‘s summit.
That goes for more than just the anticipated overhaul of the squad, which is likely to arrive 12 months too late to save this season. It applies to conversations behind-the-scenes, where there is a feeling among some in the Premier League that Liverpool’s tendency to promote from within has allowed complacency to creep into some decision making.
In Schmadtke they appear to have opted for creative tension and probably a shorter term fix than some of the other candidates spoken to.
i has learned that advanced talks were held with Roma’s Tiago Pinto, a self-styled club builder who is big on creating a culture and development environment.
“He proposed to replicate what he had done in Rome but Liverpool decided to go with a quick fix to their project which is okay,” one source with knowledge of the discussions told i.
Instead they have turned to Schmadtke, whose most recent posting as “manager” at Wolfsburg – the term means something more akin to a sporting director in Germany – saw him transform the culture at the club.
“Wolfsburg has always been over ambitious, they overpaid players who didn’t perform and the club was in trouble when he changed the whole idea there,” local journalist Pahlmann tells i.
“The idea instead was to buy players who they can re-sell if they need to. So they didn’t pay more than £50million for players and it worked. They got back into Europe and were competitive again through good recruitment.”
Liverpool will have more than that to spend, but the decision to walk away from the Jude Bellingham pursuit is evidence of a club aware that difficult calls sit somewhere on the horizon. If they are edged out of the top four by Newcastle and Manchester United, the margin for error diminishes further.
Schmadtke arrives with recruitment decisions already made for this summer. Moves for Mason Mount, Alexis Mac Allister and Ryan Gravenberch have long been worked on but it will be the charismatic German’s job to freshen things up and move the club back to the hungry culture that saw them rule the world not that long ago.[/article]
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This is just odd.
What is the deal with this old prick, cause like woland said, he seems like a right arse.
Are we waiting for another director to come in, probably, one who is contracted now?
If so, why not keep Ward for the extra time instead of bringing this man in? Was Ward that shit?
Does he not want/can to stay a bit longer?
What is the deal with this old prick, cause like woland said, he seems like a right arse.
Are we waiting for another director to come in, probably, one who is contracted now?
If so, why not keep Ward for the extra time instead of bringing this man in? Was Ward that shit?
Does he not want/can to stay a bit longer?
Nah. Since we don't have a big sale funding the transfers this summer, most likely we wont buy anyone for two years after this. Why pay a DOF when you are not going to buy anyone - Moneyball !!!!!!
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