Just posted this on the managerial graveyard thread, thought it'd be relevant for here too: As for the DOF, I've never personally understood the position, a man that gets given charge of scouting operations and the buying (and selling?) of players seems like the best job in football. To me that should be what a manager does (never get the idea of "Head Coach" either) and so it seems like a club is hiring two people to do one man's job.
"As for the DOF, I've never personally understood the position" I do. But whether a club can operate it as I perceive it should be, is another story. Specifically on player acquisitions : - team managers only need to have a short-term view (what positions is my squad weak in right now) - DoFs have a longer-term view (which players are coming thru, which are coming to the end, what positions will become a "now" issue for the manager in 2+ yrs time etc) .
I can see the point of a DoF if we have a proper coach who can spend all his time getting the team to perform at top level, without having to spend his time with a whole lot of admin work, but he does need to have a large input into players that are signed. We either have a Dof or we have Levy doing it and if you remember that was the set up with Harry. Harry told us that Levy would do the deals after asking him if he wanted such and such player. So DoF or Levy, someone has to do the job it's now far too big for just one man to look after all aspects, contracts to sort, agents to see, players to source, plus numerous other admin requirements all that plus two games a week a large squad of players, travel arrangements and on and on.
Yeah if the manager is making the choices on who he wants at the club for the DOF to then approach and deal with, fair enough. Otherwise I think it undermines a manager if someone else is making the deals the manager may or may not want. Contract renewals, similar to transfers, ask the DOF to offer new ones to so and so. Travel and admin is done by the club secretary anyway.
"I personally feel that should all be the manager's job." I want a manager to be dealing with the squad he has. If there are position deficiencies now, he reports them to the DoF. This doesn't mean that a manager cannot be aware of, or have opinions on, particular players in those positions (ignorance is not bliss) . But correspondingly the manager should accept that on occasions a player may appear in the squad with an eye to the future, not his immediate needs.
I agree. Most managers seem to be about as clueless as I am regarding their view on players' abilities. A DoF's performance can be measured on the basis of whether the players they bought were on average worth more or less than we paid for them when they were sold on. That if anything undervalues his input as if he bought a player the manager wrongly didn't use then that would likely lead to a reduced valuation on sale. If they were sold on by a successor it would make more sense to value them at any subsequent dealing price if higher. On that basis I expect Comolli comes out very well: three massive successes and only one big failure?
Most managers in the modern game don't last long enough to care about the long term future of the squad, though. If they don't do well in the present, then their future plans won't ever become reality. That's why so many of them just buy players for the current campaign.
"A DoF's performance can be measured on the basis of whether the players they bought were on average worth more or less than we paid for them when they were sold on." Which ignores players who stay for a long time (Dawson etc) . The desired bottom line financially on any player, developed or bought, is that when they are gone, their minimum cost is zero (the ROI on them in what the club achieved + their sell-on fee, offsets their signing fee + wages/bonuses paid out during their time etc) .
The lesser spotted Erik Lamela was in attendance for this game: please log in to view this image please log in to view this image He may have been playing too much Assassin's Creed, judging by the second picture.
That's all fair - players kept for a long time ought to be considered a success. Selling a player for less than he is subsequently sold for should be a failure. I'm interested on how Caulker v Chiriches will do using this measure
Last season people were up in arms that AVB considered letting Dawson go. This season people wish that he did.
