I disagree and think that view is unrealistic, in modern football any new manager is going to want to shuffle the squad around both in terms of ins and outs. Even Sherwood as a caretaker made no secret of the fact that he would want to buy and sell players over the sumer if he had the job permanently. Also, the squad may have cost £200m but how many of the players are ever going to justify their fees or wages? Look at Ade, highest paid player in the squad for pretty much his whole time at the club and he won't put a shift in. There is no guarantee that Lamela will ever fulfil his potential, and will Soldado ever score us 20 league goals in a season? The monetary value of the players at the club in terms of transfer fees and wages is no true reflection of their quality, nor does it reflect that we have imbalances in the playing personnel, like having too many CMs and not enough options out wide and up top. Even if we take your belief that managers don't need the players they want to be successful to be generally true (which I don't), surely it is clear that we have major problems with some of the players at this club and that Pochettino or his successor, if there is to be one in the immediate future, will need to overhaul the playing staff further in the coming transfer windows, both to rebalance the squad and to remove players who have negative effects both on and off the pitch.
The belief that DOF's are any more successful is based in even less fact. Having said that, Pochettino should definitely be doing more with the players he has adopted. I still want to know who's responsible for buying this load of overpriced, so called talent.
Nearly every successful organisation in the world is run by a team, not an individual. The simpler you can make jobs the easier they are to do. Giving someone the job of coaching and building the squad would be considered ludicrous in most organisations - why design a job that no-one has the skills or time to do. The claim that anyone has any real skill in signing players also has little basis in fact as far as I can see. If you buy more expensive players then you tend to get better ones but other than that I can't see anyone who has a strong longterm record.
I believe a competent coach/manager, whatever you want to call him, has a far better handle on what his team needs and the better ability to judge possible targets. I would use Mourinho as a good example. O.k. Nobody gets every decision right, but he gets most of them right. He came back to Chelsea and did things that nobody could understand, to start with. Like selling Mata. But, look where his team is now. In my opinion DOF's mostly do more harm than good. Comolli spent half his time buying players that Jol didn't want or need. As to young, upcoming talent, that should be the job of a good scouting team.
Jol was wrong and Comolli was right! When Comolli was DoF the players he signed increased in value so he earned the club a lot of money. That is not true of Redknapp's signings (nor Mourinho's I think). The main source of our disagreement however is a couple of beliefs that I have which almost no-one else shares: 1) Players are more similar to each other than they look and 2) It is very difficult to tell which players are the 'best' now, never mind how they will progress over a few years. If I asked a group of fans to put the following similar players in order of how valuable to our team they would be in 2017 I guarantee I would get almost every order possible: Livermore, Sandro, Capoue, Stambouli, Schneiderlin, Mason, Dembele, Bentaleb. Similarly Lamela, Townsend, Chadli, Willian, Lallana, Pritchard. And that is not unreasonable because no-one has enough data to know. The only way to have any chance of deciding which of those we ought to buy or sell and at what price is to have the decision in the hands of a full time person leading a team of scouts with the long-term objective of signing players who will be great in two or three years (and selling those who won't) and undistracted by the job of coaching the current squad. Getting the best four of the first bunch and the best three of the second could be the difference between being champions or being 7th. If you don't believe this look at the records for the 100m sprint and try to work out which sprinters you would sign to have a PL winning relay team in two years time. You'd find that there is quite a scatter on individual performance which means you have to watch lots of races even to be sure which is better now and there is an even bigger scatter on when people peak and how much they improve. Now extend that to football where there are many more variables and you'll see that you probably need to watch every player for 50 matches with very detailed analysis of his performance to have any chance of differentiating.
From the The Daily Telegraph "The Daily Telegraph understands players have discussed “the bigger picture” with one another and are worried that it will be two steps backwards for every one taken forwards under Levy. There is confusion over who exactly is controlling the transfer strategy and whether Pochettino actually wants the players he has been given to work with. Those who feel they are not part of his long-term plans are concerned they will be denied moves away from Spurs by Levy’s inflated asking prices. No players are trying to directly blame Levy for the poor results this season, but Pochettino may find it difficult to properly motivate those who think Tottenham cannot achieve consistent success under the chairman." So not satisfied with failing on their day job the players now want to second guess the chairman. I particularly like "they will be denied moves away from Spurs by Levy’s inflated asking prices." They want us to sell them for less than they are worth? Or they think they are worse than the club thinks they are? I bet they don't say that when negotiating their salary!
'The Daily Telgraph understands' Is newspaper talk for we have made this up. I do not believe this for a moment. It's probably taking Adebayors supposed comment and stretching it out.
Jol was not wrong! He knew exactly what he needed for his side. Instead, all he got was another of that idiot Comolli's "bargains" Any competent coach/manager knows that he needs, for instance, a DM, or a striker. In the DOF system he invariably gets not what he asked for, but what the DOF thinks the club can make money on. So long as that kind of thinking and that kind of system persists, we will go nowhere. Again, identify the correct manager and let him decide what his team needs. It works very well for Mourinho, it would work for us.
Personally, I can well believe that there's a lot of truth in that story. It's clear for all to see that the players are completely demotivated. Something is going on at the club, and it's not good.
I'm OK for the coach to sign the odd player to make up for any gap missing in the team but that is very different from being in charge of transfer policy to build for the future. Mourinho is one of the few people (like SAF and possibly Wenger) who has the capability to do both jobs. Redknapp clearly didn't. We shouldn't have an organisational design for the club that depends on having a genius for a manager any more than we should employ tactics on the field that depend on the players being better than they are.
That's what the writer has surmised NSIS. I agree it does appear that the players are demotivated and that's why I advocate getting rid of Pochettino right away. That is his responsibility and if they are demotivated then it's down to the manager. I don't like the idea of YET AGAIN changing manager but if you have someone who struggles to get the players minds right you have someone who can't actually manage. We need an old head a powerful figure I might even suggest Hoddle would be better than what we have now. Venables, Strachan, Jol, all would do the job needed.
I think building for the future should be based around a top global scouting system. In my view, the coach should always have the final say on any proposed transfer - not have players he neither asked for, nor wanted, foisted upon him. These are the guys who work with their team day in day out. If you're half way competent .( and if you're not, get rid ) you know better than anybody what's needed.
I agree it has been proven over the years that there are scouts who have an ability to 'spot' a player, Compare our recent record to NUFC or even Southampton they are doing something better then we are in terms of finding talent.
The likes of SAF or Mourinho have relied heavily on a large scouting network to find players and on club executives to negotiate deals, but the final say seems to have been theirs when it comes to recruiting a player. Is this the case with the DoF? If a DoF is having the last word, then the potential diasagreements with the manager are self evident. If he is not having the final say, what's the point of having him? He's just a glorified scout.
