I know Harry always bigs himself up. But whether slightly hypocritical or not, he's right about committees, DOFs, bringing in players that the manager didn't want, or ask for. Nevertheless, it always seems to be the manager who carries the can when it doesn't work out.
That's what they sign up for now, though. They know the situation when they join. It works out for some clubs, like Swansea, who try to make signings that are consistent with the club's ethos and style. It prevents things going pear shaped if the manager ****s off and the new one wants a completely different team. It might also prevent someone from bringing in all of their favourites and being very short-termist. Downsides? The main man's authority is undermined, he'll be pissed if you bring in the wrong people and you add a layer of possible bullshit. It appears to work for the biggest teams in the world at the moment, as well as a number of those at a slightly lower level, like Sevilla. Is it working over here? I'm not convinced either way. Ferguson and Wenger might have done things differently, but there are problems now that might have been prevented if they hadn't. Fergie clearly didn't give a **** what was going to happen after he left and The Mad Prof might not have kept so many fillers around with a DoF. I doubt either would've stood for it, though.
I understand what you're saying. Call me cynical, but with the payoffs these guys get they're probably not going to cry too hard if sacked. I'd definitely agree about the Utd situation, it was pretty clear that a lot of that side in Fergie's last season was up to its sell by date. If Fergie genuinely didn't give a toss then Woodward should have stepped in. Although he was so powerful that that could have proved difficult. I just feel that if you're being held ultimately culpable, then you want to live or die by your own decisions, not somebody else's.
I think, if what we read is true, that Klopp will work with L'pool's transfer committee, but has demanded the final say on all transfers. Which I think is what I would ask for in his situation. In my opinion, a manager is the one who knows what his team needs. Yes, a DOF could be used to locate suitable targets and also to do the negotiations in the event of any transfer. But, to my mind, the list of potentially available candidates should be presented to the manager for his final decision on the one(s) he feels are best suited to his needs. Obviously, if the deal is not financially viable for the club, then the manager would have to think again.
Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich don't seem to be doing too badly with a coach and a DoF. Coaching a football team is a full-time job and if you are doing it properly you don't have time to decide on who to bring in. You should be able to say what is missing and then someone who does have time should find players for you. But the principal job of the DoF should be to build the right squad for the future not to fire fight the present. In truth no-one can tell whether anyone in the price bracket we can afford is 'better' than say Dier, Mason, Alli, Bentaleb, or Dembele so the solution is to stop pretending that we can bring in better players and concentrate on improving the ones we've got.
Or to put it another way - the current Liverpool squad cost more than £300m and was obtained in the market. Even allowing for overpaying and having to extract people from highly paid contracts it ought to be worth £200m even if it was selected completely at random. It should therefore finish somewhere between 4th and 6th in the PL. It does so I conclude that they've had an average player purchase policy and an average coach.
So if you were made the CEO of say Tesco, the first thing you would do is change the whole senior management team to be your choices and then insist on being consulted on all senior hires? It shouldn't be - you've got much more chance to succeed by trying to get the current team to work better.
Nonsense! A completely different corporate structure. Tesco are not a Utd, or City or Chelsea. In the case of a football club, the eleven people who go out to work are more important than anything else, as they affect the whole performance of the corporation - just eleven people! Plus subs. The manager is responsible for which players go out there to do that job. Also, each manager has his own philosophy, his own ideas. The players he inherits (as in M.P's case) may not suit his methods. As the head of Salomon Bros used to say, "Our major assets go up and down in the elevator every day" In other words, the traders. But the principle is the same.
Almost entirely disagree. You can only coach players up to the limit of their ability. No coach can make a silk purse from a sow's ear. The manager is the one who sees the players on a day to day basis, works with them, relates to them, etc. He should always be the final arbiter of who is in his team and who is not
I've never disagreed with the sentiments in your last two comments. To extend your analogy a bit I'm saying that most players who cost in the £10m to £20m range are silk and only slightly different quality of silk. Its very hard even for a large full time team of scouts to determine whether the quality of silk in the external players that they are watching is worse, the same, or better than the ones in our squad already. I've never understood what special magical properties the 'manager' has that means he can make this judgement better than the DoF and the scouts about players that he has barely watched, never mind interacted with. Once they are actually in our squad it should of course be up to the coach to make selections and to ask the DoF to sell players who are not useful. The way managers behave (Wenger is a counter-example) they appear to be able to see all the weaknesses of their current players and almost none of proposed signings. I also don't understand this obsession some people have about whether players 'suit the manager's system'. Surely if you asked Klopp, Rogers, Redknapp, AVB and Wenger to define the qualities of the players they needed for most particular positions they would be close to spot on the same?
My post specifically referred to the 'Senior team' at Tesco which would be of about the same size as the important staff at a football club. The only managers in the world who can apparently only work with a select hand-picked team are football managers. This seems to me to be more a sign of insecurity and incompetence than something to be desired. Klopp has about £300m worth of talent at Liverpool - if he can get them playing a few % better then he will win the league.
Each manager has his own philosophy as to how the game should be played. Many of our recent sales are down to the fact that those players didn't fit with M.P's View of how he wants his team to play. The manager, supposedly a professional coach, who works with the players all day, every day, virtually. It's my belief that there is nobody better placed to decide on the individual qualities of a player, or as to what his squad is lacking. The DOF's job, should you choose to go with that system, should be to identify suitable targets to fulfill the manager's requirements. Not to override these, as Comolli clearly did to Jol.
He'll need a darn sight more than a few percent! He has a collection of players, but are they a team? I don't think so. That's down to poor decision making on the behalf of their transfer committee. But, Brenda has carried the can. Don't get me wrong, he has his share of culpability - to what degree, we'll never know. But the faceless members of this committee seem to go merrily on regardless of their share of the blame.
When I think about who we've sold its more down to the fact they were not as good players as we thought rather than being a poor fit with the system.
I'd say there was a subtle difference between what Poch wanted and AVB wanted: AVB wanted players who could retain possession and grind the opposition down - Poch wants players who can retain possession and win games, and if that doesn't work they wear the opponents out. ANother way to look at it is that Townsend probably fits Redknapp's system of pace down the wings, but he doesn't fit into the system of Poch, AVB or Wenger as he's pace and little more. At least Walcott and AO-C have a degree of end product, which Townsend does not.
I agree that the difference is subtle. What you've said above is that Townsend is a worse player than Walcott which many people would agree with and is independent of managers and systems.
Also, in the case of Rodgers, saying he had a system is being polite: he couldn't agree on whether he wanted three or four at the back - say what you will about AVB, but he knew what system he wanted...even if he lacked the nous to actually implement it.
Townsend is a worse player because he's devoid of a brain, to begin with. Unlike Walcott, he rarely has any useful end product to his endeavours.
