we have only had 1 DoF and manager success ... Frank Arnesen and Martin Jol and that came about by a mistake. Hoddle and Pleat; Santini and Arnesen; Jol and Comolli were all failures...and our latest try lasted 3 months. In my opinion if we insist on having a DoF then he and he alone should chose the manager...that way everyone is clear on who buys players and who decides what players are targeted and they can properly work as a team. AVB's camp are now claiming he did not want 4 of the 7 summer signings we made...(personally I think if that is true he should have publicly said so at the time) My problem is that Levy now seems to want Sherwood...a man with NO managerial experience ... as our next manager. Sherwood's decisions yesterday seemed like a PR exercise rather that of a real manager. He took Adebayor off (fair enough) and bought on a midfielder so we no longer hand a striker holding the ball up which invited west ham onto us...Soldado coming on was desperately needed and those sitting around me were perplexed as to why he was not bought on. Anyway my point is that if we do not have a manager in full agreement with Baldini we will continue to have this problem...and for the first time yesterday I heard people starting to turn on Levy. I think his financial management of the club has been good but I think he should not be choosing our manager as he is **** at doing so... Hoddle (crashed and Burned); Pleat (temporary) died on his feet; Santini (Legged it after 3 months) Jol (Good but chosen by DoF Arnesen...then conspired against by Comolli) Ramos (no idea how to describe him) Redknapp (very good - but no DoF) AVB (ok first season - no DoF...goes 3 months after Dof appointed claiming he didn't want certain players signed) If things continue the fans will turn on him in the not too distant future imo and no one wants to stay at or join a club at war with itself.
Its tricky. The combined job is clearly too big for almost anybody but getting the two to work together seems impossible too. RCL's idea is a good one but it could also work the other way up with the DoF being the manager's choice. Like a chief scout but with more clout. The downside with the combined approach is that if one leaves the other has to go too which is a shame for continuity
The issue with the DoF is that Levy doesn't seem to understand the role - the DoF selects the manager, not the chairman (hence Arnesen selected Jol yet Levy got cold feet and brought in Santini as a "big name" to appease fans, yet brought in Jol as well - quite conveniently, as it turned out) It was a lot simpler when Pleat was DoF: Graham/Hoddle was in charge of the first team, Pleat's job was to scout prospects from the lower leagues, which is more akin to Sherwood's role with the Academy than any of Arsnesen/Comolli/Baldini.
"Franco has had a massive impact. He was a person I was pushing to get from the day I arrived here. His impact was immediate, the way he moves himself in the market and the knowledge and experience that he has. It's great credit to him to what has been done this summer." - AVB at the start of September. Obviously we don't know whether that was just a line to give to the media but even when AVB was appointed there was talk of a DoF, including Baldini, so he knew what he was getting into with regards to his role and his say in transfer activity. To be honest I find the media focus on Bale leaving and the new signings all being average to be extremely lazy analysis by the media regarding AVB's departure. The likes of Lamela and Eriksen haven't hit the ground running by they have not had a run of games and both of them are still in their early twenties so it is extremely hard to judge them. Chadli and Capoue have been out injured, Capoue showing early promise in his position so early to judge him. Paulinho and Vlad have looked good in parts so really the only major question mark at the moment is Soldado. Overall it is too early to judge the new signings that have been brought in and AVB can't really use the signings not being his as an excuse. Ultimately he dug his own grave, as I believe the board would have given him had we been making progress regarding our performances throughout the season but we were arguably getting worse.
It's funny how I've heard more than once (possibly even from Levy) how the structure with the DOF helps with regards to continuity. That is absolutely hilarious. I wonder which of the four DOFs and seven (soon to be eight) managers that Levy has appointed would agree that the structure provides "continuity"? Perhaps some of the 15 or so senior players brought in over the last 18 months or the 18 or so senior players that have left in that time (not including loans) could share with us some of the joys of there being such continuity. As far as I can see whenever there's a DOF there is the sort of scatter-gun approach to transfers that we saw this summer. Financially it makes sense to spread the gamble. But is it actually good for a club to have that sort of huge change? Levy is obsessed with the DOF structure and, like all his considered opinions about footballing matters, it looks dodgy as hell to me. Give someone a job where they're expected to identify and complete signings and guess what they'll do? Make a bollock-load of signings. Of players that are normally young and from overseas and whether you want them or not (remember the time we had about six right backs?). But players who will keep/increase their value and who might even turn into decent players. Does anyone have any examples of the DOF structure working in the EPL? Ever? Or is Levy uniquely able to see what all others can't? Oh well - just a couple of seasons of ****e from whichever poor sod takes the poisoned chalice this time and then Levy can panic, bring in an unfashionable, solid EPL boss and do away with the DOF role once again. Things will be OK for a couple of years til people wonder why the new guy is only getting us into the Champions League and we're not winning titles ahead of teams with budgets 2, 3, 4 times bigger than ours. He'll have to pay for "not being able to take us to the next level" and then we'll go round again as Levy re-re-re-implements his wonderful long-term (no laughing at the back) strategy.
Makes me wonder.does the DOF and Manager sit down together and discuss the players before signing them?i always thought the DOF was supposed to try and get players the Manager wants
With the DoF role, a manager becomes a coach. He gets given a group of players and has to coach what he's got. He isn't necessarily coaching players he would have personally chosen to buy. That is a recipe for disaster in my view. I don't understand why it seems to be such a popular set up. The most successful managers in our game have not always been great coaches - often their assistant would the coach. What they usually have had is an eye for a player, great man management skills and are sometimes good tacticians. They would never have accepted someone else choosing their players - how would that have worked with Clough, Shankly, SAF? Nonsense.
Wasn't Peter Taylor a sort of DoF for Clough, identifying players who could help the team and recommending them to Clough?
If Taylor was the DOF does that mean Clough was the coach?! The guy who, to help his strikers shoot better would put a stick in the ground and say "Hit the bloody stick! No! Hit it! Hit the ****ing stick!"? From what I've read Clough was extremely hands on with identifying and recruiting players. One time going round a player's house and not leaving til he signed the following morning. Think that might have been one he did without his chairman's knowledge too.
You don't need a Dof, just employ someone who understands contracts, then have a team of scouts and a manager who selects the scouts. The scouts find the players, the manager says yes or no, the contract man ( not killer) then sorts out the paperwork after the manager has met the player. It's not complicated unless you have a maniac as chairman! The chairman should be involved once the manager requests to buy a player and he OKs the deal and makes a bid Intially to get permission to speak to the player. Man Utd done Ok without a celebrity Dof, as all I remember where the chairman/chief executive , such as Edwards and Gill, I don't remember them needing a Dof to interfere, or if they did have one he can't have been one for the limelight. I understand that means more work for Levy but that system worked well for 4 years and got the best results on the pitch. If Levy doesn't want the extra work load he should step aside and employ a chief executive like David Gill was at Utd, that would mean no Dof and no confusion as to who's buying the players and if the manager wanted them signed.
When Clough, Shankly and Nicholson were managers one new signing a year was the norm and no-one was ever signed from outside the UK. These days the situation is quite different and needs a different set up in response in my view. In practice buying and selling so many players probably doesn't add as much value as people think because only half tue signings are successful and they cause so much disruption but getting it right makes a massive difference. The hard bit isn't identifying the talent even if that is a bit hit and miss, its valuing it. Deciding how much to pay is not trivial and most of our DoF's have been pretty good at that.
That was Dave Mackay, when Clough got wind we were selling him. Or at least that's the version in The Damned United...
He was hardly going to come out and say I don't want these guys in my team is he. We needed them to hit the ground running. The club needs to actually sit down and work out a direction to go in - though this would require strong leadership form the top - akin to how Barca, Ajax, Swansea and Soton have done. Once a team has identified a way of playing, this will be consistant throughout the levels from youth upwards making training youngsters more effective. It also means Players from other teams are identified for the way they would fit into the method of playing, so not such a pot luck gamble. It lastly means new managers are easier to find as you would look for someone that can get a team playing ie Swansea. We have not had this, therefor we are in constant flux. Just because AVB was not the first team coach we needed, does not mean the DOF method doesn't work, as it works perfectly well at two clubs we have tried to emulate (and stolen managers from) Seville and Porto. The only issue I have with the system is that it seems to prize a good purchase (ie good price for what you are buying) over buying the required players at the time. For instance, signing Bent when we had Berbs, Keane & Defoe (if my memory serves?) this year we have Chadli, Lamela, Lennon, Townsend and Siggy, but only one good right back, one decent keeper & once decent left back. There seems to be a real mix of some people wanting to give AVB time, some people wanting AVB out, people wanting the DOF out, people wanting Levy out. Imo we just need a manager tha can get the team playing with the passion that Harry/Tim have done, but not such a gung ho naïve way. We actually moved the ball around really well at times against WHAM, but at NO STAGE WHATSOEVER did we look like we knew how to break through them. This may have been AVB's coaching, it may be that Defoe is not good enough any more, it maybe that the midfield two were not creative enough....who knows, but everyone seems to agree the players are there we just need someone to pull it together and change the mentality a bit
No, Taylor was his assistant. Clough was the mouth, Taylor the brains, I think, in the relationship. Clough described himself as the shop front and Taylor the goods in the back. There are plenty of examples of successful manager and assistant partnerships, but none of those I can think of would have stood for a 3rd party telling them which players they were having and negotiating the deals for them. It would involve complete trust and understanding which is unlikely when the two men are separately appointed, may never have worked together before and may have different ideas and philosophies. If the manager is choosing the players, you don't need a DoF but a good chairman or chief exec to broker the deals. A case of too many cooks.
I think that Levy wants a DOF so that he can be less involved in transfers himself. He was trying to sort out deals, get the training complex completed and finalise the plans for the stadium in the past. It was too much and a variety of transfers fell through at the final hurdle. The alternative would be to leave it all in the manager's hands, which has it's own problems.
He did actually have someone close that recommended players to him. I'm terrible with names, but from what I gather when he fell out with said person things stopped going so well for him. Does that sound like Taylor?
Yes, they fell out over Taylor wanting to take a job on his own (Brighton?). They never spoke again and it affected Cloughie quite a lot when Taylor died I think. Well that's what I got from the movie of The Damned United.
Yeah, that was Taylor. They didn't speak again before Taylor died and Clough later regretted that. When you all speak of getting a "top manager", you must be thinking of an experienced, established name, who should be capable of taking on all these roles. Which top manager would be happy to delegate the role of recruiting players to someone else unless there was total agreement about who was to be signed? That isn't the impression I have about the £100M+ spent in the summer. I might be wrong but AVB didn't choose the players. He might have had some input in making known his views about the type of players he wanted and the areas of the team he wanted strengthening, but it seems he was left to coach whoever Levy and Baldini found for him. The case of Lamela alone - huge price tag for a young player, new to The PL, can't speak English, AVB doesn't know what to do with- suggested the concept is flawed.
