Has anyone got anything FACTUAL to write about who decides the tranfer policy; the formation; the team selection; substitutions; the tactics?? Its seems to be 99% conjecture and would guess that the other 1% seems to have been gotten from playing Football Manager!!
Definitely agree but really how much do we know about any of the real inner workings of our beloved club? All we see is PR-fueled info on OS and twitter, the odd carefully worded interviews (I think it says a lot that people have read so much from Nigel's slightly less carefully worded interview than usual) and then what we see on matchdays. The rest is almost entirely speculation, guesswork, the odd media scoop and some ITKs or not-so-ITK muppets. If all contributions were restricted to fact only, these forums would be very quiet.
Anyone who speaks of certainties or definites is almost undoubtedly talking out of their arse, but I think it's fine for people to speculate and suggest theories because otherwise we'd all be sat around chatting about the weather and the player's haircuts.
Personally my thoughts/guesses are similar to TSS'.
Although on transfers, I think that domestically Adkins is very much in charge, but I think foreign transfers are mostly down to others, Cortese, Reed and some other back-room staff probably, I'm sure Adkins is involved and has a lot of the final say, but I don't think he was the one scouring the continent for talent. My reasoning behind that is that is just partly what I think is common sense, and partly a bit of guesswork, I think when you look at domestically bought players, Jrod, Clyne, S.Davis and Gazza are very Nigel-like signings and players Nigel would know a lot about. The foreign players, Ramirez, Mayuka, Yoshida, Boruc have a very Cortese-like feeling to them, Ramirez and Boruc both came from Italy, Mayuka from Switzerland, and we know Cortese's links to those two places. And I got a distinct feeling we very much a team either in Holland or focusing on Holland, we had a lot of players linked to us in a short period of time, Buttner, Yoshida, Lens, Boilesen, Pieters, De Vrij, Douglas etc., I think some of those were more real than others but still. I think there was probably a team lead by Cortese, Reed and to a slightly lesser degree Adkins, that was scouting for the foreign talent. Another thing that makes me thing this is that when Mayuka, Ramirez and Yoshida all signed, they all talked about extensive discussions with Cortese and his people about the club and where we're going and stuff, that was a recurring theme throughout, and I very much got the impression from Mayuka and Yoshida when talking about Adkins that they met him for the first time for their introductory photos of holding up a shirt and at training. But Rodriguez and Davis both mentioned having talked to Adkins earlier on in their process of joining the club. I could be way off the mark but I formulated this theory throughout the transfer window and think there's a good basis to it, but as I said, it's just a theory.
I definitely think though that all line-up, formation, substitutions whatever are all very much down to Adkins and his team, but I'm sure there is also input from elsewhere, but only input.
