It seems that Kevin Bond, Joe Jordan and Clive Allen have followed Harry out of the door with Tim Sherwood and Les Ferdinand expected to go as well. The exits of Bond and Jordan was inevitable and although Clive Allen is 'one of us', his role since Martin Jol departed, has always been a reduced one. Nevertheless, he has been a good servant to the club for a number of years and I wish him well. Should the talk of Sherwood leaving be confirmed, then that would be the surprise. His appointment was a surprise because he came with no coaching qualifications, having spent his time playing golf with Jamie and entering into business with him, alongside criticising Spurs in his role as a Setanta TV pundit. Who can forget his withering 'the best Spurs can hope for is 10th or 11th' comment. But he has done well in his time with the club, and has made a decent reputation for himself and anyone who saw our Next Gen team last season, knows that squad was in good hands. He is extremely popular throughout the club and although he is unltimately judged on how many players he helps bring through to the first team, I do feel he would be a loss. Les Ferdinand who works closely with Sherwood, would be less of a surprise as he has never been a full-time employee anyway.
If coaches are being cut, then that would suggest that we've either got someone in or are very close to doing so, in my opinion. Hmm...
I agree. I wouldn't have said that for Jordan/Bond as they follow Harry everywhere. But all round cull suggests someone else is bringing in a crew.
It looks like Levy is certainly 'moving in a different direction'. Is it their own descision or have they been pushed?
So, some questions. Which of the following tend to bring their own crew with them when changing jobs: Martinez Moyes AVB ???
I don't know enough about the backroom staff at other clubs to know for certain, but I doubt if any of them would come with 3 assistants as Harry had.
Bond is the coach who decided that set piece training wasn't worth doing, so he's no great loss. I'd prefer Allen and Sherwood to stay, Allen because he's done a good job for some time (although as we don't have a reserve team these days, his job has been marginalised), whilst Sherwood appeared to be doing a good job...apart from the time he selected two ineligible players in the NexGen.
If Ray Lewington goes to the England set up on a full time basis, then it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see Jol invite Clive Allen to join him at Fulham.
Moyes seems to keep a lot of his coaching staff around for a long time. He took Lumsden with him from Preston and a number of his current staff has served there for years.
Yes, he's had Chris Woods as keeper coach for a number of years and he brought his number two with him from Preston, Alan Irvine. As you know, Irvine went back to PNE for a stint as manager and is know back with Moyes at Everton as head of their academy.
SC I actually mentioned this on another thread yesterday, but it got lost in all the rantings and opinions. I think a complete clean out can be a good thing (Bond,Jordan etc), but although Allen was one of us you can be in one place too long and start to lose your edge(Hughton?). Just because they are all leaving isn't always an indication that movement is imminent it could be just that they are Harry's team and they are no longer needed.
Bond and Jordan would have gone anyway, but Clive Allen was there before Harry and so I suspect his departure is a clearing the decks exercise for the new man.
i go with Perryman's take on this....or maybe this just shows that we are going to have a new strategy and space is reqd for a DOF etc.
I have a question. A lot of posters seem to think that Levy is going back to the DOF situation. Is this guess work or is there an indication that this is going to happen?
Well, Harry said the club wanted to go in a different direction. There are only 2 things i can think of as to what that means: 1 - they simply want someone younger 2 - they want to change the structure of how the place is run.
There were strong rumours in the Spanish press a couple of months ago that Txiki Begiristain might be brought in as DoF, although there's been nothing else on that since so it might be (Spanish) paper talk, the deal might have gone dead, or we had an agreements and kept it on hold until Harry was shunted out.
His wiki page only mentions his playing career. What are his credentials as a DoF? Which managers has he worked with and which players has he signed to which clubs? I've found he worked at Barca, but luring players there is hardly a difficult job. Big wages, champs league, prestige etc etc.
He was DoF at Barca from 2003-10, so worked alongside Rijkaard and Guardiola (and sacked Raddy Antic...) Whilst the job sounds like an easy one, before he took over they'd gone through five managers in two years and hadn't won anything in three years, after he came in they reversed that trend with a vengeance. It's hard to say which transfers he was in charge of (plenty of players who don't fit in with the tiki-taka aesthetic were brought in under his watch, like Van Bommel and Davids), but also the promotion of Messi and Iniesta (and Dos Santos) from their youth ranks. From that point of view, he build up Barca with a long-term strategy - although much of that would have come from Laporta, but he did a good job following through with the brief.
Do Davids and van Bommel really stand out that badly, Croydon? They could both play some decent stuff considering the role that they occupy in the team, even if their main aim is a destructive one. Mascherano and Keita still play a part in the current side, though neither's exactly a first XI player.
