How much does an SD influence the 1st Team Coach?

[lake district canary 4,562]

Webber was plainly a big influence at CR and it worked well with Farke up the point at which the players we had reached their limits and Webber had that brainfart urge to sack him, but since then that influence has been appalling. 

I wonder though, how much real influence did he have over 1st team affairs - and that then begs the question how much influence will Knapper have over the 1st team.  Farke, on his appointment at Leeds, insisted he wanted complete control and be manager, not head coach - and I wonder if that is a direct reaction to having been under Webber's influence at Norwich - with Webber having too much say in the first team.

So the real question then, is how much will Knapper want to have a say in the first team or how much he will just let the first team coach get on with it.  We all know Webber was a big noise, but Knapper doesn't look to be the type of ego that will want to dominate, but rather might allow people to get on with their jobs. This would be preferable - you need a strong character as a head coach - like we had with Farke, but my own thoughts there are that Farke had to do deal with too much from Webber (like the urge to go 433 at the start if the 2nd PL season, which always seemed a bit odd and may have been a Webber directive).  So a strong head coach - and let him get on with it, with the SD more of a background figure, organising everything else around to ensure good practice is followed throughout the club.

Any thoughts on that?

 

[PurpleCanary 5,606]

1 hour ago, lake district canary said:

Webber was plainly a big influence at CR and it worked well with Farke up the point at which the players we had reached their limits and Webber had that brainfart urge to sack him, but since then that influence has been appalling. 

I wonder though, how much real influence did he have over 1st team affairs - and that then begs the question how much influence will Knapper have over the 1st team.  Farke, on his appointment at Leeds, insisted he wanted complete control and be manager, not head coach - and I wonder if that is a direct reaction to having been under Webber's influence at Norwich - with Webber having too much say in the first team.

So the real question then, is how much will Knapper want to have a say in the first team or how much he will just let the first team coach get on with it.  We all know Webber was a big noise, but Knapper doesn't look to be the type of ego that will want to dominate, but rather might allow people to get on with their jobs. This would be preferable - you need a strong character as a head coach - like we had with Farke, but my own thoughts there are that Farke had to do deal with too much from Webber (like the urge to go 433 at the start if the 2nd PL season, which always seemed a bit odd and may have been a Webber directive).  So a strong head coach - and let him get on with it, with the SD more of a background figure, organising everything else around to ensure good practice is followed throughout the club.

Any thoughts on that?

 

He wouldn't have moved away from Arsenal to take a job with Norwich City unless he was going to have the level of control and wide-ranging responsibilities that Webber had. Only with that will he later on be able to present himself as a credible candidate for the role of sporting director at a top club.

[crispeduk 282]

How it pans out at any club seems down to the maturity of both parties, if they can work together and how they agree to share responsibilities. Not sure any manager/head coach, call it what you will, can in 2023 carry out the job to the best of their ability at the same time as, for example, slapping down an arsey agent at or near a transfer window – if ever you need someone outside the training/coaching regime to lead a group negotiating towards securing an outcome shared with the team boss, that is it (although I suspect Neil Warnock could kick agent **** along with everybody else's). It's down to mutual trust and keeping everyone else onside will be heavily influenced by the level of transparency in that – and there’s plenty on this board who will quickly spot any rift. Most of us seem to be quite rationally presuming, given the playing record, that Knapper will decide if he can work with Wagner and wants to, but it takes two to tango and Wagner himself may decide it’s not for him. Another thing that seems to get overlooked is that Knapper, seemingly highly rated and recommended in football and business terms, is still young and although Wagner’s record doesn’t imply that he should assert a senior role in any working partnership, he’s been through the mill and has plenty of football life experience to share with the new Sporting Director to their mutual benefit. Just a thought, if they could agree on the appointment of additional coaching support from Knapper’s previous club that could be more immediate and more significant than any loan deals with Arsenal. That might also be a true indicator of trust between the pair. I’m feeling weirdly optimistic – cue Wagner sacking in the morning 😀

Btw I'm not suggesting Colin at the Carrer.

[Google Bot 3,391]

Sporting Director works with the head coach to set the plan.  Head Coach is responsible for meeting the targets expected.

A lot of the time this isn't even results based, as if the Head Coach is ticking all boxes then the buck goes back to the SD to make the changes, to which the coach either reacts to, or i guess, leaves mutually if they no longer feel it matches their philosophies.

Mos people employed at the club will be on the same page anyway, and that's a big part of the SD role is to bring in staff and players to match the philosophies set.

[king canary 7,705]

I think sometimes people over play how much the SD controls what the HC does day to day. The SD sets the overall style, finds the players to fit that etc. But I think we get into conspricicy theory territory when you get people claiming that the HC is told he must play one very set formation, dictates training or has an influence in picking the team on match day.

[lake district canary 4,562]

47 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

He wouldn't have moved away from Arsenal to take a job with Norwich City unless he was going to have the level of control and wide-ranging responsibilities that Webber had. Only with that will he later on be able to present himself as a credible candidate for the role of sporting director at a top club.

Agreed, but within that, there is a range of variation and nuances in how the job can be approached.  I would think Knapper will be less egotistical in his approach, but that said, we don't really know what Webber was like behind the scenes. The big thing for me, as far as Webber was concerned was his pulling the plug on Farke when perhaps he should have kept him on and taken the responsibility for our bad results himself because of the poor recruitment and possibly the change to 433 - which may well have been on his instigation.  A different SD might have acted differently - ie: not given a four year contract then sack the guy after a few games into that.

Edited November 15, 2023 by lake district canary

[Mason 47 1,422]

I believe Farke initially wanted to go down the SD route but ended up doing a bit of managing and changing his mind. So he probably always had a preference for more control.

My impression is that the relationship between the two roles is pretty symbiotic traditionally. They agree on a vision for the team and then it's the job of the SD to supply the parts and the head coach to build the engine and the players to drive the car, so to speak.

Ultimately we probably can't know for sure as Webber wasn't even the traditional version of a Sporting Director. I'd hope if Wagner is staying, Knapper will make it a clear part of his remit to stop haemorrhaging goals in the short-term

[repman 642]

1 hour ago, lake district canary said:

Agreed, but within that, there is a range of variation and nuances in how the job can be approached.  I would think Knapper will be less egotistical in his approach, but that said, we don't really know what Webber was like behind the scenes. The big thing for me, as far as Webber was concerned was his pulling the plug on Farke when perhaps he should have kept him on and taken the responsibility for our bad results himself because of the poor recruitment and possibly the change to 433 - which may well have been on his instigation.  A different SD might have acted differently - ie: not given a four year contract then sack the guy after a few games into that.

The whole thing about us changing style upon promotion lets Farke off the hook massively imo. There was an acceptance upon the 2nd promotion that we needed to be better defensively if we wanted to stay up. We'd shipped basically 2 goals a game in 19/20 and you're never going to stay in the division if you want to do that. Now, if the claim is that Daniel Farke is some football purist who would choose style over results then fair enough, but he isn't. He certainly wasn't a purist in his first season at the club when we played 10 men behind the ball after a poor start to the season, even in the 20/21 season which was full of success we ground out plenty of 1-0 wins.

It's not hard to imagine that Webber and Farke had a conversation prior to the season talking about how they were going to approach it, and what changes would need to be made in order for us to stay up. If anything Webber's big mistake was believing in Farke to enact that style change. Giving him the four year deal was a pretty big show of faith which looked pretty misplaced as soon as a ball was kicked.

[TheGunnShow 6,103]

1 hour ago, Mason 47 said:

I believe Farke initially wanted to go down the SD route but ended up doing a bit of managing and changing his mind. So he probably always had a preference for more control.

My impression is that the relationship between the two roles is pretty symbiotic traditionally. They agree on a vision for the team and then it's the job of the SD to supply the parts and the head coach to build the engine and the players to drive the car, so to speak.

Ultimately we probably can't know for sure as Webber wasn't even the traditional version of a Sporting Director. I'd hope if Wagner is staying, Knapper will make it a clear part of his remit to stop haemorrhaging goals in the short-term

He did, and indeed when he was at Lippstadt before getting the Dortmund II gig, he pretty much handled absolutely everything.

[Terminally Yellow 2,494]

It's a really interesting question. 

I get the feeling the sporting director is in charge of the bigger picture. Setting out a head coach who will play in the manner the sporting director would generally like and then doing everything they can to provide the head coach with the resources needed to be successful, be that through player recruitment or development through a youth team set up to provide the production line of players. 

The head coach is then tasked with the day to day stuff. Coaching, team and player management, in charge of setting the team out. 

I would expect that the SD sets the tone for the HC to follow. The HC then sorts the rest of it all out.

[Robert N. LiM 4,667]

24 minutes ago, repman said:

Giving him the four year deal was a pretty big show of faith which looked pretty misplaced as soon as a ball was kicked

The real 'ignore the noise' move would have been to sack him before the 21-22 season started. Can you imagine the uproar?!

[lake district canary 4,562]

2 hours ago, repman said:

The whole thing about us changing style upon promotion lets Farke off the hook massively imo. There was an acceptance upon the 2nd promotion that we needed to be better defensively if we wanted to stay up. We'd shipped basically 2 goals a game in 19/20 and you're never going to stay in the division if you want to do that. Now, if the claim is that Daniel Farke is some football purist who would choose style over results then fair enough, but he isn't. He certainly wasn't a purist in his first season at the club when we played 10 men behind the ball after a poor start to the season, even in the 20/21 season which was full of success we ground out plenty of 1-0 wins.

It's not hard to imagine that Webber and Farke had a conversation prior to the season talking about how they were going to approach it, and what changes would need to be made in order for us to stay up. If anything Webber's big mistake was believing in Farke to enact that style change. Giving him the four year deal was a pretty big show of faith which looked pretty misplaced as soon as a ball was kicked.

"As soon as a ball was kicked" - yes, against Liverpool, us with a covid disrupted pre-season, a lack of Skipp and Buendia, key injuries and two upgrade players who hadn't even arrived at the club yet.  I honestly don't understand how people can think that Farke was anything other than in an impossible position at the start of that season.

No change of style was likely to be effective at that point and the following fixture away at Man City didn't exactly help. The Leicester game we could have got something out of, had Cantwell not got into an offside position affecting play, then Arsenal away. No fl*pping wonder we struggled.

Farke was in an impossible situation and Webber and those fans that wanted Farke gone simply don't seem to have grasped this. Smith arriving only made it even more obvious that we would have been better off keeping Farke. That goes for Wagner too - I'm certain we'd be in a better place now if Farke had stayed.  We would have held on to Zimmermann for one thing, a CB with a bit more about him than the current ones.

 

[S_81 925]

7 hours ago, lake district canary said:

Webber was plainly a big influence at CR and it worked well with Farke up the point at which the players we had reached their limits and Webber had that brainfart urge to sack him, but since then that influence has been appalling. 

I wonder though, how much real influence did he have over 1st team affairs - and that then begs the question how much influence will Knapper have over the 1st team.  Farke, on his appointment at Leeds, insisted he wanted complete control and be manager, not head coach - and I wonder if that is a direct reaction to having been under Webber's influence at Norwich - with Webber having too much say in the first team.

So the real question then, is how much will Knapper want to have a say in the first team or how much he will just let the first team coach get on with it.  We all know Webber was a big noise, but Knapper doesn't look to be the type of ego that will want to dominate, but rather might allow people to get on with their jobs. This would be preferable - you need a strong character as a head coach - like we had with Farke, but my own thoughts there are that Farke had to do deal with too much from Webber (like the urge to go 433 at the start if the 2nd PL season, which always seemed a bit odd and may have been a Webber directive).  So a strong head coach - and let him get on with it, with the SD more of a background figure, organising everything else around to ensure good practice is followed throughout the club.

Any thoughts on that?

 

I’d suggest it very much depends on the board/CEO(equivalent) that the SD has to work with, as to how much scope they have in isolation. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,614]

19 hours ago, lake district canary said:

"As soon as a ball was kicked" - yes, against Liverpool, us with a covid disrupted pre-season, a lack of Skipp and Buendia, key injuries and two upgrade players who hadn't even arrived at the club yet.  I honestly don't understand how people can think that Farke was anything other than in an impossible position at the start of that season.

No change of style was likely to be effective at that point and the following fixture away at Man City didn't exactly help. The Leicester game we could have got something out of, had Cantwell not got into an offside position affecting play, then Arsenal away. No fl*pping wonder we struggled.

Farke was in an impossible situation and Webber and those fans that wanted Farke gone simply don't seem to have grasped this. Smith arriving only made it even more obvious that we would have been better off keeping Farke. That goes for Wagner too - I'm certain we'd be in a better place now if Farke had stayed.  We would have held on to Zimmermann for one thing, a CB with a bit more about him than the current ones.

 

Are you seriously suggesting that everything about the squad recruitment and development over four seasons of Farke's tenure was entirely out of Farke's hands, with no consultation?

There's no reasonable comparison to be made between Smith and Farke, except that Smith got slightly better results in the Premier League with the same squad compared to Farke, in spite of having no input whatsoever on squad recruitment.

Edited November 16, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[Number9 272]

On 15/11/2023 at 10:37, lake district canary said:

Webber was plainly a big influence at CR and it worked well with Farke up the point at which the players we had reached their limits and Webber had that brainfart urge to sack him, but since then that influence has been appalling. 

I wonder though, how much real influence did he have over 1st team affairs - and that then begs the question how much influence will Knapper have over the 1st team.  Farke, on his appointment at Leeds, insisted he wanted complete control and be manager, not head coach - and I wonder if that is a direct reaction to having been under Webber's influence at Norwich - with Webber having too much say in the first team.

So the real question then, is how much will Knapper want to have a say in the first team or how much he will just let the first team coach get on with it.  We all know Webber was a big noise, but Knapper doesn't look to be the type of ego that will want to dominate, but rather might allow people to get on with their jobs. This would be preferable - you need a strong character as a head coach - like we had with Farke, but my own thoughts there are that Farke had to do deal with too much from Webber (like the urge to go 433 at the start if the 2nd PL season, which always seemed a bit odd and may have been a Webber directive).  So a strong head coach - and let him get on with it, with the SD more of a background figure, organising everything else around to ensure good practice is followed throughout the club.

Any thoughts on that?

 

You've made alot of assumptions there LDC

[lake district canary 4,562]

45 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

There's no reasonable comparison to be made between Smith and Farke, except that Smith got slightly better results in the Premier League with the same squad compared to Farke, in spite of having no input whatsoever on squad recruitment.

After the awful start to that season, with injuries, covid disruption and late arrival of two supposedly key players, Farke actually had 5 points from 5 games.  Pretty good stats - and as I say, the task at the beginning of the season was well stacked against him - so with that improvement, he really should have been given longer. 

A form guide is often over the previous six games, so if you take that into account, it was 5 points in 6 games, not survival form, but better than Smith's 17 points in 27 games, which was less than 4 points per six games. 

It all depends on where you draw the line, I suppose.....

[littleyellowbirdie 2,614]

1 minute ago, lake district canary said:

After the awful start to that season, with injuries, covid disruption and late arrival of two supposedly key players, Farke actually had 5 points from 5 games.  Pretty good stats - and as I say, the task at the beginning of the season was well stacked against him - so with that improvement, he really should have been given longer. 

A form guide is often over the previous six games, so if you take that into account, it was 5 points in 6 games, not survival form, but better than Smith's 17 points in 27 games, which was less than 4 points per six games. 

It all depends on where you draw the line, I suppose.....

And yet Smith also had injuries and Covid to contend with. Over a season, it's to be expected that you'll have injuries. And Farke had an entire Premier League season under his belt with arguably a better squad and where the final outcome was our record worst ever Premier League season, including when comparing to the one where Farke was sacked.

A big point that's missed is that Farke was one piece in a bigger project.  Farke wasn't sacked because he personally had failed. He was sacked because the whole project had failed and we needed to try something different to keep enough fans on board. All fans would have had to content themselves to years of yoyoing on the off-chance that, one year, the stars aligned for us.  Like you, like Ricardo, and like others I would have been very content with that, but we live in a world of expectations of immediate gratification and there are simply too many not willing to sit quietly for that. In a way, Norwich is lucky to have so many with as much patience as they have. I love that Norwich tries to give managers time and space to make things work over time. Vastly preferable to changing managers every five minutes.

 

[The Bunny 316]

Quote

it worked well with Farke up the point at which the players we had reached their limits and Webber had that brainfart urge to sack him

Nitpick here, but the players didn't "reach their limits". The player trading in the preceding transfer window made the squad significantly weaker. 

[Flying Dutchman 744]

Day 739,748 of waiting for OP to post anything without absolutely needing it to somehow come back to Farke.

Edited November 16, 2023 by Flying Dutchman

[essex canary 516]

21 hours ago, S_81 said:

I’d suggest it very much depends on the board/CEO(equivalent) that the SD has to work with, as to how much scope they have in isolation. 

In other words how much influence the ex-Sporting Director's wife (though maybe not for long) still brings her Vision and Strategy to bear. Keep smiling.

[S_81 925]

2 hours ago, essex canary said:

In other words how much influence the ex-Sporting Director's wife (though maybe not for long) still brings her Vision and Strategy to bear. Keep smiling.

But it’s ok, many posters on here have convinced themselves that Wagner is going to come good after a sneaked over the line win at Cardiff. 

[Capt. Pants 4,331]

The difference with Knapper and Wagner is that Wagner wasn't appointed by him so I guess he won't be as influenced, if anything he might feel a bit superior. Somehow I doubt the likes of Guardiola and Klopp care too much what their SD's say, likewise the likes of Warnock.

It worked for a good while with Webber and Farke. Time will tell if Knapper and Wagner hit it off but they don't necessariliy have to be a good double act as long as they are receptive to each other's views.

Whatever did we do without Sporting Directors? Seems a lot of mouths to feed.

[Petriix 2,858]

3 hours ago, Flying Dutchman said:

Day 739,748 of waiting for OP to post anything without absolutely needing it to somehow come back to Farke.

Day 739 (it actually is, was your number just a spooky coincidence?) since Farke was sacked and the club's position is still getting progressively worse. Maybe people will stop thinking back once (if) things start improving again... 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,614]

I think any head coach would naturally want to be a traditional manager rather than having to work with a sporting director. Who wouldn't want more independence?

Farke clearly wanted more control, but it just means the club has more to contend with in the event of a change.

The send off Webber got from the players surprised me; it suggested a closer relationship than I expected.