Directors of Football

[peateabee 0]

I have to admit that I was surprised to hear that we might be considering hiring a director of football. I Wondered what everyone else thought about this? Here are my thoughts to get things started.

It has rarely worked in this country. The only example I can think of where It seemed to work for a while was at West Brom for a couple of years with Dan Ashworth. This seems to be an exception to the rule - normally the experiment just seems to end in disaster with the director of football and the manager not on the same page. Even abroad where it supposedly works all the time, I still see the issues of managers being provided with players they do not necessarily want and then forced to fit they into a team - possibly pushing them away from the style of football they are comfortable with, to one they are not familiar with. I think it is an arrangement fraught with difficulties.

Having said that - I am sort of in favour, or at least can see the logic of having more people involved and responsible for the big decisions at the football club. I see no reason why a team of people cannot work together and do a better job than one man. Player recruitment is a mammoth task in todays global game and an incredibly important one, and I can see the appeal of having someone solely focussed on this. This also frees up the manager to spend more time woking on tactics, studying the game and on the training pitch with his squad - allowing him to focus on improving what he has already got. And these should surely be any mangers initial focus. But constructing a squad is such a massive part of management, with a director of football you can almost end up with two managers essentially doing half a job. And unless these people are almost of one mind about the future of the team then you can easily end up with disconnect between these two parts of what is essentially the same process. And then the process stops working.

The only way I can see you achieving a scenario where the manager and the ''director of football'' are almost of one mind is to hire a manager and then let him bring in a ''director of football'' to help him. But then that isn''t really a true director of football, he is really just part of a management team.

Some might cite the examples of say a swansea, barcelona etc who say as a club - this is how we play - the style of football we want, so we hire a manager and director of football who also think the same way and, hey presto, you have two people who ''are of one mind''. But I would argue that this is a little simplistic. You can''t just say - we play free flowing football or we play a high possession game - because how many tactics and formations fit within those parameters? The nuances of the game I would think would almost certainly lead to disagreement along the line somewhere. And then someone has to have the final say. But who? For me it can only be the manager - the evidence suggest the contrary invariably ends badly. But as soon as you take away the full responsibility of signing a player from a director of football he ceases to really be one again. This time he is more of a chief scout.

So maybe the best way to have a director of football is in fact to not have a director of football. You either insist the manager brings in someone to work alongside him - specifically concentrating on player recruitment. Or you independently hire a director of football who ends up essentially being a chief scout - who is responsible for those finding the talent, but the manager gets the final say. Does anyone else see a different way this can work?

[Move Klose 303]

i can see how and why it would work but surely the manager has to have some input into who the club sign. And for the DOF to sign players who the manager would want to put in the side he would have to have a close relationship with each other so he knew who he would want to work with.

[Molly Windley 76]

Have we already appointed a director of football?To me it would appear to be the logical order of things to appoint the director of football first, come up with a long term plan for the footballing side of the club and then involve him in a major role in the process to appoint the manager. If you appoint the manager first, not using the footballing knowledge of the DOF (the reason you are employing one) and then try and find a DOF that can work with the manager looks like the wrong way to approach this.Are we doing things backwards?