Christopher Vivell | Appointed director of recruitment on short term deal

Ed Woodward came from JP Morgans where he was an investment banker.
Yeah and he was CEO. Had the same amount of football experience as David Gill. Not necessary really for CEO, it's not a "football job". Matt Judge was doing one though.
 
Isn’t it widely reported that Judge fecked up some player negotiations, with instances of him not even knowing the player names?
 
Yeah and he was CEO. Had the same amount of football experience as David Gill. Not necessary really for CEO, it's not a "football job". Matt Judge was doing one though.

But Woodward was quite clearly making football decisions. The sort of decisions that will now be made by proper, football experienced operators in fitting positions, which was the original point made.
 
Can anyone explain the different roles / responsibilities for Berrada, Wilcox, Ashworth and Vivell?

Losing track a bit here.

Berrada - CEO. Makes the major decisions, supervises all the other executives, drives the overall direction and strategic vision of the club. And a million other things. The CEO has to knit together the two halves of the organisation, the Sporting and the Commercial. They are responsible for shaping the long term growth and sustainability of the organisation, and have to shape the football operations to not only operate efficiently inside the commercial constraints, realities and necessities of the club, but to also drive the economic growth of the organisation as a whole. They are a key piece, or the key piece, in defining the culture within the club, its core mission statement, and corporate values. They are to a large extent responsible for the major decisions in how the club interacts with external stakeholders.

Ashworth - Director of Football. Ostensibly runs the football operations of the club from a sporting perspective (not commercial). Differs from club to club but best defined as being the spearhead of shaping the short, medium, and long term strategic intent of the football team, including playing style. Will oversee how recruitment, infrastructure, hiring, medical, sports science, data, and youth development all feed into the goals and objectives of the club on both a short and long term basis, and how all those facets align with the strategic vision and interact with one another. Is responsible for providing a stable and evolving structure that exists independent of the incumbent head coach. Plays a significant role in determining the roles performed by each of the key football executives, as well as being responsible for analysing the performance of the head coach. A DoF has to think both exploitatively - how to extract the best performance from the coaching and playing staff immediately - and exploratively - how to improve football performance through evolution and change initiatives. The DoF is responsible for thinking about where the club will be in 3, 5, and 10 years time and having that vision run through every facet of the football side of the club in a coordinated, harmonious and complimentary way. A key edict of the modern DoF is to indentify and define a football DNA for the organisation so that recruitment, player, executive and coach development can all move along the same tracks, towards the same goals.

Wilcox - Technical Director. The technical director role has a lot of overlap with the Director of Football, and at some clubs is almost interchangeable. That said, there are plenty of general areas where the two can be clearly differentiated. The technical director’s role will be more focused on the operational side of the football club, and at a less strategic level than the DoF, although still contain much collaboration and vision at a strategic and holistic level. This means a lot of work done in the areas of recruitment, performance and data analysis, performance development of players and coaches (including training, licensing and accreditations), sport science, youth development, and all the linkages between them all.

Vivell - Recruitment Director. Exactly what it says on the tin. Primarily focused on talent identification, competency gap identification, squad planning, recruitment pathways for the various channels (youth, reserve, potential, first team, etc). A lot of data analysis to identify areas where we have competency deficiencies and then to identify the right targets to fills those gaps. Will involve building up a portfolio of players for each role that can be analysed over a sustained period of time. May also involve helping to create the methodologies behind talent identification and key performance indicators. Both of which have to be aligned to the strategic visions laid out by the Football and technical directors.

All the jobs come with a mix of short term, immediate, operational demands, but also incorporate defining the long term strategic visions, plans, goals, objectives and methodologies of the club.

Please bear in mind that this is a very simplistic overview.
 
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Isn’t it widely reported that Judge fecked up some player negotiations, with instances of him not even knowing the player names?
He fecked up most of them.
 
But Woodward was quite clearly making football decisions. The sort of decisions that will now be made by proper, football experienced operators in fitting positions, which was the original point made.
Fair enough, yes he was. He tried to be Gill but Gill had Ferguson who was basically DoF and manager so did too much. That point is true.
 
Will be interesting how all these new appointments work out with O'Boyle, Hargreaves and Fletcher.
 
Do all clubs fans follow the board dealings and these kinda appointments?
I’ve never seen Romano talk about City’s or Chelsea’s Technical head of recruitment.
 
Fair enough, yes he was. He tried to be Gill but Gill had Ferguson who was basically DoF and manager so did too much. That point is true.

It was just a perfect storm of shiteness really.

The void left behind two fantastic operators, who were of a prior era in terms of how football clubs were run, but whose brilliance, particularly in Fergies case, kept an otherwise unorganised ship on course.

Greedy owners who neither understood, nor cared much for, how to run a football club - hoodwinked by the banker who helped them obtain it in the first place.

The stepping into that void of said banker, and his insatiable ego - given free rein to run the club as he saw fit (read: into the ground).
 
This feels like a panic move. Like we've got some of our top people in place and realised that we have no decent scouting network and random targets including ones that EtH wants. We've then decided to just get someone in over the summer to help us out through sheer panic.
 
This feels like a panic move. Like we've got some of our top people in place and realised that we have no decent scouting network and random targets including ones that EtH wants. We've then decided to just get someone in over the summer to help us out through sheer panic.
I don't think we fully understand what role Vivell play In the football structure. Is he someone that is being brought in to oversee the multi-club model like how City have Brian Marwood overseeing their various club in a managing director role?. It's all a bit vague at this stage and I'm sure we'll get to know more in the coming weeks.

People also keep mentioning Dougie Freedman for the head of recruitment role when he has no experience in such a role and he's doing the same role as Dan Ashworth will be doing at United.
 
Cheers @simonhch @Bastian

Really insightful and makes a lot of sense. The technical director and head of recruitment role is what was particularly confusing me as I’d read that recruitment was part of Wilcox’s role. As you say, seems like there’s overlap to a degree but Vivell’s role seems the most focused. Would be interesting to see how it actually functioned day to day.
 
What’s the rush? Why not wait until the actual decision makers are in before making the decision? Rather that and make a correct one than rush into a judgement before they can legally work for us and have a say.
Because some decisions are easy to be made.
 
This feels like a panic move. Like we've got some of our top people in place and realised that we have no decent scouting network and random targets including ones that EtH wants. We've then decided to just get someone in over the summer to help us out through sheer panic.
Of course YOU'd think it was. Why are you always negative? Maybe just maybe, we always wanted to get someone but we're waiting for Dan to join fully as the Head of Recruitment would be reporting to him directly. Nothing about INEOS says panic. They take their time with everything and are methodical, sometimes overly methodical but still I don't see them knee jerking or making last ditch alterations to their plans.
 
37, on a short-term deal. i thought ineos were committed to only spending on youth, as part of a long term plan? yet here we are, with more quick fixes.
Hard to find those out there who is as committed to youth as you are I'm afraid
 
Why a short term basis?

Probably because on one hand we need somebody to come in and help out now and on the other hand this appointment doesn't have Ashworth/Berrada approval (both has yet to enter the building). If he impresses those two then we might keep him
 
Isn’t it widely reported that Judge fecked up some player negotiations, with instances of him not even knowing the player names?
Must be the reason for Van Gaal introducing Chris as Mike Smalling.
 
CEO : Berrada
DOF : Ashworth
Technical Director :Wilcox
Recruitment Director : Vivell

This is the new team, did I get that right?
 
Probably because we need someone in quick as the window is open and he's available, but might not be the guy they want long term. Doesn't mean they might not keep him if he impresses them
So Ole 2.0 then. An interim to fix the issue at hand, then a fulltime contract later if he pulls off a feat similar to that Paris night (Signing Vinicius Jr, for example)
 
Not surprising considering SJR’s comments regarding squad building that they’re bringing in someone from the Red Bull system.
 
Wonder if we’ve brought him in due to budget constraints, obviously we know we need a fair few players but don’t have the budget for it and have brought in Vivell to help us pick up some cheap hidden gems to stretch the budget further. I could be waffling but was under the impression that was his speciality.
 
Chelsea binned him off after just 7 months as their technical director:

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...rectoer-christopher-vivell-on-gardening-leave

He was hired in Oct 22 and fired in June 23, which means he had the Jan 23 transfer window. In that window (via lookup in wiki), they purchased:
Badiashile, striker Fofana, Santos, Mudryk, Madueke, Gusto, Enzo Fernandez and Jimmy-Jay Morgan

If I remember right, negotiations for Mudryk and Fernandez were directly managed by his Boehlyness himself. The rest were actually decent buys. Now, how much of this involves Vivel, I'm not sure.