Yes Utd have a plan but guess what they aren't gonna come out and tell everyone what it is just so you can feel better.
No, I'm not worried at all.
No, I'm not worried at all.
Club Vision Roadmap & Strategy
- Thread starter newgiz
- Start date
I agree with what you're saying and it's important to link the youth and first team as far as playing style and tactics are concerned. And even the kids that don't make it should benefit from the tactical education within the positional play principles. It will take time but i'm hopeful we see noticeable changes in the next year or two.
Kleyn was brought to Southampton by their then DoF, Les Reed. And it was Reed who brought the likes of Pochettino and Mitchell to Southampton, as well. And Reed is someone who has a good reputation due to him being a DoF at a time in England when it was common for clubs to operate with their managers setting the directive on the football side of the club.
We should hopefully hear more soon regarding the team Dominic Jordan is putting together. Jordan is someone who is known to put together world class data science teams and so far we only know about Alex Kleyn. The Liverpool data analytics mainly came in via Tottenham and they've had a 10 year head start over us and for us to catch up I presume it will take a few years.
Bout and Lawlor have been replaced by Jose Mayorga and Simon Wells. But there has been strong suggestions that Murtough was trying to bring in Lee Dykes from Brentford but Brentford responded and gave him a promotion.
Is this the same as marketing departments, who use buzzwords to explain what they do but ultimately they just outsource the work to a third party company so they can sit about in their office all day doing feck all? Without any evidence I'm just going to assume "yes, that's exactly it."
I'm not in data science but through passing familiarity with it by osmosis, degrees of separation (and the Athletic), alongside a slightly stronger sense of what average marketing departments tend to do ... yeah. they're not the same. 85 -90% of people working in your average marketing department would be at sea in a data science role (even the ones who do their daily sudoku and brain trainers)
If we are doing it right, then this involves receiving information and a great amount of input from the like of EtH, first team coaches, reserve team coaches, under-18 coaches, perhaps even scouts who provide parameters on which the players would be assessed upon.
Its unlikely someone from the club will come out and say exactly how we do it.
But its certainly not buzzwords.
That's interesting. We might have identified the one we want without being able to appoint them yet. For instance, Paul Mitchell at Monaco won't renew his deal which runs until '24 which means he's in effect done after this summer (at least according to this article). According to an article in the athletic (non-Athletic link here) Steve Brown (current head of recruitment) is described as more as a manager than a scout to whom Mick Court (analyst), Wells (scout under SAF brought back by Ole - his personal scout I believe you mentioned) and Mayorga report. According to this piece it seems as if Brown is a buffer between the three and Murtough to perhaps spread the workload, but he doesn't sound like the required fit for the position (though he was a first team scout and "recruitment co-ordinator" at Everton).
The interesting and quite on point bit with regards to this thread's discussion is how many different heads of recruitment we've allegedly been interested in, from Brighton's Ashworth (gone to Newcastle), Liverpool's Edwards, Brentford's Dykes, Monaco's Mitchell (although links to him were mainly Rangnick suggesting him I think) and Wolves' Hobbes.
Of course it's a bit of technocrat position, but the demonstrated value is each person's track record with their clubs. What they have to write home about varies greatly but I guess the overlap, excluding Wolves, is that their clubs mostly play progressive styles of football. And with Hobbes, he's only been in the job a year but is credited with a few of their better younger players.
Another common denominator is that they are all working within Premier League clubs, apart from Mitchell who has previously been with MK Dons, Southampton and Spurs. I do wonder if that is a necessary requirement as it greatly limits the pool, and as we have seen, these clubs quickly promote or look to tie down the people we're looking at. Mitchell being available and having added experience at RB Leipzig and Monaco surely makes him the most attractive option on paper.
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Steve Brown isn't the head of recruitment mate and never has been. He's the head of recruitment 'operations', which means he leads a team of 6 people who take care of the scouts around the world when it comes to ticketing, travel, accommodation etc. His job is basically to make sure the recruitment staff get from A to B. The Athletic are a good source of information when it comes relaying information about Man Utd but from my observation they're not very good at explaining who the key players are in the recruitment structure hence for some strange reason they keep telling us about Steve Brown. The guys at the transfer ground guru (TGG) are hands down the best at breaking down football club structures and the relevant departments associated within those structures. Lawlor and Bout were heading the recruitment department under Ed Woodward until they were released.
Ashworth and Edwards aren't recruitment heads mate and their roles are to oversee the whole football structure as Sporting directors. At Liverpool the heads of recruitment are Barry Hunter and Dave Fallows and at Brighton during Ashworth's time as the Sporting director, the two people heading the recruitment department were Paul Winstanley and Kyle Macauley. And it's the recruitment heads that people pine for but mistake the role with the role of the sporting director. The sporting directors role is to oversee all the football departments and not just the recruitment department. It's the job of the people heading the recruitment department to scout and compile reports over the course of the season by utilising the scouts working under them in different continents.
The DoF like the head coach shouldn't be scouting players because as the head of football he has to oversee multiple other departments on the football side of the club and can't dedicate his time to just the recruitment department. His role is one where he's the cement between the bricks (as ten Hag described Casemiro) where he connects all the football departments with the aim of aligning the structure for the benefit of the first team.
Paul Mitchell has only had experience working as a sporting director at Monaco where he didn't do a good job at all. Monaco ended up finishing 6th in the season just gone and they've also sacked the head coach Mitchell chose for his project. And prior to getting the role as the DoF at Monaco, his role was working as the head of recruitment at Soton, Spurs and RB Leipzig and from what i've seen, the players he identified have been a real mixed bag.
Personally i'm hoping we make another attempt to bring in Lee Dykes from Brentford to bolster the recruitment department. I don't know a lot about Jose Mayorga, but it'll be interesting to see how his South American back ground will influence our transfers. Mayorga it seems is overseeing the global scouting and Simon Wells is overseeing the scouting in the UK.
United is an astronomically huge institution. We obviously have a vision, roadmap and strategy. I believe we have also changed the “business models “ a few times since formation especially in the last decade amidst troubled times. Whether it’s a good one or not, that’s another issue.
There's a question here what exactly is meant when we ask "do they have a strategic vision or a strategy"? If that means "have they produced a document called something like "Strategy 2022-2027"?", then the answer is almost certainly yes. If that means "Do they have a clear strategy that informs and drives actions and decisions at all levels?", then it's a different matter. Everybody has a strategy document. Having an actual strategy is much, much rarer. Including among entities much bigger than United (who have just over 1,000 employees, not particularly huge).
what is it with you office nerds and your obsession with spreading this dumb corporate language on to the rest of us?
I’m sure there is some sort of roadmap which is all complete bullshit. Utd aren’t a football club under the Glazers, the fact likes of Arnold and Murtough have over a decade of first hand experience of that and are still here pretending otherwise tells you a lot about them.
Until we get new owners and there is big clear out and influx of new people in senior roles nothing will change.
Until we get new owners and there is big clear out and influx of new people in senior roles nothing will change.
Vision? Roadmap? Strategy? We don’t do those around here 
At some clubs the long-term vision trickles down from their owners and at other clubs the vision and strategy takes off after hiring a head coach with a defined way of playing the game. At Liverpool and Brighton, it started with FSG and Tony Bloom but it wasn't until the owners brought in Jurgen Klopp (FSG) and Graham Potter/De Zerbi (Tony Bloom) that they started to excel or in Brighton's case punch above their weight.
Because prior to the arrival of the aforementioned managers/coaches, Liverpool and Brighton weren't exactly excelling with Brendan Rodgers and Chris Hughton (2014 - 2019) with the same people making up the football structure. Even-though Liverpool came close to winning the league with Brendan Rodgers but their football structure led by Michael Edwards was much ridiculed and they were a laughing stock amongst Liverpool fans and Journos alike. The article below is a hit piece on the Liverpool football structure during Brendan Rodgers' time. And Liverpool fans wanted Edwards gone 7 years after he took up a role in their first team football structure with some fans even starting a petition to remove him from the club.
And the below article is a indication of the influence of Tony Bloom at Brighton. But that influence is only talked about now due to the work of Graham Potter and De Zerbi and not when Chris Hughton was their manager between 2014 to 2019. And they had the same recruitment staff during Hughton's 5 years at the club.
The Glazers have never got involved in setting a vision for the longterm and they left that to Ed Woodward. And Woodward's vision for the club was to hire managers who ended up implementing a brand of football that was reactive in nature and hence our transfers reflected the reactive approach to playing the game.
And when you say that you can see a strategy at clubs like Arsenal, Brighton, Liverpool etc. I'd say that strategy is down to the head coach those clubs hired in Arteta, Potter/De Zerbi and Klopp. And what do these coaches have in common? All of these coaches want to play the game in the opponent's half by building from the back, keeping a compact high defensive line with the press and counter press as the failsafe out of possesion so they can defend from the front. That then meant the recruitment structures at the aforementioned clubs started to excel because they had a clear blueprint to target players for a vertical game within the positional play principles.
So the most important decision to set a vision is to bring in the guy that will execute the strategy on the pitch in the form of a head coach. That's what the aforementioned clubs did and their owners then backed the football structures and aided the development of data analytics to help them even further.
It really is. I'd risk and say, It's like massive catacombic labirynth, with traps and minotaur waiting. Simple roadmap won't suffice.
Thanks for the tip (TGG). I didn't know about Steve Brown until I went digging to see names linked to the head of recruitment position. All the names I mentioned have been at one time or another linked to us for that position, bar Mitchell who was kind of linked as a sporting director. Newcastle probably did their job well in getting in Ashworth. It will be interesting to see what they do in the market this year. They've been quite measured since their takeover.
Matt Hargreaves - head of football negotiations officially started last week. It's hard to evaluate how cut and dry these timeframes are but it's quite recent that the de Gea deal has hit a stumbling block.
From the appointments already made I expect the club to be a lot more proactive and effective in getting rid of players who are not made for the football or culture we want to foster.
Yes this is exactly the point. As you say everyone has a strategy document, but the question is whether it actually extends to something more tangible or actionable than merely being just a Paper Product.
Thanks for shedding light. Didn't know about TGG as well, so will take a look.
I’m just waiting for new owners. We are going nowhere under the Glazers.
Hahaha. Exactly.
I saw complex language and long words used on the Apprentice. And when Alan Sugar heard that waffle, he told the person to talk normally or get fired.
I think some people think that by overcomplicating something, they sound more intelligent.
The real skill is to explain a complex idea or situation using simple words that make it easy for everybody to understand.
Same here.
The Glazers' target is 4th place and to make lots of money.
I don't care how much money we make - I want us to win the biggest trophies in football and I don't see that happening while the Glazers are here.
I feel almost certain that there is a semblance of a plan, albeit, a fluid one, given our situation. However, we will know more once the dust has settled and our owners are declared.
So that's all good then...
So that's all good then...