You say United don't have a Michael Edwards, and you could be right. But would you have said Edwards was the right man when he was involved in a team working under Damien Comolli that eventually failed and led to Comolli being dismissed? Would you have said Edwards was the right man after he was roundly criticised for his role on the Liverpool transfer committee, which was reported by some news outlets as the cause for Brendan Rodgers getting sacked?
The truth is that Edwards had become a laughing stock at Liverpool among their fans and the media outlets covering the club. And if it wasn't for the arrival of Klopp, the narrative around Edwards would most probably be very different now.
I think the biggest mistake the EPL fan makes when attempting to understand the DoF model, is that they isolate the DoF from the large group of people working under him. And from my observation that is down to the rise of the sugar daddy clubs, which has created a perception that the likes of Rangnick and Campos go around signing players on their own whim. Which is absolutely not true, and without the people working directly on the recruitment side who report to the DoF, the DoF wouldn't be anywhere near as effective at his job.
So the DoF is only as good as the people working under him. And it's those people working under him that we should also look at closely, because it's their judgement that the DoF will have to act upon. So the DoF's role is to make sure that the recruitment teams working under him are working in optimal working conditions, which in turn will provide him with information that he will need to act upon. So the DoF will likely be doing a lot of travelling.
And ultimately the concept is very simple and that is to recruit players for the guiding principle put forth by the head coach. It's not rocket science, like Rangnick said this week, and once the directive is set and made crystal clear, then it will come down to the information from the scouts. So if we want to sign a player from Spain for example, then that will come about after the lead scout in Spain, Gerardo Guzman gives the potential candidate the thumbs up and reports his findings to his head of department in Europe, which is Henny de Regt. And de Regt will then run the rule over the player and if he agrees, then de Regt reports to Marcel Bout (head of recruitment) who makes the final call. And if the said candidate passes the final check from Bout, then Bout will pass the reports over to the 5 man data analytics team led by Mick Court. And after the process is complete, Bout, (head of scouting), Court (head of data analysis) Jim Lawlor (Chief Scout) decide on the respective short lists for the targeted positions in the team. That is then passed on to John Murtough who will attempt to bring the scouted targets to the club.
But sadly for us, the above team hasn't been influential at first team level due to both Mourinho and Ole having their own personal recruitment staff. So i'm not surprised the club has been failing. Because if you marginalise the bigger, more well resourced team of people who are vast in number on the recruitment side in favour of a much smaller team led by the first team manager. Then don't be surprised if the smaller team can't look past the most obvious transfer targets.
