I will always give a chance to anyone who has a football background at the top level before passing judgement. And that's all I've ever done when it comes to John Murtough where I've consistently said that Murtough will be judged by myself on the structure he himself puts in place and not the structure that Woodward created with Bout and Lawlor when it came to recruitment. Rangnick himself didn't see a problem with DDG or Scott Mctominay who he saw as a future United captain. And it's easy to see why Rangnick didn't have a issue with either player due how he saw football, which was centred around more running without the ball rather than coaching on the ball dominance.
And as far as DDG is concerned, it looks like he's going to be the backup keeper which i'm fine with. And if we can't get someone like Raya or someone else externally who fits into the positional play principles of EtH. Then I hope they give the #1 spot to Henderson for now and spend the money on a top class creative CM and a striker. Henderson at the very least will be proactive when it comes to sweeping and claiming crosses in comparison to DDG. Also you have to remember that i'm someone who has never taken to DDG in the time he's been at the club, so him not being #1 anymore is good news for me, and it will potentially lighten the workload for the players in-front of him who have done a good job as the tweet below indicates.
And if i'm being honest with you, there's no such thing as a world class DoF. That concept only exists in the minds of those people who don't have a deeper understanding of the game from a tactical and structural perspective. The media hype up certain individuals but when you actually attempt to understand the actual process behind these so called elite DoFs, then the process is actually very simple and the advantage they have is that they work at clubs who allow them the control to align the whole football departments with data analytics playing a key role.
Let's use Luis Campos as a example. He's won league titles as a DoF with both Monaco and Lille. The last one when he was at Lille. So when he was at Lille, he was working as part of a group of 7 people (5 scouts & 2 analysts) that scouted/analysed players covering about 200,000 players across different continents. That isn't possible with only 5 scouts, and hence they utilised data with a set criteria to filter through the players that didn't fit the criteria. And Lille had access to data that their majority owner at the time (Gerard Lopez) said was only available to them, hence it gave them a big advantage when it came to identifying players. And those 5 scouts were then deployed in those regions where the data was telling them to scout in, and hence the eye test was utilised more effectively. Campos doesn't have any special codes where his eye for talent is superior to the majority. But rather he's had the advantage of data science that most others are still catching up on. And when the other clubs catch up, Campos will be just another DoF. It's why the 7 people he works with are in a contractual agreement to work together and hence take advantage of what they have, before the inevitable happens and the clubs who have been sleeping on a data science strategy, wake up.
Below is what Gérard Lopez (majority Lille owner at the time) said about how they took advantage of data at Lille. And it demonstrates again how the ownership plays a big part in how the football side of the club develops. Under the Glazers that hasn't been possible and I don't believe it will ever be a possibility.
Gerard Lopez:"I bet on the talent of my team. Where we act really differently is the tools they use. That gives us an incremental advantage: They have access to technology that nobody else has. We're one of the leading investors in artificial intelligence, for example, so you can assume our use is way ahead of the competition."
"What sort of stuff do we do? Well, we look at associative effects. Take a player with certain characteristics and the way he'll perform will be impacted positively or negatively by the characteristics of those around him. So we use it to help us crunch data because when you think of the sheer quantity of players scouted, the data points and the combinations of players, it can play a key role. We look for associative values, rather than just talent. And it's repeatable, though obviously, having the talent helps, too."
https://www.espn.co.uk/football/fre...e-limits-of-how-techdata-can-influence-a-club
And below is a clip of Lee Dykes explaining how he and his team of 15 scouts take advantage of data to best utilise the eye test at Brentford. At around 3 minutes is the key bit where he mentions the strength of the club is it's structure where the owners allow himself and the football people to run the football side which allows them to take advantage of the data, where 15 pair of eyes cover around 85,000 players. And that's only possible with the help of data analytics which they have developed at these clubs for many many years.
David Gill started the rot when other clubs were modernising their structures. And we then carried on with the manager model with Woodward until Ole was sacked. And I don't care who the DoF is but rather I care about understanding who are the people occupying the roles below the DoF in a recruitment and data science capacity. Because without top level heads of scouting and a data science strategy, you ain't going to maximize the potential of your scouts. And our data science strategy is in play and is taking shape due to John Murtough. And the people who identify players to sign are the heads of scouting whilst being aided by a data science team.
A new owner might bring in a DoF, and that's fine. But he'll only be as good as the structure below him and the ideas on how he wants the team to play. So it doesn't really matter if DoF x has ample experience of being in the role if his ideas on football are flawed to begin with. A director of football is someone who sets the direction on the football side of the club. And there's no DoF that I know of, that has more knowledge about the game tactically than a top level head coach/manager. Hence why football managers are more sought after than DoFs. DoFs can influence the decision making of head coaches as long as they have a fully functional structure behind them in the form of head scouts and data scientists. Which wasn't the case in the last summer window.