The ‘Deputy Football Director’ position | 31.05.2022 - Andy O’Boyle appointed

Not seen an explanation there about why Lee Grant retiring is evidence of things moving quickly. Or Lingard leaving by choice for nothing instead of being sold in the summer or January is evidence of things moving quickly. Or Lense and Arnas leaving as intended who only joined because we took so long to get a permanent manager. Just in relation to this thread, Murtough has been football Director for 15 months and is only just getting a Deputy, not the quickest.

I don’t know why people get so sensitive about people who just don’t lap everything up. Notice I said the club moves slowly, not Woodward or Murtough. Maybe you got confused but they’re not the club, and if you look at last ten years and think we don’t move slowly then good luck to you.

If you find people sensitive, it might be because they make some sort of reaction when you say things like ‘good luck to you’, and that you are a bit sensitive yourself to those reactions. I don’t know. It sounds very condescending though. And I should know.

What you deflect from, however, is that by or by crook, this is a time of vast personnel change at the club. The reasons, or as you might prefer, the blame, is irrelevant to that fact, it is a fact regardless. That means that things, and even less so ‘everything’, are not moving slow now. The last ten years does not hold much predictive value, as we are already in an anomaly, and the personell is different, and the structures are different. I can only guess you would like to be certain about what is going to happen and talk as if you know what’s going down and everyone who doesn’t are self-deceptive or gullible or something like it, but you really don’t know wether the club is being slow and reactionary or speedy and revolutionary at the moment. The past doesn’t hold the answer. It might be interesting, who knows?
 
I'd say the criteria is such a broad lens it's essentially meaningless. What team in the world would refuse a player that matches it? That criteria is surely nothing to do with style or managers, everyone wants players good at everything.

Fact is, most of them ain't and it's the analysis that is important. We can all say X player is technical, lightening fast and has three lungs and is a great chap..until he's been here two years and he's evidently not what we thought. That's why it's a difficult job contrary to what you're saying, the judgment is by far the hardest bit as there are so many things that are difficult to predict. Especially as you start to recruit with a riskier profile of signing which many are advocating for to get better "value"

I dunno, I just don't find anything useful or informative in that tweet and to compare our players against it as if we didn't have some idea that being technical, physical or a good egg might be important seems facile. I think it would be obvious that the judgment failed rather than knowledge that those things are pretty good. It reads like a prompt for an FM player rather than legitimate club information.

The point about a strategy and focal competencies is, however, not to identify traits that are good and useful. Anyone can do that, about anything i.e. Guardiola has built his success on.

What makes a strategy, is what values are prioritized consistently and above others, when push comes to shove and sacrifices are made. I don’t know about these rumours, but two things are clear: 1) Solskjær talked about all three of them repeatedly, and 2) they weren’t really prioritized in recruitment ahead of other strengths like national culture, diversity in competencies, positive social values, aerial threat, x-factor. They were three of many equal values. And Solskjær’s broad scope helped him achieve lots of things, like consistently improving points rate over three seasons, consistently reaching latter stages of cups, repeatedly beating top coaches with top squads. It wasn’t stupid, far from it. Neither was it enough to get consistent wins across a season or dominate possession, which today seems strongly correlated. Ten Hag will likely prioritize harder en more consequently in a narrower scope (I’m guessing) going for speed of step, speed of thought, control of ball, aggression and discipline above all else, again and again. It might work. Regardless, it changes the job of the recruitment team vastly.
 
The criteria fits many players in France, Germany and elsewhere, and the players don't necessarily have to be expensive either.

Konate at Liverpool is just one of many examples that fit the criteria of a CB that ticked all boxes when he was at Leipzig, but we opted for Maguire instead. I can do the same for fullbacks and other positions in our team where we end up signing inferior players for much more than our competition.

Thanks, mate. I think there's a bit of hesitant with Konate, whatnot with his injury record. I know that's not really your entire point.
And I agreed where even the Caf faithful were raising eyebrows when we were linked with Maguire and AWB. Especially at what cost them.

Yeh. As a fan, I'm always optimistic with the new season (except the Summer before Mou was finally ousted. That freaking pr*ck football just depressed me). Thanks for your insight, mate. I wasn't try to corner you or anything. Nobody has answer for everything, and it's nice to know some "inside" information on how the Club operate and their personal.

I really have good feeling about ETH. And if he can get United play like his Ajax but with better players, the United future is getting brighter.
 
I think we have to get the profile of player he wants and give him time to implement the style. It's not necessarily about the specific player he wants. Gradually over three or four windows you'll have a squad that resembles closer what ETH wants.

Absolutely, mate. His brand of football really suit my taste, and a bit reminiscence of early SAF (just a bit, because SAF's at the beginning didn't value much on ball possession). Maybe it's those constant movement, hardwork, and all play as a team to impose themselves on opponent.
 
Why you asking then? Why not just give your opinion instead of posting more fluff

Its called a rhetorical question.

And no one had yet to tell me how Murtough has more experience handling recruitment compared to someone line Rangnick. You know why? Because he doesnt. I'm not saying he is a bad adminstrator, I'm sure he's good at his job.

But we need to stop having people learning at their jobs controlling the club. Nicky Butt said something similar recently as well. ETH is a top class manager. We should also have a top class DOF who specializes in recruitment/team bulding.
 
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Its called a rhetorical question.

And no one had yet to tell me how Murtough has more experience handling recruitment compared to someone line Rangnick. You know why? Because he doesnt. I'm not saying he is a bad adminstrator, I'm sure he's good at his job.

But we need to stop having people learning at their jobs controlling the club. Nicky Butt said something similar recently as well. ETH is a top class manager. We should also have a top class DOF.

Better question would be, how many top clubs hire DoF from outside.

All from Wiki
Bayern DoF is Hasan Salihamidžić who replaced Sammer, both didn't have DoF experience before Bayern
Liverpool appointed Michael Edwards who never had DoF experience
Chelsea - Marina Granovskaia, she had no prior experience.
Barca appointed Txiki who was working as commentator, later he moved to ManCity when Laporta left Barca.
PSG - they appoint lot of external DoF

Not sure about Madrid, maybe Perez decides everything.

Hiring external experts is not always the only good solution, most of the clubs bounced back when they appointed DoF without prior experience. Monchi had even better reputation than Rangnick but it didn't work out at Roma.
 
Better question would be, how many top clubs hire DoF from outside.

All from Wiki
Bayern DoF is Hasan Salihamidžić who replaced Sammer, both didn't have DoF experience before Bayern
Liverpool appointed Michael Edwards who never had DoF experience
Chelsea - Marina Granovskaia, she had no prior experience.
Barca appointed Txiki who was working as commentator, later he moved to ManCity when Laporta left Barca.
PSG - they appoint lot of external DoF

Not sure about Madrid, maybe Perez decides everything.

Hiring external experts is not always the only good solution, most of the clubs bounced back when they appointed DoF without prior experience. Monchi had even better reputation than Rangnick but it didn't work out at Roma.

Can also add,

AC Milan - Paolo Maldini who didn't have experience
 
Best decision they ever made.

Yeah, they won the league and looks like they have good team. It worked out well for them, maybe hiring well know ted talk expert is not the only way to go.
 
Better question would be, how many top clubs hire DoF from outside.

All from Wiki
Bayern DoF is Hasan Salihamidžić who replaced Sammer, both didn't have DoF experience before Bayern
Liverpool appointed Michael Edwards who never had DoF experience
Chelsea - Marina Granovskaia, she had no prior experience.
Barca appointed Txiki who was working as commentator, later he moved to ManCity when Laporta left Barca.
PSG - they appoint lot of external DoF

Not sure about Madrid, maybe Perez decides everything.

Hiring external experts is not always the only good solution, most of the clubs bounced back when they appointed DoF without prior experience. Monchi had even better reputation than Rangnick but it didn't work out at Roma.

You might want to fact check some of that. Like at least explain what their cv prior to the roles were.

I get your point though. The best bit is that no one every mentions. There not very well ran clubs (City exception)
 
You might want to fact check some of that. Like at least explain what their cv prior to the roles were.

I get your point though. The best bit is that no one every mentions. There not very well ran clubs (City exception)

Which one? The post I replied to was talking about " experience handling recruitment ". Their other position experience doesn't matter, anyways it's not like Murtough doesn't have experience .

How are they not very well ran clubs? City are well ran because they have endless money, how can anyone say Liverpool are not very well ran club, are you going to tell me it's because they lost PL by 1 point and CL finals?

Chelsea are not better run than Liverpool, still they win lot of trophies. Not sure what you mean by "they are not very well ran clubs", Which clubs are very well run then?
 
Thanks, mate. I think there's a bit of hesitant with Konate, whatnot with his injury record. I know that's not really your entire point.
And I agreed where even the Caf faithful were raising eyebrows when we were linked with Maguire and AWB. Especially at what cost them.

Yeh. As a fan, I'm always optimistic with the new season (except the Summer before Mou was finally ousted. That freaking pr*ck football just depressed me). Thanks for your insight, mate. I wasn't try to corner you or anything. Nobody has answer for everything, and it's nice to know some "inside" information on how the Club operate and their personal.

I really have good feeling about ETH. And if he can get United play like his Ajax but with better players, the United future is getting brighter.
I'm also very optimistic, mate.

There will be bumps in the road, but I think we're now on the right track. I also feel Murtough's work overseeing the youth development in the last 9 years has created a real foundation for Erik ten Hag to further utilise for his and our benefit in the mid to long-term.
 
Which one? The post I replied to was talking about " experience handling recruitment ". Their other position experience doesn't matter, anyways it's not like Murtough doesn't have experience .

How are they not very well ran clubs? City are well ran because they have endless money, how can anyone say Liverpool are not very well ran club, are you going to tell me it's because they lost PL by 1 point and CL finals?

Chelsea are not better run than Liverpool, still they win lot of trophies. Not sure what you mean by "they are not very well ran clubs", Which clubs are very well run then?

Realistically we all moan about the same things. We hire crap managers and have crap recruitment.

Bayern - have crap recruitment and little money to spend. It’s why Flick left and is also why Nagelsmann has been moaning for the majority of the year. They seem to be off to a good start this summer.

Chelsea I mean where do we start? Management well we’ve seen that first hand they just know when to pull the plug. Players? I mean shall I list them?

Liverpool currently have two of their best attackers going into the last 12 months of their contract. Let that sink in.

Barca are just a mess. I’d rather be us than them and that’s saying a lot.

PSG just made Mbappe their director of football but before that they scraped up the whole free market for 2 years and not one of them signings have set the world a light. They still need a new midfield and lard knows what the plan was for their goalkeeping position. They literally looked at DDG and Henderson and said that looks like a good model.
 
Realistically we all moan about the same things. We hire crap managers and have crap recruitment.

Bayern - have crap recruitment and little money to spend. It’s why Flick left and is also why Nagelsmann has been moaning for the majority of the year. They seem to be off to a good start this summer.

Chelsea I mean where do we start? Management well we’ve seen that first hand they just know when to pull the plug. Players? I mean shall I list them?

Liverpool currently have two of their best attackers going into the last 12 months of their contract. Let that sink in.

Barca are just a mess. I’d rather be us than them and that’s saying a lot.

PSG just made Mbappe their director of football but before that they scraped up the whole free market for 2 years and not one of them signings have set the world a light. They still need a new midfield and lard knows what the plan was for their goalkeeping position. They literally looked at DDG and Henderson and said that looks like a good model.

So which clubs are well run then?
 
Realistically we all moan about the same things. We hire crap managers and have crap recruitment.

Bayern - have crap recruitment and little money to spend. It’s why Flick left and is also why Nagelsmann has been moaning for the majority of the year. They seem to be off to a good start this summer.

Chelsea I mean where do we start? Management well we’ve seen that first hand they just know when to pull the plug. Players? I mean shall I list them?

Liverpool currently have two of their best attackers going into the last 12 months of their contract. Let that sink in.

Barca are just a mess. I’d rather be us than them and that’s saying a lot.

PSG just made Mbappe their director of football but before that they scraped up the whole free market for 2 years and not one of them signings have set the world a light. They still need a new midfield and lard knows what the plan was for their goalkeeping position. They literally looked at DDG and Henderson and said that looks like a good model.

Sorry but that’s a complete crock of shit
 
So which clubs are well run then?
Out of those clubs I'd say all of them are with the exception of Barcelona which is borderline bankrupt. All clubs make mistakes, bad signings, let players go that they should have kept. No one is perfect. Not Bayern or Liverpool. Real Madrid has just won a double and has made some astronomical errors in recent times with the likes of Hazard, Jovic and with expensive players like Bale not even in the squad. But that's balanced out by shrewd signings, good scouting setup and a strict wage structure. With PSG and City it's hard to say because they operate outside the boundaries of conventional financing so whatever mistakes they make they could just buy themselves out of.

Our bad has just massively outweighed the good since SAF left us. I'm really hoping that our new front office can turn it around.
 
The point about a strategy and focal competencies is, however, not to identify traits that are good and useful. Anyone can do that, about anything i.e. Guardiola has built his success on.

What makes a strategy, is what values are prioritized consistently and above others, when push comes to shove and sacrifices are made. I don’t know about these rumours, but two things are clear: 1) Solskjær talked about all three of them repeatedly, and 2) they weren’t really prioritized in recruitment ahead of other strengths like national culture, diversity in competencies, positive social values, aerial threat, x-factor. They were three of many equal values. And Solskjær’s broad scope helped him achieve lots of things, like consistently improving points rate over three seasons, consistently reaching latter stages of cups, repeatedly beating top coaches with top squads. It wasn’t stupid, far from it. Neither was it enough to get consistent wins across a season or dominate possession, which today seems strongly correlated. Ten Hag will likely prioritize harder en more consequently in a narrower scope (I’m guessing) going for speed of step, speed of thought, control of ball, aggression and discipline above all else, again and again. It might work. Regardless, it changes the job of the recruitment team vastly.
Interesting. Do we know what Solksjaer's strategy was from detailed reports or are these ideas your perception? I think it's difficult to reverse engineer a strategy from an output that says the players are poor because that wasn't an intended outcome. Where would these focal competencies be if ETH makes a hash of it for example?

The way they analysed these players was obviously not aligned with current opinion. And before people say "it was obvious X can't play in a high line!" - it is obvious now. Everything is obvious when the mist descends, but some of the failings were not so obvious on sale. Also there is a reality that most players are not perfection, you do have to build a team with individual weaknesses.

There are also many connected steps in recruitment, so it is difficult to say with any certainty where it fell down. Even if he had Pep's Bible of player values by position it's still possible to fail.

The initial report still reads as made up to me. Reminds me of the strategists version of the transfer journalist that links every player under the sun. Eventually the broken clock runs right. I'm not sure what they've illuminated for me but possibly I'm missing the point somewhere!
 
Out of those clubs I'd say all of them are with the exception of Barcelona which is borderline bankrupt. All clubs make mistakes, bad signings, let players go that they should have kept. No one is perfect. Not Bayern or Liverpool. Real Madrid has just won a double and has made some astronomical errors in recent times with the likes of Hazard, Jovic and with expensive players like Bale not even in the squad. But that's balanced out by shrewd signings, good scouting setup and a strict wage structure. With PSG and City it's hard to say because they operate outside the boundaries of conventional financing so whatever mistakes they make they could just buy themselves out of.

Our bad has just massively outweighed the good since SAF left us. I'm really hoping that our new front office can turn it around.

It's Barca from 2003-2010.
 
Realistically we all moan about the same things. We hire crap managers and have crap recruitment.

Bayern - have crap recruitment and little money to spend. It’s why Flick left and is also why Nagelsmann has been moaning for the majority of the year. They seem to be off to a good start this summer.

Chelsea I mean where do we start? Management well we’ve seen that first hand they just know when to pull the plug. Players? I mean shall I list them?

Liverpool currently have two of their best attackers going into the last 12 months of their contract. Let that sink in.

Barca are just a mess. I’d rather be us than them and that’s saying a lot.

PSG just made Mbappe their director of football but before that they scraped up the whole free market for 2 years and not one of them signings have set the world a light. They still need a new midfield and lard knows what the plan was for their goalkeeping position. They literally looked at DDG and Henderson and said that looks like a good model.
Could have just saved your time admitting you were wrong rather than posting this.

Bayern, Chelsea and Liverpool are very well run clubs. Barca I'll give you that although the new regime is turning things around. PSG aren't even run badly but they're not exceptionally run either.
 
Could have just saved your time admitting you were wrong rather than posting this.

Bayern, Chelsea and Liverpool are very well run clubs. Barca I'll give you that although the new regime is turning things around. PSG aren't even run badly but they're not exceptionally run either.

It's Barca from 2003-2010, when their dof and laporta left.
 
Tbh personally I'm not a fan of a rigid transfer philosophy. Good players are extremely expensive commodities and your strategy has got to be flexible enough to accommodate them when they become available.

I'd say only Klopp & Guardiola have earned the right to be inflexible based on their success and even they're noway near as inflexible as people think. If Guardiola was joining City now many of you'd be on about how KDB is too careless with the ball for a Guardiola team - but that's quite obviously bollocks and Guardiola quite clearly finds a way to accommodate good players.

The key for me is finding good players for good value first. Load your squad up with them, and expect your coach to work it out. It's what Madrid do. As long as you're stacked full of talent in all 3 areas of the pitch, not particularly imbalanced you can make it work and a good coach should be able to maximise the potential in the team
Truth, difficult to argue with this but at United I think it was the other way round and the squad make up was a small part of our issues which were mainly to do with poor managers no longer good enough for the level we wanted to operate at or never good enough to operate at the aspired stage. This meant that there was limited player development so even if we signed a good player there is always a greater chance of them regressing rather than improving e.g Fred was highly rated when he came and looked like a proper midfielder but never really built on his potential and no one seems to have worked on his weaknesses with him.

So its not about recruitment alone, we have signed highly rated players before and very few have maintained their level or grew. I think its more to do with coaching and the corrosive effect of keeping around players like Jones, Lingard, Mata etc for way too long. How can you motivate players when they are seeing you paying 140k to Mata for cheerleading?
 
City, Brighton, Villa recently a few.
Do you really think that all of the above three clubs are run better than Bayern or Liverpool? Jesus christ.
 
Truth, difficult to argue with this but at United I think it was the other way round and the squad make up was a small part of our issues which were mainly to do with poor managers no longer good enough for the level we wanted to operate at or never good enough to operate at the aspired stage. This meant that there was limited player development so even if we signed a good player there is always a greater chance of them regressing rather than improving e.g Fred was highly rated when he came and looked like a proper midfielder but never really built on his potential and no one seems to have worked on his weaknesses with him.

This is true. Our piss poor managers have generally underperformed even with the talent they did inherit or recruit.

For example, I think Ole inherited a decent team although with clear flaws. Those flaws should've been addressable in a couple of transfer windows. But the way he spent that summers transfer funds was fecking criminal.
 
Do you really think that all of the above three clubs are run better than Bayern or Liverpool? Jesus christ.

Bro we literally associate well run clubs with winning. I don’t know why posters are acting up like these clubs they all lick cheeks about, are well rounded about their business.

Liverpool literally have the same set up before Klopp arrived but now they are the best ran club. Let’s see how well ran they are when it’s time to replace Klopp.

We are making a lot of changes stop acting like we are that far away from these other clubs.
 
This is true. Our piss poor managers have generally underperformed even with the talent they did inherit or recruit.

For example, I think Ole inherited a decent team although with clear flaws. Those flaws should've been addressable in a couple of transfer windows. But the way he spent that summers transfer funds was fecking criminal.

It was poor management but the people advising didn’t help. However it all comes together as one. 6 months before his arrival Maguire wasn’t good enough and his first summer Bruno gave the ball away too much. They now both play for us. That’s a poor set up.
 
Bro we literally associate well run clubs with winning. I don’t know why posters are acting up like these clubs they all lick cheeks about, are well rounded about their business.

Liverpool literally have the same set up before Klopp arrived but now they are the best ran club. Let’s see how well ran they are when it’s time to replace Klopp.

We are making a lot of changes stop acting like we are that far away from these other clubs.

Can you please enlighten how Aston Villa a club who has spent nearly 400m euros in PL in last three years and have finished 17,11 and 14th respectively better run than Liverpool?
 
Over the last six to eight months we've had nothing but announcements about changes at senior manager level but absolutely nothing when it comes to the squad itself.
Some things never change.
 
Can you please enlighten how Aston Villa a club who has spent nearly 400m euros in PL in last three years and have finished 17,11 and 14th respectively better run than Liverpool?

Point proven.

Look at my first flipping sentence. :lol:
 
Who knew point of football is improvement in results and health of the club :lol:

But for example Brighton will never be better than Manchester United.

We finished above them. Are we a better ran club? It’s not 1+1=2 debate.
 
Who knew point of football is improvement in results and health of the club :lol:

Funny thing is that it's widely accepted that Liverpool and Bayern are amongst the best run clubs in the world, but some clown on Caf thinks that fecking Aston Villa are run better than them. Run the same poll on villa forums and they'll throw you out of there.
 
But for example Brighton will never be better than Manchester United.

We finished above them. Are we a better ran club? It’s not 1+1=2 debate.

No, thats dumb logic. Its what you spend and what you get in return, how the club is shaped for present and future and ofcoure how healthy club is.

Guess which team tops most of this? Yeah, Its Liverpool. Also Brighton are well run than Villa or ManUtd, at least for now.
 
Funny thing is that it's widely accepted that Liverpool and Bayern are amongst the best run clubs in the world, but some clown on Caf thinks that fecking Aston Villa are run better than him.

Yeah, Aston Villa over Liverpool :lol:

Maybe few think they barely spent anything and punching above their weight to stay in PL. They were VAR feck up away from relegation.