DoF

[royvilla949]

what we need is a clough & taylor. one finds the best players the other runs the team

[Irish villain]

what we need is a clough & taylor. one finds the best players the other runs the team

A pair like that don't come around too often. I'm not sure a DoF would work at villa. Do they ever work in England?

[Damo70]

paul_e,  how do you decide who's to blame if the results are bad? Surely the DOF's signings are partly to blame? I agree with royvilla, we could do with another Clough and Taylor but they were a natural partnership, not a manager and a DOF thrown together by a chairman.

[Villanation]

Its a bit of a contradiction really.

The Spurs fan says Villa where like Spurs where and that a director of football would attract the right players to get the club to the next level.

Reality is if you want Villa at the next level IE Champions league then we need to sell the club to a very rich Arab that's prepared to throw 300ml at a squad, even then would take a few seasons to achieve.

As for MON, what MON needed was a No2, problem is MON, IMO, couldn't work with a No2, and in terms of this Spurs fan saying having another party select MON's players and then expect Martin O'Neill to work with them, sorry he's talking out of his b** hole, clearly doesn't know how MON works, how he functions with his players, MON in a million years would never work with the likes of your Berbatov's or Torres and any other of the big rock stars.

What you see with MON is what you get and you either get him or you don't, so in answer to the question i think any director of football needs the right kind of manager to work with.

The other point is, as a matter of reality Villa did achieve the next level, 6Th, (possibly a fifth place at some point) Europe, Cup finals etc., on our expenditure is as high as it gets, problem is we are just starting to realise that. Seriously if we ever did qualify for the ultimate, the Champions League, seriously how long do you think we'd last.

[old man villa fan]

  It's a great way of creating a club style that goes through all levels.  The problem with a traditional approach is that you can end up with reserves and youth that don't fit the first team.  I think we've suffered from this a little recently as the reserves had a very different style to the first team whilst mon was here.

For a club without the millions of Man City or Chelsea, or the turnover of Man Utd, you need steady progress built on continuity.

We cannot afford to keep on 're-stocking' the 1st team with players purchased from other clubs.  We have to bring through quality players from the youth team that fit in with the way the 1st team play.  To do this the club has to play in a similar manner from top to bottom.  To manage this throughout the club is far more than the 1st team manager can handle.  You need a club manager that is technically gifted but may not perhaps have top man-management skills necessary for the 1st team in the PL and more importantly not have an ego that undermines the 1st team manager.

A club manager, in our case, would make up for the lack of football experience of RL, GK and PF and be that 'old hand' that we need.  Somebody that could be the media face of the club that could try and build relationships with the media that we currently lack.  It would not necessarily have to be an elder statesman but could be a 'wise head on young shoulders'.  The club manager would have to have the vision and be in it for the long term and, above all, have the respect of the 1st team manager.  I could have seen GH in this role and there are many other foreign coaches that could do it.  There are very few quality British managers that can manage a team at the top and even fewer that are young with their best years ahead of them.  We build up young managers on the back of their playing careers and then knock them down when they do not live up to the hype.  The reason for this, I believe, is that PL football is too big for one man to manage a club.

Obviously, the 1st team is the most important and therefore, rightly, the 1st team manager must have the overall say in how the team plays.  Saying that, it would have to be the Aston Villa way that everybody buys in to for it to work.  Tactics change with time so that they meet the challenges at any given time.  Having a system the runs from 1st team down would even give you the chance to try subtle changes to the system in the reserves before applying them to the 1st team.

The aim would be to develop players that can make the step up from youth level to the 1st team and just concentrate on their game rather than having to change the way they play as well.

I do not see this system being the tradtional DOF as put forward by most people, where they see it conflicting with the role of the 1st team manager.  The club manager would be a co-ordinator of the teams at all levels, look after the scouting network, develop relationships with overseas clubs where we could possibly share ideas and exchange players to assist in their development, assist the 1st team manager in buying and selling players so that it does not take the 1st team manager's eye off the ball regarding running the 1st team and there are many other things that the club manager could do.

I honestly cannot see Villa being able to push our way on to the top table if we continue with the traditional approach to football management.
 

[olaftab]

It was a very good  debate on Villa with Danny Kelly.  He and his guest Harry Harris reckoned we are nailed on for Hughes and they talked up McClaren as a superb coach and than mentioned the fact that during Croatia game  his biggest error  was not the brolly but that he didn't do anything to close out the game at 2-2 despite having a fully fit Hargreaves sitting on the bench.

[Greg N'Ash]

this was brought up by me and others during MON's time and was always poo-pooed by others, perhaps with good reason.. The main problem is people have different opinions of what makes a good player and you're very unlikely to get a DOF and manager who see exactly eye to eye on that subject.

However, I feel a lot of MON's best work at the club was with the improvement of some of the existing players, and one of his problems with player purchases towards the end was he ran out of ideas which would have been where a DOF could have come in.

[ozzjim]

I think they would have to be appointed together, or the DOF appoint the manager/ head coach, so the relationship is clear from the off.

[robbo1874]

I posted something similar in the new manager thread recently. I reckon based on the improvement towards the end of last season we. Could have done a lot worse than move houllier into that dof role, with gmac assuming managerial responsibilities. Give them a season with a clear objective of top 6 finish and with a few quid to spend in the window and a full pre- season to get the squad right and I think we could've had a serious crack at it.

[Ian.]

The biggest problem with DOF is whenever I see it written down I can't help but see the initials DOL and I don't like it one bit.

[Dante Lavelli]

I have long been a fan of a Director of Football as I think running a club from top to bottom is too big a project for one man.

However the lines of command/responsibility need to be clearly defined.  For me a DoF football should:

1. Establish and manage a scouting network for young players (say up to the age of 22)
2. Coach the youth coaches so that a "Villa way" is established
3. Control and improve the training facilities.
4. Act as an ambassador for the club
5. Provide continuity when the head coach/manager leaves

The manager should

1. Coach the first team squad
2. Sign players
3. Scout future opposition
4. Scout for future signings i.e. ones for the first team squad
5. Agree to broadly play in accordance with the "Villa way" and promote players from the Dof sausage machine.

To be honest I am not sure where the finances bit sits.  Maybe that should be a third secretary type position, a la Steve Stride.

[Percy McCarthy]

  Good managers don't need a DOF, in fact the best managers are quite dictatorial in management styles.

  SAF, Mourinhio would'nt put up with a DOF.

Spot on. In England, the great managers have been, in effect, directors of football. Busby, Shankley, Fergie, Wenger, Revie, Nicholson, Saunders, going right back to George Ramsay, have dictated the direction and ethos of the whole of their clubs. I don't think thats always been the way abroad.

[The Left Side]

If we were to get a DoF they would have to have an established working relationship before we sign them up, along the lines of GH and GMac to use as an example.

[JJ-AV]

Leave those decisions up to the manager. A decent manager will have a team of people looking at players for him anyway, none of the top managers do their own scouting.

[enigma]

  Good managers don't need a DOF, in fact the best managers are quite dictatorial in management styles.

  SAF, Mourinhio would'nt put up with a DOF.

Mourinho had one at Chelsea and has one now at Madrid.