I seem to remember a few years back a head coach of a top European team asking his director of football for several defenders as he felt that that was the area the squad was the lightest, the previous season they had conceded many goals and his attacking and midfield options were already of a high standard. The obvious should have happened, but the Director, perhaps having spent too much time on Football Manager, did the opposite and signed expensive midfielders who were talented but not necessary. Not long into the season the team leaked goals and guess who got the blame and the sack? The manager.
My team, Sunderland, have for the last couple of seasons employed a manager with a director of football above him overseeing the transfer dealings. It hasn’t worked. Whether it be the head coach’s fault for not identifying the needs of the team or the director of football doing his own thing, it just hasn’t worked and has resulted in three sackings: two head coaches and one director of football. The sackings have not just been down to this, not by a long way, but they have contributed as poor transfer dealings, unless the squad is already strong, will almost certainly result in relegation for a team like Sunderland.
In more cases than not it seems to work in most European leagues where it is seen as the norm nowadays, but in the Premier League the tried and trusted formula is to have a manager who is in charge of the team, the transfers and pretty much the club minus the money and admin side.
Is it our mentality that is stopping this way from working? There does seem to be a phobia of doing things this way in England. This phobia could well be here for a reason as the success rate of clubs who have tried their hands at using a director of football is not exactly on the positive side.
So far it definitely hasn’t worked at Sunderland. When Paolo Di Canio was head coach the director of football at the time was the Italian Roberto Di Fanti who signed more than a dozen players, many of whom played very little first team football and were moved on within a year. Apparently his brief was to sign British players or at least players with experience in the Premier League. Many foreigners were signed with little or no experience. About three of the fourteen players he brought in were good signings: not a strong enough success rate.
It hasn’t worked at Newcastle, where one of their previous appointments, Joe Kinnear was bizarre to say the least. He was not greeted fondly, nor will his reign be fondly remembered by Newcastle supporters. Things went horribly wrong for Kinnear. For example, he tried to sign a player they already owned who was out on loan.
Even those at the top end of the table have had mixed success. Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham have had various degrees of fortunes. The argument could be that they are doing well, competing for several trophies per season, but their respective directors of football have signed plenty of players who have been dumped in the reserves and sold off for less than they were bought for simply because they didn’t meet the needs of the manager. Surely this way of doing things will eventually put a club into trouble and without the vast amount of money that the clubs’ owners have then a club and a high profile one at that could have already been in big trouble.
With the right person in the role, whether it be an ex-player, manager, agent and with the director of football, head coach and owner working together then is there any reason why it shouldn’t work? The introduction of the Financial Fair Play rules may also be another reason as to why the director of football should be experimented with further in English football.
The game is changing and this may well be the way forward for all clubs in the future: leave the manager to deal with the team, whilst the director of football deals with the buying and selling of players; with the blessing of the manager, of course.
