Hitchens60 asks an interesting question;
The position Director of Football or Sporting Director – what’s in a name; aren’t they essentially the same roles? -raises an interesting dynamic.
For the Head Coach the role provides a degree of protection; if the players don’t come up to expectation (or more importantly show improvement) it’s because the DoF failed to recruit the right players; for the MD who makes the appointment, given the same scenario the DoF has failed in the role expected of him and can be removed.
Sound familiar?
On that basis the DoF appears to be firmly positioned between a rock and a hard place and any opportunities to succeed appear limited!
Of course the role of DoF encapsulates more than just player recruitment and includes areas such as developing a culture and playing styles that are recognisable throughout the club from the first team through the U23’s right down to the youngest of the junior teams and, of course, the women’s team. It also includes developing and improving sports science which now has a prominent role in all professional sports.
Villa, of course have an unenviable record in this area.
First there was Gary Karsa. Sacked after two years.
Henrik Almstadt then teamed up with Paddy Riley and the reaction was – at last an identity and new modern thinking direction for the club. Sacked within a year.
They were followed by Steve Round and the so called ‘Villa Engine’. Another new identity – surely we now have the right new direction but no, within two years Round is sacked and Suso is appointed with the strong Spanish and European scouting network – finally this must be it; the new direction we’ve been looking for – again sacked!
Now Johan Lange, the best there is in Europe with his highly successful FC Copenhagen model.
There’s a familiar pattern developing here – yet another new direction but this has to be the one!
The question is – is it?
There is a world of difference between FC Copenhagen playing in the Danish Superliga and Villa in the EPL. Yes, they win trophies and regularly qualify for the Champions League – but then they should be if you believe the recent analogy with Celtic in the Scottish Premier League. Like Celtic they rarely make it through the group stages and more often play in the Europa League – not that we should knock that from our 17th position – but the point is generally still valid. Copenhagen are known as a ‘feeder club’ which has been successful in developing local talent and selling them into the German and Italian leagues for values in and around £10m. These are functional players sold at inflated prices who don’t necessarily go onto better things – don’t we already have plenty of these? – not that I’m knocking it, if that’s the limit of our ambition.
Our owners’ stated ambition though is very different – to improve from our current lowly position to be regularly challenging the top clubs in Europe (where have we heard that before?).
The point is they don’t just want us to be a feeder club so Lange is therefore operating in a very different environment from that at Copenhagen. His challenge is to respond to much higher expectations than at Copenhagen and in a tougher, more competitive market place. Can he do it? – well at least he has previous experience of living in the West Midlands and English football as assistant manager at Wolves – albeit for six unsuccessful months!
But what of our two other summer recruits – Craig Shakespeare and Rob MacKenzie?
Both have excellent CV’s and a lot of experience in the EPL – particularly with helping Leicester City break the mould.
When Pearson was being suggested as Villa manager, many fans wanted us to go for his assistant Shakespeare instead.
Mackenzie is credited with playing a pivotal role in signing Kante, Knockaert, Mahrez and Vardy for Leicester – just now, I suspect, most of us would take just one of those signings at Villa.
I think these are both very savvy signings. It’s clear we don’t just need quality and EPL knowhow on the field; we need it to reinforce a very inexperienced management team and it’s something which both Shakespeare and Mackenzie can provide. Will they prove to be more valuable acquisitions than Lange?
Only time will tell.
It’s a good question Hitch and one I’ve asked myself.
How often are we going to keep chopping and changing?
I have doubts about Lange’s role and it concerns me that a lot of emphasis seems to be put on bringing players through and flogging them on.
As you suggest, if that’s going to be the priority, fair enough; it is at least a sustainable thing.
But I’d like to see us improving and challenging before it becomes a priority, as I suspect all Villa fans would.
I too am worried about Lange and are the owners going to be buy young untried players and improving them to sell at profit like Brentford and Southampton did in the past while trying to get to the top. Are they going to try and buy and sell while improving the quality of player till they get to the top. What is the plan?
But I think Shakespeare is a very good signing and will help Smith and Terry improve too.
But I think the manager should be the one to decide the way we play and implement throughout the club
So everyone knows the system and can step in at anytime without disrupting the team to much.
The other worry is will villa take to long to choose the players and other teams get them first.
That’s the thing Roy.
The DoF is supposed to be the continuity side of things, so the coach/manager can leave or be sacked as and when.
But if you keep sacking the DoF and manager, well, there’s a problem, to my mind.
If you have a genuine plan, you have to see it through, in the short and medium term at least, even if it’s not what us fans want immediately.
I think this is what Hitch is getting at and I think he’s spot on.
Fwiw, I already believe Purslow won’t last long, because he’s full of it and the owners will find him out.
I hope I’m wrong, but as I think Hitch is hinting (and I’m sure he’ll come back on this) we’ve seen it all before.
Purslow’s just another CEO or whatever he’s called, who is just a businessman, who couldn’t give a flying about the Villa, as much as he might pretend he cares.
I’d say anything for £200k or whatever a year too.
I’d like it to go back to how it used to be.
An owner who’s hands on and backs his own judgement in what he sees day in, day out, with cash. Another Ellis, without being such a tight git, if you like.
It won’t happen, but that maybe begs another question in itself.
I believe Man City have just been knocked out of the Champions league again.
Haha! It’s nice to see that money can’t quite buy you everything in football.
I’m sure there’s some sort of lesson there somewhere.
I have pretty simple views about roles and responsibilities in business – and football is a business – some might say a disproportionately large business given the inflated transfer fees being bandied about in the current economic climate – but I digress.
The roles of Lange, Smith (and his assistant coaches), Mark Harrison and Rob Mackenzie is to establish an identity and playing style for the club, identify and acquire the players necessary and then deliver that plan. In order to do that, Purslow and the Board have to first informed them of the financial business plan withIn which the club wish to operate.
Put the plans together and you have a business plan for the club which should then be adopted by the Board who have the responsibility ‘inter alia’ of providing the structure and resources necessary to deliver that plan. If anyone fails to deliver they should be removed and replaced – simple – but that doesn’t mean abandoning the plan and starting again.
Villa have suffered through too many changes of ownership and it’s lack of continuity at this level that has led to a continual reinvention of the wheel. Whether you agreed with Ellis or not he had a clear idea and plan for the club which was consistently delivered during his reign.
Suso has gone and others may leave or be removed but that doesn’t mean we have to start again.
Smith is on record as having said that creating an identity and playing style is taking longer to develop than it should (or words to that effect). Actually, not that surprising given the events since Smith took over with us languishing near the bottom of the Championship and having just been saved from bankruptcy.
I hope Smith, Purslow and our owners have learnt a lot from this last season; let’s hope they can put it into practice.
Rashica not interested in coming to a team that might struggle.
So he’s obviously not confident of improving us.
Bugger off somewhere elsewhere then we are bigger than any player.
If he not interested to play for the shirt he’s not worth it we’ve had enough of those over the years.
At least he was honest I suppose we can now push ahead with benrharma and Watkins.
I’m sick of such players like rashica utv
I suppose the real question is – is it yet another change in direction or merely the replacement of the DoF because he failed to deliver the agreed plan?
I’m not going to talk about club culture and an identifiable playing style because I’m not sure we yet have either!
On Purslow – yes he’s a businessman but his background is in football and I think he wants Villa to succeed because it’s in his interest if we do; he’s no more certain of his job than anyone else.
Hitch, I was about to say all this is above my head on backroom matters, you basically explained and it makes sense, Shakespeare coming was warranted as Dean Smith is a new manager in the game and our club has struggled for years to keep up in football matters. When I was at Villa I always maintained we was going backwards in running Villa, now we have businessmen and club matters have to change, I feel that our day has come and one day we will be back. I’m back believing that given time the name Aston Villa will be in Europe cups giving us fans what we wanted..
Well put by hitches and Badger.
Yes I will admit I liked the way Ellis ran the club to a certain extent that he didn’t quite go the extra when needed like after winning European cup he should have strengthened the team from a position of strength.
I think Smith want’s to go like Brentford style of play as I think the owners do as well and purslow the way he was celebrating our survival with the team said it all for me he’s in for the long haul.
Shakespeare is in for that premier experience could it be the new Clough Taylor combination plus I think Terry is there to learn and if things don’t go as planned he steps in so it continues the system maybe?
But I think we are starting to see the foundations being laid for future success (I hope)
John your working,, as long as it’s not John Doe.. 😂
🙂
Sorry, Bill, that’s me, trying something. Ignore it mate.
One thing is for sure and that is we need to start producing better players through our academy system. At the moment, in our first team squad, we only really have Grealish who has come through tour ranks . Most of our other recent graduates arent quite up to the standard needed in the PL, or even the championship.
By the looks of it though we are starting to address this problem now, and seem to have some young kids that do have the potential to get into the first XI one day
Benno, I’ve been saying this on here for ages.
We’ve talked the kids up for years and they’ve constantly proved to be not good enough.
Until we see at least a kid starting in the first eleven, I’m not convinced in the slightest by the rhetoric that’s coming out.
Rashica doesn’t want to come to villa 🙁 oh well your loss pal
Nothing Important Happened Today lol sofar
Apart from my post Nath 🙂 🙂
Now you know why I don’t listen to any of the crap that’s written in the papers, Nath.
Fwiw, I wouldn’t even believe that story either.
As I’ve said before, the papers know as much as you or me.
Absolutely NOTHING.
Sky are saying Villa are interested in signing Ramsdale from Bournemouth. Sheff Utd. reportedly have agreed a fee of £18.5m and there is a third EPL club interested.
Perhaps more pertinent in this thread, with the comments made so far. On the team planes to European ties I twice sat next to Uncle Doug. That wasn’t evidence of any priviledge on my part – it wasn’t a popular seat! I asked him about the cluture or ethos at Villa compared with other clubs, and typically he turned the question round and asked me what I thought. Eventually though I got his ideas out of him.
The main one was he said Villa had a reputation amongst other club owners of being a Gentlemanly club. They would not make approaches behind the backs of other clubs’ boards to managers or players. Doug said there was a ‘right way’ of doing things in football and a ‘wrong way’ which several successful clubs adopted. He named three of the top teams of the time, I noticed they all wore red shirts.
Doug also claimed – I thought it was boastful then but I have seen so much evidence of it since I think he was right – that Villa’s opinion swings votes amongst chairmen. If the big boys want something – but Villa are against it then the majorty swing behind Villa. 5 subs being the latest example.
My impression is Villa fans think the respect of the directors of other clubs is something we should retain. We can still hire good managers who buy into that. I am not sure about sporting directors – that is a murky job title in my opinion which allows the holders to be a spiv if it gets results.
Very interesting story OLL. I think that’s part of our problem over the past 30 years… We’re too nice. I remember Ronaldo saying he always loved coming to Villa Park as players always get treated really well… Then he’d score sack full of goals against us.
Just a quick update on players being released by Villa.
In addition to Chester, Sarjic and O’Hare we have released Baston, Doyle-Hayes, Andre Green and Hepburn-Murphy. There are other U23’s going like Sea and Odutayo. 14 players in total have been released and we have also announced that McCormack’s contract has finally expired – seems like a lifetime!
Keeping good to their word on rehashing the U23’s by making room for the new young players to step up from the academy.
Would be nice to see a quality signing or 2 now please!!
Another young player from exeter. We need senior players no, just 2 will keep me quite
Its slightly worrying we haven’t signed anyone yet. Do we have a transfer plan? If we want Watkins and Benrhama why haven’t we got this done already? I don’t believe this Rashica nonsense. Nowhere have I seen the player himself say he doesn’t want to come to us maybe he’s just waiting to see what options present themselves. He would be a great signing of intent but I don’t think it will happen. We will go for the ‘easy’ transfers instead of pulling in big known names.
Yes a bit worried that we have no one in think we need some Premier league experience as well
Well, I’d thought I’ll have a look to see what’s happening, it turns out I’m not on my own wondering, don’t managerial people understand that new players need to work with older player to gell a team together? are we still in the dark days of management and training, get you fingering and do something for the fans. P/S
Don’t take any notice what Birmingham mail or any papers say because its Bullshit from the first words written. Back to cricket…😂
I wouldn’t be too alarmed by the lack of transfer activity, bar Chelsea there’s not been a great deal of movement anywhere. Losing the play off final, going up via the play offs the season after, avoiding relegation on the final day this season, we don’t truly know what league we’ll be playing in until very late for the past few seasons. You hear the management say that they plan for every occurrence, but it’s obvious that you’ll miss out on top targets while your future is decided. Also due to the current climate it seems that a lot of owners are tightening their purse strings. I don’t include us in that bracket, however if the £100m spend is true selling clubs will take advantage. As much as it pains me to say, I can understand why we’re biding our time to get the best price for players we’re pursuing.
Man City away, first game.
Except it isn’t, because it’s been put back because they’ve only just finished in Europe.
🙁
I don’t like the look of our run-in. Hopefully we’ll already have points on the board;
Saturday 8 May 2021
Aston Villa Man Utd
Wednesday 12 May 2021
Crystal Palace Aston Villa
Saturday 15 May 2021
Spurs Aston Villa
Sunday 23 May 2021
Aston Villa Chelsea
If we lose our captain and best player what signal does that send to the rest of the squad. McGinn, Mings and Luis may follow him out the door and another relegation battle ahead.
If grealish truly loves the villa and wants to be a villa legend he should lead us up the table and compete for silverware. We now have the financial clout to do it and will be more attractive to better players the more competative we become.
So Jack how much do you really love the villa. Stick around and try to win things with us.
The Yorkshire Post have Leeds down to finish 12th.
And us to finish 18th.
Oh, I love a daily laugh;
https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/leeds-united-aston-villa-west-hams-predicted-premier-league-finish-fixture-list-announced-2947695?page=5
Worse than the Brum Mail 🙂
I do hope the powers that be at Villa are not waiting for Man Utd to bid or Buy Grealish before they start buying as they will miss the boat and most of there targets will have been sold.
It seems strange to me that the season is only a few weeks away and apart from the new backroom staff and a couple of kids, nothing
Why oh why are we not buying anyone????
If we lose our best player and captain what signal does that send to the rest of the players. The heart will be ripped out followed by another relegation battle.If grealish wants to really be remembered he should lead villa back towards the top and break the monopoly of the likes of man utd. We have the financial clout now to do it.
So Jack how much do you really love the Villa.