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.
does not surrise me one bit that southgate has ignored Grealish once again. i have harped on about this before and will continue too until southgate is sacked.
first off it is not about villa, if grealish was at utd he would still not be one of southgates favorite sons. i will tell you why, grealish is what england need, but southgate is one dimensional. he wants england to play quick passing footy, side to side and create a gap on the flanks with quick passing / switching . that is all fine and dandy against the sh it sides. but will not win world cups, cause you have no flair. ( grealish = flair) that is the top and bottom of it all.
what needs to happen is southgate needs to be accountable for his selections. with the way qualifying is set up england like other top euros countries will not face any real competition until the wc or euros.
grealish needs to do his talking on the pitch. he runs the show for villa and sometimes he does too much that needs to stop. he has to have better players around him and he has to trust the players around him more. he can be a southgate robot. but he is so much more than the worker bee in the england or villa hive. bobby robson would never have said to gazza don’t do that or this. but i want you too curve the inventions keep it simple gazza. but southgate is no robson.
i think villa will have much better attackers this season and grealish will be able to show more his skills and southgate will get sacked and grealish will end up playing for england and will become a star for the national team. he just needs to patiant and use this set back as motivation to improve further. i really don’t think there is much more he can improve on. only sometimes he slows the move down too much when your counter attacking you do not want to slow the move down. sometimes he has been accursed of going to ground too easily, bu t i dont think this is fair. he is fouled 9/10 and has been targeted by all our opposition
I particularly agree with that last paragraph, Nath.
Horseface has come out with some bollocks that I can’t be bothered to repeat.
Basically, Grealish has too much competition.
I agree with the earlier reply, in that I’m worried that Grealish will now think he’ll never get an England start while he’s playing for us.
If Grealish stays he WILL play in the middle
somethings is wrong with my posts badger, their is a hour delayed on appearing on site after i post 🙁 i thought it was my phone but it happened again today on my lappy.
grealish has to continue to carry on doing the things he is doing. he has done nothing to warrant being treated like this. england manager should be ashamed of himself.
every club villa have faced last season. came up with the same game plan. double up on grealish, sometimes he had three on him. they didnt all come up with the wrong plan. they did all the same cause he is the danger he is the master cog which turned villa’s game. without grealish we were history.
hopefully the club can give jack players around him who can show piece his game more. cause we were dog poo jack has to do more than he should. this makes him look greedy or he does too much cause he is not a team player. but this is not true. he had too do everything cause the players around him were sometimes lacking.
That’s a strange problem, Nath and I don’t have a clue what would cause it.
I’ll do some digging, but in the meantime let me know if it keeps happening.
I saw the same delay…
Cheers.
The hosts are doing some sort of upgrade in the background.
That might explain it.
I’m trying to put myself in Grealish shoes now. I don’t think I would be pushing for a move if there wasn’t much in terms of money offered and a chance to play for England. In fact I would be tempted to shove two fingers up to Southgate and play my socks off, prove my worth at my club and know he he will be sacked as manager by this time next year anyway. Grealish will get much more satisfaction playing for England when Eddie Howe selects him first time. 😉
From day one I’ve never thought Southgate knew much about football, I’ll be glad to see the back of his negativity in the game. I’m not bothered to see his input in trying to beat other teams ,as far as I’m concerned I hope we get stuffed as from now. Sterling has saved him over the last two years and he’s not the player he was. I see talks are still going on over the players Smith wants but we are close to finalising 3 of the names that’s been wrote about. Utv.
In other news, Maguire has been dropped. Rightly so, imo.
And Messi has handed in a transfer request with the aim of coming to the Prem.
I’m really not kidding!
Who said he was coming to the Villa; it may well be true.
Sadly, it’s suspected Man City will be his destination.
Imagine the crowds he’ll pull in.
Is everyone forgetting about K.Walker – he got up to much more (call girls) during lockdown !!
If Jack believes what GS says about pecking order then theres no need to leave us – unless he wants Euro footie – as he can really ask for the world at Villa and would surely get it. GS will be sacked more short than long term and Jack can play for England but just a bit later than he wanted to.
test
thanks badger
still no signings 🙁
it didnt appear straight away badger, but i got distracted i returned 20mins after i posted and my post is here. so looks like you fixed the little error. cheers bumbum i glad i wasnt alone in suffering, but alls well now except no new signings
it took 3mins to appear so much better badger 🙂 now get villa to sign somebody lmao