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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

 

Time, time, and thrice time

Ok so we accept football is about results; the performance is secondary to the consideration of three points. But, as a football manager, shouldn’t there also be a responsibility to the future of the club?

This is what happens I believe in many European countries where you have a manager who often hangs around for eons and is in close contact with the board. And you have the coach who rounds up the balls, bibs and cones and picks the team for each game.

In England of course we do things differently. Here the manager does everything from design the training centre to deciding what the players drink after the game. Oh and sign new players, keep an eye on the youth set up, paint the crash barriers, that sort of thing.

Perhaps then we can see where the likes of Chelsea and Spurs are coming from. They install a Director of Football who is there to oversee a long term strategy and make sure the club is on the right path going forward. The coach is brought in to deal with just the first team. He is responsible only for results in the here and now and his remit extends no further.

It’s a policy that seems effective at the big teams on the continent where managers come and go and the clubs remain there and thereabouts. It provides a stabilizing force at the club and ensures the coach is a transient figure employed at the whim of results.

For Arsenal and Manchester United the manager is like a Baron in charge of a petty fiefdom. He is lord and master of all he surveys, yes he delegates but his reach his further and his word more powerful.

It’s not rocket science how successful clubs are run. Somehow within their set up they look for a stability that goes beyond a coach coming in with his mates, working a few years then leaving. There is if you look a corporate policy that extends from top to bottom. Other clubs lacking this vision struggle.

Some people would say Sam Allardyce was a successful manager at Bolton. He took a pissy team and made them a redoubtable if unspectacular part of the Premier tableau through sheer hard work on the pitch. But he did nothing about developing the club. Everything he did was geared towards the first team to the extent that when he left, as he was bound to one day, the whole thing collapse. There was nothing behind the scenes, no infrastructure, no supporting cast.

Now Bolton are playing the managerial merry go round where they appoint a new bod, he appoints his mates, they lose, they leave, they start again (hope you are keeping up with who all those leaves refer to!) and the club is no further forward than it was before.

I look at Derby and wonder how long before Billy Davies gets the chop? Like many newly promoted teams before them Derby are struggling and, as is the norm, some fans are calling for his head. Derby were never going to survive this season but what would scking Davies achieve? A meteoric climb up the table to a UEFA Cup spot perchance? Or more of the same after a slight upturn in results.

I’m not a Derby fan, I used to hate them when they had Terry Hennessey playing for them (whatever happened to bald footballers?) but surely a team that yo yo’s between the top two divisions, all the time getting Premiership TV money and parachute payments, is better than mid table mediocrity year in, year out, like Middlesbrough? Surely allowing Davies the chance to do his job. To get experienced in the Premier League, to develop strong foundations at the club benefits all Derby fans in the long run? Or is another 10 years mediocrity what the fans really desire?

He was good enough to get the club promoted. Then his name was feted. Surely he deserves the chance to learn and develop and improve the club in the top league?

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