Taking Brighton’s entire recruitment network has worked really well at Chelsea.
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Saw earlier this morning that they were looking to bring in ANOTHER guy from Brighton who was in charge of transfers or scouting, imagine that! In an environment like Chelsea, I doubt that anyone can succeed.
Wouldn’t mind having Ashworth at Liverpool, though, I’d say our overall organisation is still better than Man United’s and that a savvy sporting director could thrive.
Chelsea were incoherent before Boehly; at one point they had Salah and De Bruyne on their books whom they proceed to discard and that was before they became the madhouse they are now.
Utd on the other hand, seem to be getting their ducks in a row. After years, they are making moves with some logic behind them at least on paper.
Which brings the question of what the fuck are we doing. It’s been more than 6 months since Ward effectively departed. We are still searching having made an interim appointment that apparently was unsatisfactory for all parties concerned. Meanwhile, everyone’s security blanket at the club is going to leave at the end of the season.
It’s fun and enjoyable laughing at Chelsea and Utd these past years but if we don’t get this right, we could be heading right where they are.
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Replicating behind the scenes success at a different club is really hard to do becayse the circumstances are so different and the things that make signings a success are largely out of the control of the guy identifying them (see Bobby being a failure under Rodgers). But I think the one thing for certain you can say about Ashworth is he is at least a serious football man. That is not sufficient for success at a club with such dysfunction like Utd (see the mess at Chelsea), but it is at least a necessary condition.
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Some people would rather shit on their own club than look at the flaws of others.
They’ve got one bloke in and all of sudden they are stable geniuses, sorry let’s see some results.
Words are lovely our current government have loads.
The club has always done stuff behind the scenes, we don’t scream our transfer plans to all the world unlike Man Utd.
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Who was that genius DOF at Sevilla that everyone wanted? Monchi I think? Then he went to Roma and was practically ran out of town for being so bad.
It’s always way more than just one man.
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He’s actually the president of football operations now at Villa, since last summer - make of that what you will. I think he simply misunderstood the incredible weight of expectations at Roma (Sevilla have far more of a European pedigree than Roma, would not know it from the fans), and how little time he had. He was under intense pressure before the end of his first season, at Sevilla he really had not accomplished a great deal that was measurable in the first 5 years. I am sure he made some mistakes in those five years, but no one remembers those now.
That is probably not a favourable analogy for Ashworth. Brighton’s expectations were never huge, Newcastle has passionate fans, but after the Ashley years keeping them happy isn’t taking much, yet anyway. He will be judged at ManU by his first transfer window.
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The thing for me is the risk management. It’s ok to strike out a few times at Brighton or Newcastle. You can even bring in guys who it ends up being that they’re fine but not good enough to push to the next level and that pressure won’t fall on you as the DOF - it’s totally different when moving up to the top clubs. You’re shopping in a much smaller pool, there’s not as much room to be creative in the market and the expectation is that players hit the ground running.
Essentially the difference between being the DOF at Brighton or Newcastle is kind of analogous to being a player at those clubs. You get to excel in a small pool, maybe you do some not great things and very few people even notice but when you bang one in the top corner everyone sees it. Then you move to Man Utd and everything you do is analysed a thousand times, that slight imperfection that was overlooked at Brighton is magnified weekly. You’re expected to bang it in the top corner now so don’t draw the same praise while your mistakes and flaws are more important and talked about.
He’s probably going to better than whatever their current strategy is, since that is clearly failing miserably, but I think it’s fanciful to believe he fixes the inherent problems at that football club - and he definitely won’t do it quickly.
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Man Utd have a LOT of room to improve on their recruitment, so it’s difficult to not see it improve under a proper football man. They will still pay a pretty penny for signings, as the seller knows they have deep pockets, but presumably the recklessness of the recent past will be reined in somewhat.
Let’s see some results though.
And it’s not just about the signings, it’s about the wage packet too, and Man Utd are significantly overpaying on wages for what they are seeing on the pitch. Correcting that will take a lot of pain, and it won’t be done quickly.
If he gets rid of Bruno, McTominay, and Rashford, I’ll start to get concerned.
I’m of the belief that Man United have several more years of banter status left to go before we have to start taking them seriously again.
When you get things right and look back at how the process went, it’s often a combination of a lot of, bigger or small things. As rival fans, of course we can downplay it all the time… until they’re back. And at some point they will, because it’s just football cycles.
CV’s in some of these roles in the background are probably even less a guarantee for success than on the pitch, but they have to start somewhere. And you start from having the right profile of people in the right roles. That’s something they got terribly wrong in last years.
As rival fans we can comment on it, just to see what’s happening out there (as we’ve been looking for a while now to appoint a similar person, who is not Jurgen’s pal Schmadtke for short-term technicalities). It doesn’t have to be a matter of fear or blindly downplaying everything they do.
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The point is it takes a lot more than one person.
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Takes more than one, but they don’t need 50. They’re employing key people (in Berrada and Ashworth) who will select more people around/beneath them. Maybe reshuffle some existing ones, like we did. Those are key roles you start with. There are no rules of course, sometimes you “start” with the manager. We didn’t have absolutely everything in place the moment Klopp took over. That was a big part, but we kept adding and grew with time.
They are also being linked with Wilcox
Toyah?
I’ve just seen that, I remembered him from some article that described his move from Man City to Southampton as a coup for the latter. Glazers seem to have finally found a successful model: get all the money, while someone who actually loves the club will get their house in order by actually appointing football men, rather than money men.
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Rumour in the Times that PSG will buy Marcus.
They could afford his ridiculous wages and selling him would make Utd better.
This better not happen.
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Are PSG blind?
So Ming the Dingbat says we’re back in the race…race for what…in a few weeks…you’ll be back where u belong…muddle of the table…
42% possession v Luton
lol