Director of football. The time is nigh?

[Jay86]

Director of football is a total bollocks post, if your manager can't be trusted to buy the right players then he's a shit manager - simple as that. Do you know who a director of football was? Alex Ferguson. Couldn't be arsed with coaching, left that to other people like Kidd and McClaren, but had total control over transfer policy. I don't want a coach and a 'transfer guy' fucking grand poobah, I want a manager who buys good players. Football, a simple game complicated by idiots - Shanks.

Managers aren't managers these days though, most are classed as "head coach" now, whether right or wrong, that's the way modern football is heading, we in Britain are about 10 years behind the rest of Europe, as usual.

 

Maybe ferguson was more of a director of football, if so, then the "head coach" whether it was Kidd, Mcclaren, Queiroz or Rene Meulensteen would be what Brendan would be in the same format here, with Van Gaal or whoever being the Fergie.

[Gnasher]

Director of football is a total bollocks post, if your manager can't be trusted to buy the right players then he's a shit manager - simple as that. Do you know who a director of football was? Alex Ferguson. Couldn't be arsed with coaching, left that to other people like Kidd and McClaren, but had total control over transfer policy. I don't want a coach and a 'transfer guy' fucking grand poobah, I want a manager who buys good players. Football, a simple game complicated by idiots - Shanks.

Shanks had men like joe fagan, ronnie moran, roy evans and bob paisley in his set up. No disrespect to the man but brendan rodgers has got colin pascoe.

[gkmacca]

The horse has bolted, the stable door's open. This bag of wind has been given so much power he can kick out people at the academy who have been doing a great job, and he's bought so many great new players he claims the squad is too weak to withstand injury to two players. Just let him get on with his grand plan.

[xerxes]

I believe that a DOF should have been appointed to replace Comolli, but that now that Brendan is in situ , it would not be possible.

 

FSG were absolutely right to look for a DOF when they arrived, they simply made the wrong appointment through lack of experience.

 

The club is still light on football experience, but that gap has been reduced by the appointment of KK to the Board.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

How to install a DOF without undermining Rodgers ? Hire a female one to placate his many purported carnal desires.

[Gym Beglin]

We don't need a DoF, they're just as likely to make the same mistakes as Rodgers or anyone else.

 

We need CL football, and then we need to buy the players that our 'elite' scouting team recommends.

[Gnasher]

It is extraordinarily difficult to take you seriously.

 

I realise its probably not feasible but who are we to turn our noses up to a man of hiddink or van gaals quality?

 

As we're not going to sugar daddy a load of 40mil players into the first team we've got to get our transfer policy, playing style and academy spot on. Van Gaal or Hiddink would fit the bill on all three points. The players Van Gaal brought through the Ajax acadamy reads like a who's who of genuine world class footballers.

 

The mans a winner. The only football man at the club is Kenny and it seems he's on his way to Asia to sell shirts. Who are we left with? Ian Ayer and Colin Pascoe.

 

Van Gaals a bit of a hot head lunatic but so what? He knows how to build a club to play good football and win titles.

[Tony Moanero]

The horse has bolted, the stable door's open. This bag of wind has been given so much power he can kick out people at the academy who have been doing a great job, and he's bought so many great new players he claims the squad is too weak to withstand injury to two players. Just let him get on with his grand plan.

Can you elaborate on "doing a great job", please?

[Gnasher]

The horse has bolted, but if only,

 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/may/22/louis-van-gaal-liverpool

[Jonny83]

Director of football is a total bollocks post, if your manager can't be trusted to buy the right players then he's a shit manager - simple as that. Do you know who a director of football was? Alex Ferguson. Couldn't be arsed with coaching, left that to other people like Kidd and McClaren, but had total control over transfer policy. I don't want a coach and a 'transfer guy' fucking grand poobah, I want a manager who buys good players. Football, a simple game complicated by idiots - Shanks.

 

Pretty much word for word my feelings on the subject.

 

I remember in the summer everyone in the media wanking themselves silly over how awesome Spurs DoF setup was, getting all these fantastic players in, while taking the piss out of Arsenal and the autocratic Wenger's inaction. Look how that appears to be ending up, with Mini Shitcoat being criticised for how he's playing (or not playing at all) and integrating "his" signings when he probably had no input into them in the first place, while strangely enough the team over which their manager has been able to make select additions with his way of playing in mind is actually doing quite well. Regardless of the inevitable springtime bottling for the Arse I know which position I'd rather be in right now.

 

I'm far from anti-Rodgers (regardless of the Hull abortion we're still having our best season since 2008-9), but if he's been poor in the transfer market, then that's his fault and he needs to do better, if I do shit at my job then my boss won't hire someone between us to "direct" me, he'll tell me to do better next time or I get the sack.

 

Don't get the stability argument either, as if your DoF is shit you have to replace him too (like Comolli), or give him immunity and make the "head coach" the fall guy - in other words all the control with none of the accountability.

 

Pound-for-pound I think Swansea have the right idea - let the manager get on with it, and when you need to replace him, deliberately get a guy with a similar style and way of playing so the transition is as smooth as possible and you don't need to tear up the squad. Admittedly they've lost every manager from Martinez onwards due to being poached for being good, rather than sacked for being shit, so they've never had to make an appointment to firefight or steady the ship, but still.

[xerxes]

We don't need a DoF, they're just as likely to make the same mistakes as Rodgers or anyone else.

 

We need CL football, and then we need to buy the players that our 'elite' scouting team recommends.

The DOF is not supposed to be replicating the manager’s job, therefore the same mistakes should not be made, that is the point of the role.

 

Rodgers is doing a very good job, but his relative inexperience, and the comparative inexperience of the team around him, create vulnerability.

 

The nature of a manger’s judgement is short term, it has to be, five losses and you are out. An experienced DOF looks beyond that to ensure the purchasing policy of the club is on track. It makes sense. The average life of a football manager is less than two years, most contracts to players are three to four years.

 

A DOF in itself guarantees nothing ( Baldini at Spurs). But in any business, paying for the best quality “buyer” predicates the purchases themselves.

 

Chelsea, Arsenal, Man City and Man U can pay better wages and offer CL football than us currently. That means that we have to take a chance that they have overlooked a CL calibre player, AND get it right, to prosper, whilst the aforementioned can afford to get some wrong.

 

The circumstances of Borrell’s departure remain a mystery, I hope they were not the result of power-plays that a DOF should be able to head off.

 

No-one doubts that “we need CL football”, what is in question is how you go about that, and the purchasing process goes beyond swallowing what our “elite scouting team recommends”. Are they scouting for the right players, in the right positions in the right places with a realistic chance of them coming? That is where experience can tell.

[The Guest]

The DOF thing is fucking stupid and always has been.

 

Let's bring someone in to tell Rodgers where he's going right and wrong.  Well if he knows more than Rodgers why isn't he the manager?

 

Rodgers is either good enough to manage us or he isn't.  No manager is perfect and will make mistakes.  How do you know this DOF wouldn't have seen through the stupidity of us signing Coutinho and Sturridge?  How do you know he wouldn't have sanctioned another Andy Carroll.  It's fucking daft and all it does is blur the lines.  There are still people who will argue today over who's fault it was to waste money on Carroll and Downing.

 

Rodgers is responsible, he will live or die by the decisions he makes and that's the way it should be.  We could easily be sitting here with a retired Carragher, a crocked Agger and an underperforming Skrtel.  He signed Toure because he's experienced and can still play at this level.  In the summer people were whinging it wasn't enough and they were probably right,  He went out and signed a young first choice centre half for big money and he looks a very good prospect.

 

Now all of them are fit people are whinging.  He can't win.

 

He's made some bad signings I think we can all see that but hiring a DOF is not going to fix that.  Opinions on players are just that.  You have no idea whether Van Gaal or any other would be able to know what Rodgers feels like he needs for his team.

[Gnasher]

Pretty much word for word my feelings on the subject.

 

I remember in the summer everyone in the media wanking themselves silly over how awesome Spurs DoF setup was, getting all these fantastic players in, while taking the piss out of Arsenal and the autocratic Wenger's inaction. Look how that appears to be ending up, with Mini Shitcoat being criticised for how he's playing (or not playing at all) and integrating "his" signings when he probably had no input into them in the first place, while strangely enough the team over which their manager has been able to make select additions with his way of playing in mind is actually doing quite well. Regardless of the inevitable springtime bottling for the Arse I know which position I'd rather be in right now.

 

I'm far from anti-Rodgers (regardless of the Hull abortion we're still having our best season since 2008-9), but if he's been poor in the transfer market, then that's his fault and he needs to do better, if I do shit at my job then my boss won't hire someone between us to "direct" me, he'll tell me to do better next time or I get the sack.

 

Don't get the stability argument either, as if your DoF is shit you have to replace him too (like Comolli), or give him immunity and make the "head coach" the fall guy - in other words all the control with none of the accountability.

 

Pound-for-pound I think Swansea have the right idea - let the manager get on with it, and when you need to replace him, deliberately get a guy with a similar style and way of playing so the transition is as smooth as possible and you don't need to tear up the squad. Admittedly they've lost every manager from Martinez onwards due to being poached for being good, rather than sacked for being shit, so they've never had to make an appointment to firefight or steady the ship, but still.

Liverpool is a zillion times bigger job than swansea, and Swansea have kept Alan Curtis and John Toshack at the hub of the club, good experienced football men.

 

There are not enough football men involved with the club, until its sorted i can only see Rodgers struggling, good young manager but it could become his undoing. Who's he got? Tom Wernar, Ian Ayre and Colin Pascoe.

 

The last time we won the league Kenny had Ronnie Moran and Roy Evans. Bob Paisley was always on hand with a bit of advice and Kenny was clever enough to use it.

[Major Tom]

The knives are out for Rodgers straight away.

 

Fans.

[Dr. J]

 

"There's no doubt the quality in our squad, with all due respect, isn't big enough to cope with two big players like that missing," he said. "We still have some very good players. Daniel could be out for up to eight weeks. Philippe [Coutinho] hasn't trained all week, he has a high ankle strain and had some injections to get on the bench. He did very well to get on the field.

 

Rodgers doesn't help himself when he makes comments like this. From the managerial side, we did well enough without Suarez for 5 games at the start and the same with Coutinho. From the DOF side, why the fuck did he send out one striker and a capable playmaker out on loan?

 

It's the poor workmen who blames his tools, especially when he's the one that chose them.

[Gnasher]

On a lighter note, speaking of toshack, anyone remember when he brought out a book of poems in the mid seventies called "oh gosh it's tosh"?

 

One reviewer called it the worst book he'd ever read. These arty farty literary experts don't have a clue, its a classic,

 

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/anfield-poetry-load-tosh-3519598

[Gnasher]

The knives are out for Rodgers straight away.

 

Fans.

I hope not, i think he's got a lot still to offer the club.

 

Nothing wrong with having a cold hard look at the structure of the club. You don't have to call it director of football if it upsets the manager, head of academy or transfer analyst or some other such title maybe? Or some other bollocks title.

 

If we've got Ian Arye cruising around barcalona on a Harley Davidson we'll continue to try papering over the cracks. We'll continue to have an acadamy producing fuck all, and a muddled transfer policy where three centre half's arrive in one window when one would've been adequate. It's not good enough.

[Boss]

No strategy, it's all over the place. One week it's 5-3-2 the next it's 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, no consistency in personnel either. Players being asked to play everywhere, centre backs as wingbacks (Sakho, Toure), Flanaghan as a LB,  Moses central, then on the left or right, Sterling as a RB, a different centre back pairing every game.

 

We need better cover for LB and RB and we need to sell a centre back or two in January. We need to stick to one system, if it's possession fine, play Allen instead of Henderson, play Alberto more often. Decide on a back four and stick to it for the rest of the season and we'll get somewhere.

[Liverpool lad]

We need Rafa back

[Gnasher]

Instead of appointing a physio we should employ a physio and a director of physiotherapy to tell him how to be a physio.

That's not far off what we've got now with our transfer strategy,

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/10489838/Liverpool-manager-Brendan-Rodgerss-signings-in-spotlight-again-following-defeat-at-Hull-City.html

[gkmacca]

On a lighter note, speaking of toshack, anyone remember when he brought out a book of poems in the mid seventies called "oh gosh it's tosh"?

 

 

 

 

A collector's item,now, and rightly so:

 

"We're coming in to land at Speke, 

My legs are feeling very weak. 

We've just returned from Barcelona, 

And now I'm going for a sauna."

 

Apparently he and Joe Fagan got into a furious argument over that last rhyme and had to be pulled apart by Bob Paiisley before they came to blows.

[stringvest]

someone rep gkmacca for that.

 

If FSG were to go out for a DoF, they'd be suckered in by the next snake-oil salesman that sees a quick buck.  Commolli was always going to end in tears; the man's a fraud.  My strong concern is they'd be hoodwinked again.  

[Section_31]

Experienced football administrator, experienced manager, proven players - simple stuff.

[stringvest]

They've failed at three out of three so far. Maybe they're taking time to reflect.

[s(k)aturation]

A collector's item,now, and rightly so:

 

"We're coming in to land at Speke, 

My legs are feeling very weak. 

We've just returned from Barcelona, 

And now I'm going for a sauna."

 

Apparently he and Joe Fagan got into a furious argument over that last rhyme and had to be pulled apart by Bob Paiisley before they came to blows.

 

That it technically didn't rhyme?