Director of Football?

boo3000

Hi all, Im a spurs fan for years nd just came across this. Anywho, does anyone here think we should bring back a director of football with a new manager. I don't know how much the previous guys did but certainly during the time before Harry we brought in a huge amount of young talent and found some real gems.

Sugarlumps

Dear God...........NO

Hatch99

boo3000 wrote: »

Hi all, Im a spurs fan for years nd just came across this. Anywho, does anyone here think we should bring back a director of football with a new manager. I don't know how much the previous guys did but certainly during the time before Harry we brought in a huge amount of young talent and found some real gems.

I'd rather manager had full control, not sure Levy agrees though.

boo3000

There seems to be a certain amount of speculation in the UK that Spurs might be getting a director of football again, Damian Comelli and Tim Sherwood mentioned. I think it's a good idea in theory, esp since managers seem to have a shorter and shorter shelf life there's less incentive for them to look at the long term needs of the club.

yiddo59

Topspurs Jim Duggan on a Director of Football

17th June 2012 – Regression by committee

The news of Redknapp’s dismissal did not come as a total shock but it wrong footed me enough to forget to mention the director of football system.
After a decade of shambles ending with Spurs rooted to the bottom of the league with doughnuts like Pleat and Comoli being a nuisance to the managers in that time, surely the appointment of a very successful Redknapp working in a conventional way put all that **** to bed

Apparently not. **** my old boots.

Anyone can make a mistake but the definition of an idiot is someone who repeats that mistake

And ****ing Sherwood as Director of Football

I’d like to be optimistic, but if the rumours of Spurs going back to the Director of Football system/Levy more hands on - Spurs are on the way down.

Whether it was Redknapp or someone else is in charge at the start of next season, its going to be a struggle to get that thin squad to match the achievement of last season. Ledley, bless him, seems to have finally gone, Bale and Modric are looking elsewhere and the forwards look pretty thin on the ground. And Spurs plan to address this by going back to a system that has not worked and will not work. Everything is pointing one way, and Yazz aint singing. And if there are funds to spend this summer – net funds not just sale proceeds – and they were denied Redknapp in January to allow a director of football/Coach/Levy to spend them in the summer ... its almost too sad to contemplate

There were times last season when fans seemed to be getting very used to being in the elite, like it was somehow Spurs right and not a brief rise out of a majority of mediocrity through hardwork and talent. Successful clubs keep doing the right things and unsuccessful don’t. Just how far are we away from falling into shambles like Liverpool, or falling back to nothingness like Everton or Villa. Even with everything in place, Spurs financial backing is unlikely to get much higher than 4th/5th given the financial resources of rivals.

Levy’s tenure at Spurs has little to recommend it apart from the success on the pitch between 09-12 under Redknapp as manager/no director of football … a time where he took a back seat and prevaricated over developing a new stadium, a project which has entered its 10th year without a brick being laid. The rest of it has been pretty poor. Santini, Comolli, waiting to the last minute of the last day to sell Berbatov (and get Fraser Campbell), Rasiak and Pleat as manager during 2003/4 which is the lowest point in the clubs recent history.

Take away the good years of Redknapp and it starts to look pretty thin. The successes – Jol, a lucky appointment after taking 9 months to appoint Santini and Redknapp gone to in extremis after his disastrous interference – have both been sacrificed to his better judgement when he thought he knew best.

I watched the Wicker Man the other day and the scene at the end where Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie looks across at Christopher Lee’s Lord SummerIsle and says “ your crops failed because they cant grow in this environment. Even if you sacrifice me, they will fail again next year and then the only sacrifice the gods will accept will be Lord SummerIsle himself”
Levy has sacrificed yet another manager and in trying to implement a failed Director of Football arrangement, is trying to get crops to grow outside nature. If he screws up this time, will he finally accept some responsibility and walk the plank – or will another manager go up in flames as Lord SummerIsle sings madly on. Remember 4th & 69 points is a sackable offence.

As for the managers mentioned...
AVB fits very nicely into the Levy system. Young, worked under DoF and desperate to get another chance and given his record at Porto may have something to offer. However, with any sort of pressure on how much weight will his team talks carry with his Chelsea failure fresh in the mind.
Martinez is just some sick joke who you would not even wish on West Ham
Moyes does not do a lot for me in terms of setting the imagination racing but am starting to come round a little to his pragmatism, experience and ability, every now and then, to get Everton to out perform their budget. In someways he represents the safest pair of hands but then again he’s done less at Everton than Redknapp did at Pompey and there is not a strong case for bobbing Redknapp for him. Also has the common sense to want work away from the DoF system
Capello. He would be a fine choice having experience of the EPL as well as a fine CV of success. The only worry with him would be the hunger to keep winning in his most challenging role outside managing the best club in the league
Blanc Success at Bordeaux and the international team make him a high quality candidate but that controversy over quotas taints him a little.
Poyet. May not be the most obvious candidate but a strong character who has done a great job at Brighton and knows Spurs very well. It would be a massive gamble but he definitely has the potential to be great manager and possibly a silver lining to this whole mess
Mouninho or Pep. Unconditionally Yes but they wont come

If they are insistent on a director of football and all its nonsense, AVB seems the best fit. If they want to build on the platform Redknapp has left them, not cos I want him but cos he’s most likely available, Moyes should be the choice. But do either of them or any of the others really give you more confidence than Redknapp?

As ever the Betfair manager market is the best place to get the real feel for whats going on rather than a load of vain phoney ITKs
http://sports.betfair.com/football/market?id=1.105931046 esp if my old mate is betting again ‘-)


The press reaction to the Redknapp sacking has been fairly predictable. Redknapp has a lot of friends in the tabloids which have come out in favour of him, irrespective of the common weight of opinion supporting his case – while some of the broadsheets have been briefed by the Spurs press office ‘daniel levy did not go into that meeting to sack Redknapp … ‘ trying to repaint Levy as some sort of victim have been equally partisan

The two I have chosen to link here are from award winning journo David Conn … “Delusions of grandeur haunt the men running Tottenham Hotspur
Sacking Harry Redknapp will not solve Spurs' pressing need to generate enough revenue to compete with the elite”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jun/16/tottenham-hotspur-delusions-grandeur?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Ffootball%2Frss+%28Football%29

and an Arsenal fan on his blog
http://www.arsenalinsider.com/6717/spurs-shoot-themselves-in-the-foot/?#axzz1y30obr00

Both contain simple home truths which make awkward reading for those looking to be optimistic about Spurs future. Perhaps the fans will have more than just the manager not referring to the club the first person to outrage them next season


And finally, I thought it would be interesting to visit the topspurs editorial from the time of the last shambolic sacking. To put it in context, in 2007 they had sacked Jol at half time two good seasons and almost exactly a year later they sacked the whole of the new coaching staff just a year on – with Levy blaming everyone else and Spurs in a total shambles at the bottom of the league

http://web.archive.org/web/20090120124417/http://www.topspurs.com/jmdview.htm (scroll down to 26th October 2008 – Whatever happened to Tottenham Hotspur. There have been some gorblimey moments following Spurs ….

You’ll see a number of recurring of themes, not least – why does Levy not come out and speak to someone outside his payroll. If he has the confidence in his vision, it would be a great way to get that across to the fans. Has anyone ever heard Levy speak? Or is it that there is no justification in his actions or worth to his vision?

Here is what he dictated to the Spurs website the during the last crisis on the sacking of Ramos/appointment of Redknapp – when for once expediency overcame dogma
http://web.archive.org/web/20090627112018/http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/articles/openletterfromthechairmandaniellevy261008.html

Here are some selected quotes:
In Harry, we are also accepting with his appointment that now is the right time for us to move back to a more traditional style of football management at our Club, one which we believe will be capable of initiating our climb back up the Premier League table and to maintaining our challenge in the UEFA, Carling and FA Cup competitions.


Not even a mention of the Champions League at that desperate moment – and yet this manager and this manager system outperformed all expectations at that dark hour.

And …
Quite simply, we failed because we were not as decisive or as successful in identifying or replacing the two strikers as early as we should have been.


With this weakness identified, surely Spurs fans can expect their esteemed leaders to do business – whether selling Bale/Modric early and buying players to strengthen the squad early rather than panic buys on the last day. How confident are you that this is going to happen?

Look out for more cobblers ‘youth’ & ‘planning for some future’ when all that really matters is the next match as there is no point planning more than a seasons given the nature of player contracts/average length of stay of top players.


As ever when pessimism reigns, I hope I am wrong but it’s all starting to point to another very Spurs shambles

mushykeogh

^^^^ that article doesnt make for pretty reading. Granted, its just one persons opinion but i would go along with it.

So after 25 years as a spurs fan, here (on past experience) is what will happen next:

AVB will probably be manager, we will have a director of football. We will be linked with 30 mill bids to everyone under the sun and buy no one of worth (except the next Zidane, Messi or Gazza ala Tarabt,Dos Santos or Bostock).
A season of floundering, talks of building for the future followed by a new manager within 18 months.

Then we can talk about how we are only 3 top players short of being genuine title contenders and how moving into the new stadium will magically make us compete with the rich clubs.

in true Tottenham fashion, the self destruct button has been pushed. 4th and 69 points?, ah, they were the days.

boo3000

There's a thorough rebuttal if ever i saw one! I don't know, personally i think there is still an argument to be made for a director of football, just because it might not have worked in the past doesn't mean it won't work in the future and i think a lot of the problems we had before Harry came in were down to Ramos, more so than a dof system, granted Damien Comelli didn't cover himself in glory at liverpool. I still think we brought in a lot of young talent over the past few years and for every Dos Santos/Tarabt there's a Bale, Huddlestone, Walker, BAE, Kaboul, Sandro etc.
I remember watching the premiership when Modric came in and things were going bad and he was being used as an example of the poor quality player to come from doF, as he was clearly too lightweight to cut it in the Premiership.

yiddo59

boo3000 wrote: »

There's a thorough rebuttal if ever i saw one! I don't know, personally i think there is still an argument to be made for a director of football, just because it might not have worked in the past doesn't mean it won't work in the future and i think a lot of the problems we had before Harry came in were down to Ramos, more so than a dof system, granted Damien Comelli didn't cover himself in glory at liverpool. I still think we brought in a lot of young talent over the past few years and for every Dos Santos/Tarabt there's a Bale, Huddlestone, Walker, BAE, Kaboul, Sandro etc.
I remember watching the premiership when Modric came in and things were going bad and he was being used as an example of the poor quality player to come from doF, as he was clearly too lightweight to cut it in the Premiership.

You forgot Commollis greatest ever signing Ghaly

Hatch99

yiddo59 wrote: »

You forgot Commollis greatest ever signing Ghaly

some boyo

yiddo59

I lost faith in Ghaly when I heard Comolli had been watching him for 4 years before we signed him

Hatch99

'Think' he was responsible for Bentley too, another who gives me sleepless nights. We slipped up with Boateng, easy to say now I suppose.

yiddo59

Hatch99 wrote: »

'Think' he was responsible for Bentley too, another who gives me sleepless nights. We slipped up with Boateng, easy to say now I suppose.

Really? Where would he fit in? Dunno if he's all that and certainly wasnt worth what we Paid for hm at the time.

Hatch99

yiddo59 wrote: »

Really? Where would he fit in? Dunno if he's all that and certainly wasnt worth what we Paid for hm at the time.

Depends what way you play, probably more suited to playing 3 in the middle, which is what I think milan played this season. Young and crazy while we had him I think.

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

I don't regret moving on KPB myself, when he was with us he didn't really impress and even the past season he wouldn't have been first choice, if Modric moves on though he could have been really valuable to us, but that would have involved him being on our bench for the past 3 seasons, which I doubt he would have been happy with. Don't forget we have Thudd still waiting to come back, hopefully he'll be playing a lot more next season, he was great the season we got fourth, scored some important goals and I don't think anyone will forget his thunderbolt vs Bolton at home.

boo3000

I think since Levy's come in we've had a policy of (mostly) buying young or relatively unknown players and this has paid off in terms of a great squad without such a huge outlay, of course there's been duds like Ghaly but for every dud i think there's been a gem and the costs been low. I think it's the way to go for a club like spurs and if it involves a dof in some role, so be it. I don't think Harry was ever very concerned with the long term development of the club which is something we have to keep an eye on at spurs.

nbar12

I know im going off the point of a director of football, which I think is not the greatest decision ever made. Anyway I was just wondering who would you's like to see manage Spurs? At first I was all about AVB being in charge with Spurs but now im warming towards Blanc but I dont know why!? Who would you's like to see take charge?

T-b0n3

nbar12 wrote: »

I know im going off the point of a director of football, which I think is not the greatest decision ever made. Anyway I was just wondering who would you's like to see manage Spurs? At first I was all about AVB being in charge with Spurs but now im warming towards Blanc but I dont know why!? Who would you's like to see take charge?

There is a thread here about all the manager talk and who we want etc.

nbar12

T-b0n3 wrote: »

There is a thread here about all the manager talk and who we want etc.

cheers mate, im new to this so dont know how to find anything!