Directors Of Football

[City Ben]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/nov/10/premier-league-management-director-of-football?CMP=twt_gu&CMP=EMCFTBEML853

 

Just read this fairly interesting article about DoFs. Made a lot of sense to me - what's the view on here? This doesn't have to be a thread about Keith Burt, more the principle of the structure which our board has put in place. 

 

If I think about this from a business perspective, I can't imagine many situations whereby a huge number of diverse work streams would be micro-managed by one guy at the top. It's too much to expect of someone. You can't be in charge of finance, new product development, and marketing for example. Not feasible. You have a CEO to oversee all of this, who appoints heads of each area. And the same is true of a football club. The first team is just one part of the overall requirements. OK it's the thing the whole organisation should be aiming to improve - but the person running it needs different skills to whoever is running U-15 coaching or recruitment or contract renegotiation. For me, this makes complete sense.

 

Interesting also that we decided to make the move to DoF at the same time as we changed manager, much in line with the recommendation in the article. 

[steveybadger]

Yep, interesting. As you say the key is not to impose the system on the existing manager. Plus the way transfers are conducted was interesting - reminds of Lyon in France who used 7 people to discuss and agree transfer buys, rather than leaving it to the manager. Thinking being that if the majority agree on the target it's better than one person choosing as that person could be a poor judge. Their record over a number of years suggests it works.