Our club is inherently broken, but current on-pitch issues are distracting from the bigger picture.

[Carlton Blade]

Broken is a euphemism for not minted.
But the DoF will magically sort that

I don't understand your point of view on this. It seems to be "we don't have much cash so let's do nothing to maximize the value of what we do have by employing people who know how to make that cash go further"

 

[Danetheblade]

I don’t see the plan. Just adding a DoF is a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

The plan is set a DOF on, the DOF then finds candidates suited for the other roles that are needed. It’s pretty evident the board haven’t got a clue when it comes to what’s required.

 

[Upton_Blade]

I don’t see the plan. Just adding a DoF is a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

You're contradicting yourself here. You've quoted Roygbiv post about the structure at Sunderland. I don't know for a fact but I'd hazard a guess that the DOF was the 1st through the door and then set about getting the right people for all the other roles.

Not one person is suggesting we just employ a DOF and no one else but if the DOF isn't the 1st through the door to then facilitate the uplift in staff and roles then who does?

Whether you agree or not the DOF role, or whatever version of the same role, oversees the entire football function bar coaching the 1st team so it makes sense for him to get the people he thinks best in the various roles behind the scenes.

 

[Keen Blade]

The owners are expert business men, they will have a short term, medium term and long term strategy.
The appointment of Selles proves this but they wanted to run before they could walk…..introduced change too quickly and it backfired
But thankfully they’ve realised their error and took the brave decision to going back to the system they know works in the short term.
However as mentioned its like putting a sticky plaster over a wound…..it deals with the situation for this season but doesn’t really lay foundations for the future.

To be honest a lot of the problem is fan expectation and pressure.
People talk about medium and long term but I’d say over 80% couldn’t care about our long term future….they only care about this season (short termism).

So many of our fans say they don’t care about our style of play, don’t care about entertainment…for them it’s win at any cost.
It’s more difficult to build for the future with that fan mentality?

Think part of the problem in Sheffield is Unitedites (and most Sheffielders in general) are generally a negative doom and gloom bunch who hate ambition and change.
And it doesn’t help when you have plenty of Wednesday fans pretending to be Blades trying to turn anything positive into a negative.

So it's the fans fault that the club has mis-spent £400m in 6 years ?
Gimme a break.
The figures show that SUFC is an incompetently run business.
The fans have no involvement in setting the woeful structure or recruitment.
Look at that Mackems structure mentioned above and think what Bettis is supposed to shoulder on his own.
It's risible.
A £400m business run for remote foreign owners & board members (under both the Prince & CoH) by an inadequate local duo with no hope of being a PL club despite the claimed aspirations of the owners.
Inspiring the dreams of fans and then shattering them with 2 abject relegations and finishing up in another relegation battle to avoid L1.
With a demoralised and disjointed squad thrown together in a mad panic.
Embarrassing really.

 

[Kenilworth]

It is if we stop there. What a DoF does though, and this is echoing what has been said to you a lot on this thread, is set the agenda and strategy for the club from top to bottom, identifying the gaps and filling them as appropriate.

If the alternatives are Chris Wilder trying to do everything or a DoF taking the reins for everything above the first team then I know what I’d prefer.

I get that. We are no where near that. COH need to sort it out and have a plan. Like SwissBlade says, no one has seen what the plan is. They are silent. That’s what draws the speculation.
All it is is idle speculation about a DOF without the slightest clue of how that pans out in reality. What is clear is that such a change is a huge investment and there are no signs at all that this is the direction the COH fellers wish to travel towards. So far, all they have done is sack Wilder, appoint the rookie Selles without any consideration of what that entails, fuck up the recruitment, panic buy a load of dross at the end of the tranny window, sack Selles cos he was shite and they didn’t have a clue what they were doing, appoint Wilder again as an admission of how clueless they are about English football, hide from the consequences and we still don’t know what the fuck they are planning to do.
It’s a cluster fuck of almost Chanser proportions and all the sheep can do is laud the advent of a DoF as though that solves everything in a heartbeat.

It’s laughable.

 

[Kenilworth]

You're contradicting yourself here. You've quoted Roygbiv post about the structure at Sunderland. I don't know for a fact but I'd hazard a guess that the DOF was the 1st through the door and then set about getting the right people for all the other roles.

Not one person is suggesting we just employ a DOF and no one else but if the DOF isn't the 1st through the door to then facilitate the uplift in staff and roles then who does?

Whether you agree or not the DOF role, or whatever version of the same role, oversees the entire football function bar coaching the 1st team so it makes sense for him to get the people he thinks best in the various roles behind the scenes.

Contradicted yourself.

“I'd hazard a guess that the DOF was the 1st through the door”

That’s pure speculation. The DoF is one cog in a wheel. It requires commitment to a long term plan, which in turn demands a plan on the first place. There is absolutely no sign of a plan. You are doing the same as everyone else. This magical DOF is a catalyst to all the change that is good in the world. In reality, if a DoF is appointed on their own it’s just another single point of failure in a line of epic fails.
It’s all too simplistic. Without a massive commitment to spend a huge amount of money on the changes to create the sort of infrastructure they implemented at Sunderland, as an example, there’s absolutely no point in changing from a manage led football club.

 

[Kenilworth]

I don't understand your point of view on this. It seems to be "we don't have much cash so let's do nothing to maximize the value of what we do have by employing people who know how to make that cash go further"

No. It’s quite simple. A DoF is. It in isolation without a plan and a lot of investment. If we have no plan then there is no investment. If there is no money there is no plan. Its impotence. It’s easy to comprehend. If there is money then where is the bloody plan?

 

[103SecondsOfMagic]

I still don’t get it.
Who?
Who is this mystery man?
A single man at the helm?
How is that different from a manager based club, now?
It makes no sense.
Why would that make any difference to a deaf and blind and inexperienced board of AI bot buddies?
You appear to be mesmerised by the DOF cult.

Where has it worked so miraculously without a massive parallel investment?

Did Bournemouth and Brighton and Brentford find a DOF and all of a sudden blossom as though Percy thrower added a tipple of miracle grow to a sad set of geraniums?

Given the level of our investment capacity and the board we have we’d be lucky to become a crap Watford mark 2. Always changing head coach, always wallowing in a mid table mediocrity mode. Zero identity and as bland as beige.

Like most modern, well run clubs Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth all have Directors of Football/Sporting Directors of some kind.

Brighton had Dan Ashworth followed by David Weir, Brentford has Phil Giles, Forest have Edu, Arsenal have Andrea Berta, Man Utd have Jason Wilcox etc etc.

We're lacking the continuity a DoF would bring across managerial changes. You can call it a Director of Infrastructure if you like, but as CarltonBlade pointed out, that would be the role of a DoF.

 

[Ned the Donkey]

I've seen various debates of late over certain things we should or shouldn't do. The primary topics being around whether Wilder should remain in place as manager, or if we should cast our net out for someone else, as well as whether we should change to playing 2 forwards.

While there is certainly merit to debating these topics, I think it misses the bigger picture. Which is that we currently look like a club that has zero clue of what it wants to be.

Over the last 15 years, we've made multiple attempts to break away from the pigeonhole we'd established for ourselves over multiple decades prior. The "Bladey Blade" method, of running harder, working harder, showing more "pashun" than the opponent. An approach which has occasionally borne fruit, but since the departure of a certain Mr Warnock, has only delivered success via Wilder and Hecky, a pair you can effectively view as master and disciple.

Now, if we look at the attempts to correct course, it becomes blatantly clear that there has always been a failure to truly commit to the alternate path:

2025: Hire Selles. A man with a significantly different tactical outlook to his predecessor. Club proceeds to recruit the bare minimum, until Selles throws the board under the bus in a press conference. After which we make a number of last ditch signings to bolster the squad. Poor performances, as a result of a combination of the above, plus a lack of uptake on Selles' strategies, result in his early departure. We re-hire Wilder and return to the status quo.

2021: Slav. A man with a significantly different tactical approach to his successor. Club proceeds to make zero recruitment (our only permanent signings were Adam Davies and Adlene Guedioura), and wonder why Slav was unable to get Wilder's many square pegs, to fit into 11 newly-rounded holes. The response is to dismiss Slav, and bring in mini-Wilder, and return to the status quo.

2015: Adkins. A man with a significantly different tactical approach to his successor. A true failure in all regards. We recruited badly, except for the re-signing of Billy Sharp. Adkins' past tactics that brought success at the likes of Scunthorpe and Southampton, were almost entirely absent. The board, in contrast to all other examples here, did actually give him time to turn things around. But it never came. Instead we held out to the end of our worst season in decades.

2013: Weir. A man with a significantly different tactical approach to his successor. The club did a few things right on this one. Brought in staff at Weir's behest. Separated the Assistant Manager role into tactics and fitness. Hired a number of players to be moulded around the centrepiece of Weir's tactic: Kevin MacDonald. Oh wait, what was that? A 200k release clause? Wolves are paying it? Oh, bugger. Well, here's Jose Baxter to make up for it. I know he's a totally different type of player, but you'll make it work, won't you? (Spoiler: He didn't make it work). Weir proceeds to flounder without a midfield maestro to build his team around, and we tumble down the league until he's dismissed, and replaced by Nigel "I need a right back" Clough.

The archaic approach of "Outrun. Outright. Outplay." isn't sustainable. We need a Director of Football. We need the club to have a focused tactical approach, at all levels, to ensure prolonged exposure to one method of playing for senior players, and an easier, less jarring path to the first team for youth prospects. We need a thoroughly defined recruitment strategy. At present, everything feels like we're throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks.

Regardless of where we end up this season, we need to be employing a long-term strategy for the club. We cannot carry on in this manner - making a half-arsed effort to set ourselves up for the future, only to bail on it immediately and go back to what we did before. It might take a bit of suffering to get there, but we're already suffering as it is. At least if we commit to change, the pain might become worth it.

Yes let's gentrify the club. It's far too vulgar.

 

[Balham]

Kenilworth that’s a big old post explaining that you’ve not read mine. Where do you propose we start modernising the structure if it with a DoF?

 

[Toto]

I've read most of this and my understanding of what you write is zero. I go down to watch my team play football, for that reason alone, it is my team. It's all bollocks the reason why but I went with my dad and have taken my kids, we all have a common cause. I'm 68 now and still get a thrill, having the same pint before the game with the same company with the familiarity of doing it in the place that I come from, my home town. That's it win or loose, like I said, I Still get a thrill and wouldn't change a thing (maybe swop Cannon for Marsh)!

 

[CornwallBlade]

I don’t have a problem with out run, out fight, out play.

But we’re doing none of those

This.
It’s not a unique, championship winning formula. It’s absolutely a fundamental, table stakes, requirement for a professional football club. Currently, we are lazy, unfit and uncommitted - that is a shocking indictment of the coaching, fitness and management teams, but mostly of the players themselves.
The reason BDTBL is regularly such a soulless place is, I suggest rooted in that.
You can postulate all you like on DOF’s tactics and recruitment but, without a set of players who can, and will, run themselves ragged for 90 mins, everything else is irrelevant.

 

[Edgar Allan Poo]

This.
It’s not a unique, championship winning formula. It’s absolutely a fundamental, table stakes, requirement for a professional football club. Currently, we are lazy, unfit and uncommitted - that is a shocking indictment of the coaching, fitness and management teams, but mostly of the players themselves.
The reason BDTBL is regularly such a soulless place is, I suggest rooted in that.
You can postulate all you like on DOF’s tactics and recruitment but, without a set of players who can, and will, run themselves ragged for 90 mins, everything else is irrelevant.

I just hope we pull it around and this current crop of players don't earn the title of 'The Unconvincibles.'

 

[SwissBlade]

Contradicted yourself.

“I'd hazard a guess that the DOF was the 1st through the door”

That’s pure speculation. The DoF is one cog in a wheel. It requires commitment to a long term plan, which in turn demands a plan on the first place. There is absolutely no sign of a plan. You are doing the same as everyone else. This magical DOF is a catalyst to all the change that is good in the world. In reality, if a DoF is appointed on their own it’s just another single point of failure in a line of epic fails.
It’s all too simplistic. Without a massive commitment to spend a huge amount of money on the changes to create the sort of infrastructure they implemented at Sunderland, as an example, there’s absolutely no point in changing from a manage led football club.

Lets also not forget that Sunderland spent several years being a laughing stock for how they managed to fuck themselves with bad decision after bad decision

They've managed to get up to the premier league with a lot of luck and having a good season which was way off the top 3 sides...

Whatever happens next i think we all agree that we need some sort of plans and actions from COH as they're hurtling towards a year at the helm of this car crash

 

[Kenilworth]

Kenilworth that’s a big old post explaining that you’ve not read mine. Where do you propose we start modernising the structure if it with a DoF?

I did.
Your point was a DOF above Wilder to take direction and some of the burden away for wilder to concentrate purely on the football team. Looks ideal on a napkin until you realise that it’s still a one man key dependency. A man with accountability but no authority. A man on a crusade without horses. That was my counterpoint. Without a long term plan of investment and change in the infrastructure, merely appointing a DOF above Wilder is really no different to adding another Bettis into the equation.

 

[Kenilworth]

Lets also not forget that Sunderland spent several years being a laughing stock for how they managed to fuck themselves with bad decision after bad decision

They've managed to get up to the premier league with a lot of luck and having a good season which was way off the top 3 sides...

Whatever happens next i think we all agree that we need some sort of plans and actions from COH as they're hurtling towards a year at the helm of this car crash

Exactly.
They were miles behind in 4th last season. Given up the ghost.
Had VAR not intervened on 30 minutes, their lovely infrastructure would have been completely impotent. They would have had to sell Bellingham and Watson anyway and start again this season.

 

[Bell4]

Which bit can’t you see working? I raised 4 points.

Warnock was just an example, to take infrastructure development away from the manager.

But otherwise I do agree that getting an amazing DoF is just as gilt edged as getting an amazing manager. My argument against DoF is that when results turn, who takes the blame? “You bought me shit players and my team underperformed”; the manager is entitled to say.

I just don’t think chasing some unobtainable style with our likely resources is the way to go.

We were good in 3-5-2 and overlapping centre backs. Just make that our thing and recruit to that. As ever it will be down to how well you recruit. But having that unique system as your thing removed one variable and simplifies recruitment.

I’d say Seriki and Burrows are well suited to it. Tanganga could well be a RCB. Maybe Zatterstrom too with Mee in the middle. Gus is an ideal Duffy. Perhaps Campbell and Ings up top. Davies as the Coutts and Arblaster as the Fleck when fit.

But like the remakes of Cape Fear and IT

 

[SwissBlade]

Exactly.
They were miles behind in 4th last season. Given up the ghost.
Had VAR not intervened on 30 minutes, their lovely infrastructure would have been completely impotent. They would have had to sell Bellingham and Watson anyway and start again this season.

But that did all happen and good luck to them, I don't confess to know what they have at Sunderland, but I guess it does mean that they are well prepared for the big time... Good for them.

I'm sure Brentford, Forest, West Ham, Burnley and Wolves, the current bottom five all have great infrastructure in place too

 

[Carlton Blade]

No. It’s quite simple. A DoF is. It in isolation without a plan and a lot of investment. If we have no plan then there is no investment. If there is no money there is no plan. Its impotence. It’s easy to comprehend. If there is money then where is the bloody plan?

The whole point of adding people to the management staff is to build plans and put them into action. I've never said "just hire 1 person to pick transfers and it's all fixed"

The point is to maximise what you have, not lament that you don't have more and refuse to make the most of it

 

[Carlton Blade]

This.
It’s not a unique, championship winning formula. It’s absolutely a fundamental, table stakes, requirement for a professional football club. Currently, we are lazy, unfit and uncommitted - that is a shocking indictment of the coaching, fitness and management teams, but mostly of the players themselves.
The reason BDTBL is regularly such a soulless place is, I suggest rooted in that.
You can postulate all you like on DOF’s tactics and recruitment but, without a set of players who can, and will, run themselves ragged for 90 mins, everything else is irrelevant.

So you're saying the club should have done a much better job selecting they types of players that 'fit' the clubs philosophy

 

[Carlton Blade]

Exactly.
They were miles behind in 4th last season. Given up the ghost.
Had VAR not intervened on 30 minutes, their lovely infrastructure would have been completely impotent. They would have had to sell Bellingham and Watson anyway and start again this season.

They were also much, much, much better placed to have handled the fall out from defeat than United have proven themselves to be. Because they planned past the end of their nose

 

[Revolution]

The structure is less important than using money wisely, or having money in the first place or, it appears, hiring a coach that knows what he's doing .

To look at the 4 examples given by the OP:

Weir: absolutely shocking manager, but this was in McCabe's "self-sustaining" period when he decided to scrimp and we ended up signing a load of talentless crap. The purse strings were loosened after Weir was fired, the Prince came on board and it was clear we would be in league 2 if Clough was not given some money.

Adkins: an appointment welcomed by many given his good track record but was given virtually nothing to spend: I think Sharp was his only cash signing. Stuck with a lot of crap and unmotivated players and signed some crap himself, and the club was resistant to the changes he had been brought in to make. His 40 per cent win ratio with us is, incredibly, better than anything he's managed since.

Jokanovic: a man very much on the downslope who wanted to play a style we couldn't with the squad we had, and having expressly asked for wingers we did not sign any. We had a very good squad and Slav could not get them to play consistently. Luckily Hecky could.

Selles: an utter disaster of a manager with no idea about tactics or squad building. The club's transfer activity this summer did not help. We did not spend money until it was far, far too late, used the loan market terribly, and when we spent money we spent it on crap, by and large.

A DOF or any structure is not very relevant when you pick a manager on the downslope, or you don't put the money in.

The roots of our problems are:

Idiot owners
Really poor choice of manager
not spending money

A DOF may not cure any of those problems.

 

[Carlton Blade]

The structure is less important than using money wisely, or having money in the first place or, it appears, hiring a coach that knows what he's doing .

To look at the 4 examples given by the OP:

Weir: absolutely shocking manager, but this was in McCabe's "self-sustaining" period when he decided to scrimp and we ended up signing a load of talentless crap. The purse strings were loosened after Weir was fired, the Prince came on board and it was clear we would be in league 2 if Clough was not given some money.

Adkins: an appointment welcomed by many given his good track record but was given virtually nothing to spend: I think Sharp was his only cash signing. Stuck with a lot of crap and unmotivated players and signed some crap himself, and the club was resistant to the changes he had been brought in to make. His 40 per cent win ratio with us is, incredibly, better than anything he's managed since.

Jokanovic: a man very much on the downslope who wanted to play a style we couldn't with the squad we had, and having expressly asked for wingers we did not sign any. We had a very good squad and Slav could not get them to play consistently. Luckily Hecky could.

Selles: an utter disaster of a manager with no idea about tactics or squad building. The club's transfer activity this summer did not help. We did not spend money until it was far, far too late, used the loan market terribly, and when we spent money we spent it on crap, by and large.

A DOF or any structure is not very relevant when you pick a manager on the downslope, or you don't put the money in.

The roots of our problems are:

Idiot owners
Really poor choice of manager
not spending money

A DOF may not cure any of those problems.

Any business that relies on overworked or underqualified staff to make decisions will get a much worse return on the money they have

 

[Rodley]

Yeah I think thats fair, but the drop off was so fast in that COVID season that they perhaps didn't have time to do anything other than react to a changing situation. Thats not making any excuses, just the reality of how things were

The Covid season was the one where as a club we should have pushed the boat out and brought in 5-6 quality additions and invested in all the off-the-field infrastructure. But the Ownership simply didn’t have the resources to do so.

That was the sliding doors moment for the club. Finishing 9th was finally a bit of a toehold which we’d waited for for 30+ years.

 

[Revolution]

The Covid season was the one where as a club we should have pushed the boat out and brought in 5-6 quality additions and invested in all the off-the-field infrastructure. But the Ownership simply didn’t have the resources to do so.

That was the sliding doors moment for the club. Finishing 9th was finally a bit of a toehold which we’d waited for for 30+ years.

Wilder said at the time that the club was really surprised with how much everyone else spent in the summer of 2020. Having made a big profit in 2020 (the largest in European football) we were well placed to spend some money, but as is well documented we got blown out of the water on some transfer targets.

Plus of course the transfer business we did do was almost uniformly awful.

 

[Champagneblade]

The structure is less important than using money wisely, or having money in the first place or, it appears, hiring a coach that knows what he's doing .

To look at the 4 examples given by the OP:

Weir: absolutely shocking manager, but this was in McCabe's "self-sustaining" period when he decided to scrimp and we ended up signing a load of talentless crap. The purse strings were loosened after Weir was fired, the Prince came on board and it was clear we would be in league 2 if Clough was not given some money.

Adkins: an appointment welcomed by many given his good track record but was given virtually nothing to spend: I think Sharp was his only cash signing. Stuck with a lot of crap and unmotivated players and signed some crap himself, and the club was resistant to the changes he had been brought in to make. His 40 per cent win ratio with us is, incredibly, better than anything he's managed since.

Jokanovic: a man very much on the downslope who wanted to play a style we couldn't with the squad we had, and having expressly asked for wingers we did not sign any. We had a very good squad and Slav could not get them to play consistently. Luckily Hecky could.

Selles: an utter disaster of a manager with no idea about tactics or squad building. The club's transfer activity this summer did not help. We did not spend money until it was far, far too late, used the loan market terribly, and when we spent money we spent it on crap, by and large.

A DOF or any structure is not very relevant when you pick a manager on the downslope, or you don't put the money in.

The roots of our problems are:

Idiot owners
Really poor choice of manager
not spending money

A DOF may not cure any of those problems.

The fish rots from the head.

If you have clueless owners with no strategy or a strategy they don’t know how to execute or fund, then it’s very difficult for the other components, be that DoF or Manager, to overcome.

 

[Revolution]

The fish rots from the head.

If you have clueless owners with no strategy or a strategy they don’t know how to execute or fund, then it’s very difficult for the other components, be that DoF or Manager, to overcome.

It can be done despite, rather than because of the owners (eg Dave Bassett's success) but it is very, very difficult, and much harder than it was in Bassett's time.

 

[dingledog]

I thought I had arrived in a parallel universe here. A good read of well argued points and counter points, also a lot of 'pashun'. But I'm left thinking I am non the wiser really. Surely the issues have all come back to money, who has the money, how they choose to spend their money, what advice they have sought in spending their money. Unfortunately for those of us who are poor addicted supporters and had no choice in becoming a Blade for life (I blame my Dad) we don't appear to have the money and so in reality have little influence on the money department. Yes we can throw our shoes in the car park, we can express our views on forums or in song at games and this might just help influence the money men a little as it may impact on their potential returns.

 

[dexter101]

I did.
Your point was a DOF above Wilder to take direction and some of the burden away for wilder to concentrate purely on the football team. Looks ideal on a napkin until you realise that it’s still a one man key dependency. A man with accountability but no authority. A man on a crusade without horses. That was my counterpoint. Without a long term plan of investment and change in the infrastructure, merely appointing a DOF above Wilder is really no different to adding another Bettis into the equation.

I get your point, because I was thinking a DOF as being Wilder without the day to day bits so what difference would it make currently.

I am now seeing it as splitting Bettis's role. He runs the business, someone to make football decisions.

A good example of where this would make a difference this summer is who hires the manager. currently we have a Marvel director, a poker player and 2 business men dictating who manages the team. Clearly with the planning and appointment of Selles, their footballing decisions are off.

Say they want to invest in the academy, who is going to drive that project? a DOF would have football know how to bring together that.

Its not a magic fix all, but its someone at the very top who understands the game of football and can support/hold to account the manager.

I actually think bringing in a Bladey Blade DOF would work well. someone who understands football, understands the club and can help the board set out a long term football strategy that works along side what ever long term business strategy they have.

This isn't me moaning about the americans either. They need someone at their level to tell them "thats a stupid idea" which the manager probably no longer has the clout to do.

 

[Balham]

I did.
Your point was a DOF above Wilder to take direction and some of the burden away for wilder to concentrate purely on the football team. Looks ideal on a napkin until you realise that it’s still a one man key dependency. A man with accountability but no authority. A man on a crusade without horses. That was my counterpoint. Without a long term plan of investment and change in the infrastructure, merely appointing a DOF above Wilder is really no different to adding another Bettis into the equation.

At the risk of repeating myself, I'm not suggesting appointing one person and leaving it at that. I'm suggesting that the modernisation of our off-field structure should start with that appointment.

The problem is that adding in the headcount and infrastructure will probably cost £3-5m per year and we'd rather spend that on a shit striker who the manager was desperate to sign.