I’m not a fan of the DOF model so I’m no doubt biased but for me we are still team around 8-10 and we have a bloated squad of average players, he hasn’t been able to get rid of players which he was supposed to do. For me he’s not been particularly successful.
I think his job will a lot more difficult now as there will be a lot less money floating around and we still have far too many players we don’t need, hopefully he can now show why people rate him.
Id imagine the DOF role is also incorporating parts of the game that have probably absolutely ballooned over the last two decades or so. Scouting for example was probably a few of the managers mates at matches round the country ringing up the manager ‘got a player here Davey’ they’d go and have a look together and then a deal was done or not. The academy was probably a few coaches giving kids a game and training and occasionally going ‘hey Davey there’s a good young lad called Rooney coming through take a look’. In short a manager like Moyes could pretty much do everything on the football side of the club. He’d ask for money for a player and Kenwright told him yes or no, that was it.
Now scouting is a global affair with an intense market place over players who are multi million pound assets even from the age of about 15. Do you think Carlo has time to be managing all of that? An entire network of scouts, prospect profiles, game footage etc.
Then there’s the academy. Each player now needs individual management, loan deals arranging, pathways, exit plans etc. Has Carlo got time to coordinate all of this?
Conteact negotiations with players, their agents, their sponsors, new signings, etc. Has Carlo got time to be doing all of this?
Managers now have to focus on managing the first team squad, coaching the players, and weighing in on transfers (what type of player, help create t e short list etc.). Not to mention huge amounts of media duties. Everything else has to be covered by someone and the coordinator of that entire network of football operations is Brands.
So I just don’t understand it when people say we don’t need Brands. Every single club has a person for this role now. It might not be a DOF, could be technical director, head of footballing operations. Whatever it is everyone has got one. So why do people want to take us back to a dinosaur era where the manager basically did everything. Moyes just about got away with it because he was right at the end of the era before technology really took over. But now there’s no way a manager like Ancelotti at 60 years old could do all of this, no way.
