#46 Does AVB leave you with a Blancety Blanc?

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Harry Redknapp, thank you and goodbye.

This is the emergency broadcast episode of The Fighting Cock podcast. We discuss:

Where did it all go wrong?
Levy's choice
The cull
The potential replacement(s)
AVB, Moyes
Tim Sherwood
Director of football
Short term long term
Summer transfer window

Everyone in da house: Flav, Spooky, tehtrunk, Ricky, Thelonious, Chicago Dan and engineer Al.

Love the shirt.

[mp3]http://itunes.thefightingcock.co.uk/podcasts/website_download/53.mp3[/mp3]

[download]http://itunes.thefightingcock.co.uk/podcasts/website_download/53.mp3[/download]
 
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Thanks for that.

A few points, since I'm the biggest fucking pedant on the board:

1. "André" (in terms of Villas-Boas) sounds like "UnDRESS," but without the final "ss". Not "AWN-dray"

2. Blanc isn't a racist. He's a buffoon. This is covered here:

laurent-blanc-t2630-20.html#p91464

The short version is that he's caught on tape complaining that FFF is only recruiting tall, strong young players for the youth sides. And that those kinds of players are "black". He's then caught on tape complaining that players the FFF recruits and trains turn their back on France and go play "in North Africa" and "in Africa".

The nice way to say this is that he's concerned that dual-nationality players are taking advantage of France's training, only to then go play for their parents' countries. So he's ON TAPE listening to the idea of putting in a quota (30%) of players who are "binationaux".

The mean way is to say that Blanc's a racist, since he doesn't talk about Polish- or Portuguese- nationality players who are brought up in the French system. ONLY Africans and people from the Maghreb.

The truth is somewhere in between: France is doing a terrible job of making its players want to play for France, and the state itself is doing a terrible job of making non-white Frenchmen feel like they are French. Blanc feels this, but sounds like an idiot when he tries to express himself.

3. Chicago Dan is absolutely right about the DoF. What a bunch of island-dwelling people completely terrified of change unless it was developed in a Manchester factory.
 
There are reasons DoFs might not work as well in English football as it does in the NFL (for example, a very different approach to youth development and feeder clubs). But they aren't reasons the idea won't work.
 
The NFL isn't the best example, because you're dealing with a massive roster of players that's constantly rotating in and out during the game. Every NFL team has a handful of coaches helping direct the game at all times. It's a massive network of specialisation.

I think the baseball analogy, though perhaps more foreign, is, perversely, more apt.

In baseball, the manager picks the team and handles in-game management. He also handles the squad in the dressing room, at team meetings, etc. He has with him usually a batting coach, a pitching coach, perhaps a bench coach, and a handful of other coaches/trainers/interpreters/etc.

The GM, on the other hand, handles everything else. That includes who makes up the 40-man (instead of the 25-man active) roster, how players should be brought in from the minor league teams (sort of like bringing a U18 into the first team to cover for an injury), the status of the organisation, including the other squads, as a whole, etc.

It's obviously not perfect. Often you can get GMs who are awful. Or racists. Or have antiquated ideas about player evaluation ("he has a good face"). But it does let the manager concentrate on his main objective: winning Major League Baseball games.

We already have this in place at Spurs, of course, but we pretend it's not the same thing. We have coaches and people working with all the various branches of THFC, and Harry's focus was on the PL, on winning PL matches, and on keeping the PL-ready roster happy and ready to die for their manager.

And, as stated in the pod, we already had a de facto GM/DoF in Levy himself. (Baseball has many examples of owners/chairmen behaving like GMS--and the pressure between the chairman and GM at Boston is part of what caused Boston to lose their successful GM) We brought in Sandro, vdV, etc. So it's clearly working already. Levy, I imagine, simply wants to formalise it.
 
Flav said:
It has never worked in England.
Click to expand...

In the Premier League, maybe (although I'd argue it works well at WBA), but Reading have certainly had successes with a DoF. Nick Hammond's done it well there since 2003. Key is communication/blending the right personalities.
 
WindyCOYS said:
Flav said:
It has never worked in England.
Click to expand...

In the Premier League, maybe (although I'd argue it works well at WBA), but Reading have certainly had successes with a DoF. Nick Hammond's done it well there since 2003. Key is communication/blending the right personalities.
Click to expand...
A team haven't done well just because they have one though.

Maybe it could work in England but it's a huge gamble for Levy to take considering how it's gone when we've tried it in the past. In both cases, the manager didn't have a good relationship with the DoF.
 
It's just a bunch of words at the end of the day. Levy has been director of football during Redknapp's tenure. If the DoF is there to support the manager and leave the chairman to go about his other business, then fine. If its more of a technical director to organise a blueprint for the future or scouting etc so that there is a consistency across the next 5-10 years (i.e. a system set up to support any manager or coach), then fine.

The way it worked with Comolli was not the right way. Comolli appoints the coach HE wants to work with. That's where it goes wrong. Okay, fair enough if we lose a manager we need to appoint a new one and the chairman and DoF would discuss that but with Comolli it felt like there was a power struggle (in the end) and too much influence over what the manager should be doing rather than it being the opposite way round.

New man in must be the lead, not the DoF.
 
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