Structures and the Cult of the Manager

There is some consternation among West Ham fans that the club is buying players without having a manager in place. Some fans explain this away that the new manager is probably pulling the strings without having been formally announced, but I think this genuinely isn't true - the club clearly haven't picked a manager, yet the keeper Randolph has joined the club, and Pedro Obiang seems poised to join from Sampdoria.

The obvious point to make is that the idea that the manager buys all the players is completely outdated in the modern game. Obviously it still goes on but I would call it the exception rather than the rule. Put simply, you just can't depend on a Wenger joining your club, sticking there for the long-term, and being a bit of a dab hand in the market. Pretty much all clubs have realised that managers come and go, but continuity is needed in terms of building expertise and continuity in the acquisition of players.

That all said, if you have a manager or coach ill-suited to the players in the squad, you have problems. West Ham was a great example of this last Summer, with Sullivan buying Valencia and Sakho as strikers, when clearly Allardyce wanted them to ultimately operate as wingers and has little experience in playing diminutive strike partnerships, explaining a lot of the problems and frustrations that led to his departure this Summer.

Funnily enough, West Ham have a bit of recent history with this issue. Most obviously there's the very mixed transfer record of Allardyce - he bought a bunch of duds (particularly strikers) and control was taken away from him last Summer, resulting in the club's best haul of players in years if not decades. But you can go further back and find problems - Zola was blamed for Benni McCarthy, the spent force on which we pinned survival hopes in 2010. Curbishley left the club because a player was sold without his consent. Pardew left after Tevez and Mascherano were bought and unsettled the squad (and then there was all that kerfuffle over the registrations). The Icelandic owners that bottomed out during the collapse that left West Ham with a huge expensive squad but no money in the bank. Previous to that, Roeder got a public apology from the board for not supporting him in the transfer market at a crucial time to avoid relegation. And Harry Redknapp was sacked... for a whole bunch of still rather mysterious issues around player transfers. It's been a longstanding mess, basically, at West Ham - that's putting it kindly.

It beggars belief that they have taken so long to realise the problem with having a haphazard, uncontrolled transfer policy, and have taken steps to sort out the mess. Tony Henry has been brought in as the head of recruitment, and according to some sources actually has full control of the spending this Summer, regardless of which manager joins the club. There is a sense of unease over the input that the chairman David Sullivan has on who comes through the door - though he always claims that he just supervises I think he effectively controls the decisions these days. It's all fine as long as it works, but if it fails then the owner is hardly going to sack himself from the job.

There is a wider tug-of-war going on among managers. There was talk that Klopp would join Liverpool only if they gave him full control of the purse-strings - their transfer committee has been widely criticised for recent signings (on what basis I'm not really sure, as there was literally no way of filling a Suarez-shaped hole in that squad). Alan Irvine at West Brom announced that he had no idea about their star signing. The issues between Pardew and Graeme Carr at Newcastle. Clearly some managers would like to be the old-style of manager who buy all the players and have full control. And it seems to me that most fans prefer that as well - they know who to trust, and then who to blame.

Basically the issue is between the short-termism of managers fearful of their jobs, and the more balanced view that might be provided by those with the long-term health of clubs in mind. The evidence is pretty much everywhere of the damage short-termism can do to clubs who just bet the farm each Summer on a new set of stars who may succeed or fail or be average until the next bunch come in the next year.

And the wider issue may well be that managers simply do not have the time to do a full and exhaustive job of dealing with the health of the club and the transfer market, at the same time as running the squad. The job is no longer possible for one man. I would guess that Wenger for example, rather than an old-school manager, is more of a director of football in all-but name - the nitty gritty of coaching and man-management is the job of the coaches he employs at the training complex he helped design, operating the philosophy of football that he founded.

At a fan level, it all leads to more confusion - we don't know who did what at clubs, so having any sort of view on it can become an art in itself. Brendan Rodgers is being questioned by Liverpool fans for supposed failed signings that he had little to do with. Moyes was criticised for failures in the market at Manchester United, but are we to assume that was his responsibility coming into the club? - the finger should surely have been pointed at a weak infrastructure in terms of recruitment at the club (which has presumably been solved to some extent as a result).

Basically I believe that the era of the cult of the manager is over, and we should stop expecting all-powerful figureheads to bend clubs to their will. Managers and coaches are employees, and that's all. Examples like Koeman at Southampton, who may well have contributed to their success, but builds upon a very settled structure with a short history of expertise in the market. Managers come and go, and the media spends a lot of time complaining about how little time they are given to succeed, but the truth is that like players if they don't deliver results they need to be discarded quickly.

People ask me who I'd like to see in charge of West Ham. I already know that answer, or I hope I do - the owners, the heads of the departments, the director of football (should one be appointed). The question of who coaches the players is a different one entirely, and in my opinion is much less important than getting the key structure in place.

Summer strategies

What clubs do in the Summer is look at their options and presumably, unless they're very haphazardly run, they come up with a battleplan for what they are going to try and do in the transfer market. Obviously this is true, but what I find odd is that watchers of football seem either disinterested or completely ignorant about this process.

Presumably my club West Ham have a strategy for the Summer. It won't be written about in any of the papers, or on websites or blogs, for some reason. I think the media has an obsession with gossip, and stuff that may be happening, but not the reasons why the gossip exists and the stuff that happens comes to be. I suppose many writers think their readership wouldn't be interested to look so far under the hood, or perhaps the writers are just largely oblivious to what they could be writing about.

Perhaps this is sometimes because it's bad news. I'm not sure Spurs fans want to read that actually their club's strategy would rightly consider the blatant truth that they won't be cracking the top four next season, and that actually shrewd management of their squad would consider a medium to long-term view. Fans just want big signings, even if the clubs go bankrupt in the process. I think football, and football covrage and football writers and pundits, have created this destructive desire in many ways.

Actually I think there are betting opportunities in considering the possible outlooks for clubs. My own club West Ham, are moving into a new stadium next Summer, and you can be absolutely sure that not a penny will be saved this Summer to try and guarantee that move is made in the Premiership - my expectation is for short-term gains in the squad, maybe significant ones. I think a bet on a top ten finish for West Ham next season would likely be a value proposition.

Whereas teams who have spent the season at the struggling end of the division simply can't bet the whole farm on survival next year - the sort of pragmatic signings that West Brom have made in recent years will continue to be made, because anything else risks an apocalypse should they be relegated with a wage-heavy under-performing squad. It's not that West Brom are necessarily unambitious - they are actually well-run and keen to do the right thing, by and large.

At the top of the Prem, it seems to me the motivations are very clear. Chelsea are in charge, and have little real motivation to shake up their squad very much. Man City have had a dreadful season by their budgetary standards, and face a mass shake-up. Man Utd have a taste of possibility and should be big spenders. Arsenal face another season where the pragmatic choice is to make small strides - in many ways Arsenal's curse is not Wenger's failures, but his successes at providing good value teams who look very near to real success (thus never necessitating radical action in the transfer market).

All of this is assuming pragmatism rules, of course. It often doesn't, and there have been some bewildering decisions made in the past. I would argue that my club West Ham's splurge last Summer was somewhat out of character for a team in danger of relegation - it was a panic rather than a pragmatic sign of progress, and shows that the club is under the influence of the whims of its passionate but eccentric owners. All part of the fun I suppose.

Where decisions get interesting is at clubs where the strategy is not obvious or a necessity. Do Southampton roll the dice and buy big to make further progress? I think they might do that, but I don't think they should as the upside just isn't that great. Should clubs like Swansea and Stoke, making steady progress, abandon their reserve and go for it - logic suggests not. But sometimes confounding the received wisdom of what a club should do could be a correct strategy.

The other fascinating one is Liverpool, who clearly to my mind suffer from a bit of hubris. As soon as Suarez left that club there should have been a realisation that expectations must be lowered, and perhaps there was internally. But they actually face a similar issue this Summer - tbey could spend massively on world-class players and still not crack the top 4 next Summer, and risk imploding the club on the back of all the good work Rodgers did getting them to outperform a year ago.

The basic question, how does this club improve its lot, is no closer to an ideal answer. Especially with FFP. But what should be obvious is that the same answer does not apply to the same clubs equally, and just spending money on players can at times signal the beginning of the end.