Earlier this week, Everton were reported to have secured the services of Nick Cox, and it looks like Everton's new recruitment structure is now taking shape.
After dropping the Director of Football model and going with a 'flatter structure' that includes a team of individuals with proven experience and specilast skills across a range of disciplines within the modern game that are key elements of an effective player recruitment system, manager David Moyes will be key in this window and the ones to follow.
Everton’s aim has been to put in place a robust, talented professional structure for the long term — one that does not depend solely on any one manager or individual. Patrick Boyland at The Athletic believes they are now close to having all the pieces in place.
The biggest change behind the scenes has been moving away from the Director of Football model. Kevin Thelwell was well regarded for his role in helping keep Everton afloat during difficult times in recent seasons but new CEO Angus Kinnear believes in a “flatter structure”.
The range of skills that have been required of an effective Director of Football are to be divided among this group of individual specialists, including Nick Hammond as head of trading, Chris Howarth as strategy lead, with James Smith as head of recruitment, and Nick Cox expected to be confirmed as head technical director.
The belief at Everton is that they are assembling a ‘best in class’ team to rival any of their peers, and one that can be in situ for the long term.
Negotiations with rival clubs and player representatives, for example, will be handled by Hammond, the former Reading and West Bromwich Albion director of football who held consultancy roles with Newcastle Utd and Leeds Utd.
Hammond worked closely with Kinnear at Leeds and was the No 1 target for the head of trading role at Everton. His focus will be on negotiating deals advantageous to the club, but he is also expected to offer insight on the market and specific players when needed.
New director of strategy, Chris Howarth, is another with Leeds connections. An entrepreneur who has built and sold three analytics companies, he moved into sports data by founding Insight Sport — a company that worked with around a dozen clubs across Europe’s top leagues. Insight Sport provided clients with player and tactical evaluations using data and AI, while Howarth was seen as an early adopter of player tracking data.
Insight Sport was sold to TFG this summer, with its bespoke data set to be used by Everton and the group’s other team, As Roma. The idea is that Howarth will build club-specific models based on key requirements per position, and scrutinise the data to find value for money, with manager David Moyes feeding in the technical profiles he is targeting.
James Smith is a Sports Science graduate who coached the sport in the United States, he worked his way up from performance analyst to head of technical scouting during Moyes’s first stint as Everton manager over a decade ago. After following Moyes to Manchester Utd, he switched allegiance and rose to become director of scouting and recruitment across the City Football Group.
Smith is seen as an ambitious appointment, with his decision to leave Man City and rejoin Everton being viewed by some at the club that this new project is ambitious enough to attract top operators in the game. Smith will sit at the top of the scouting network and manage it, while providing a bridge between recruitment and Moyes.
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