The dizzying permutations of head coach, assistant coach, manager, director of football and technical director have all been fizzing through the ‘West Ham ether’ this weekend as newspapers, journalists and yes, fan sites too have had their own stories, rumours and inputs over the shape of ‘West Ham yet to come’.
In true Dickens style, the ‘West Ham of the Past” and ‘West Ham of the Present ” didn’t turn out so well- so maybe there’s another variation on the way. Let us hope it isn’t ghostly.
Claret and Hugh reader ‘James’ certainly got us thinking with his post suggesting the Hammers were likely heading ‘back to the future’ with Nuno as the supremo. See what you think:
Guest post by “James“:
The old way of running a football club worked best. You had the manager who oversaw transfers and kept a bit of a distance from his players to observe things while his coach/coaches took over training sessions and even sometimes gave orders from the touchline.
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The Brian Clough and Peter Taylor or Alex Ferguson and Brian Kidd (later Mclaren, Quieroz and Phelan) model worked well. These days you have the head coach and he is trying to do too many things instead of delegating.
They get burnt out (Jurgen Klopp) or lose their energy and get sacked. Then you have the problem of the director of football and manager having a different vision of transfers and then coming to blows (Moyes and Steidten).
The manager has to be the one making all the transfer decisions. How can he build a team if someone else is making the decisions?
A DOF should only be implementing the will of the manager. Football clubs need a manager and not a coach. This is why Ancelotti has had so much success. He’s a manager and not a coach.
This resonated with the news over Nuno having a say in his Sporting Director’s appointment: It does sound as if Nuno is heading to wards the ‘Ferguson’ model in overall charge and then having coaches, sporting directors, agents all underneath him. Would that be such a bad thing? You tell me.