Chairmen going offside

Back in the day the Manager of a football team in the English First Division (Now of course Premiership) looked after so much that happened in the club. They crucially were the ones who decided what players they wanted to sign, and went to the Chairman to argue the case for being allowed to sign said player. Many an explosive confrontation broke out in offices of Football Chairman as the manager and club owner hotly debated who he was allowed to sign and who not. So if the team was doing badly, and not getting the results expected, the chairman will feel he had proper justification to sack the gaffer. And given the amount of control the Manager had over overall team affairs, in most cases he was a justifiable fall guy if things did go wrong.

But what about today’s Manager? How many managers can now simply walk into a Chairman’s office, and have a 1 to 1 chat about where he would like to see the team going, what players he would like, and how much he reckons he’d need to purchase them?? In many cases, a manager now has to do deal with 2 or 3 levels or bureaucracy at the club, if he wants to put a request in with the chairman. In many cases it might not even reach his ears, so to speak. We have directors of Football, “financial Operatives”, a Chief executive, and so forth. In many cases I’ve read of Managers being lumbered with new players he didn’t even want, because it was the Director of Football or some other dogsbody who brought them to the club, and not him. People are asking how come Torres did so well for Liverpool, and was worse than pants for Chelsea? Answer – In the main is that Liverpool adopted a structure on the field which largely evolved around Torres, and fitting in with his style of play etc. This style of play was largely unsuited to the Chelsea style, and thus, he was like an odd ill fitting piece of a Jigsaw that sticks out like a sore thumb when you view the puzzle. I would bet money on it, that, had he the final decision on whether to sign him or not, Ancelotti would have said no. But Ancelotti does not call the transfer shots at Chelsea, and neither did Scolari and others, but it was Abramovich and his henchmen who decided who arrived, and who departed. Had Torres not been bought, and subsequently send their playing system and style into haywire, I firmly believe Chelsea, with the same strike pairings pre Torres in operation, would have beaten Manchester United to the league title.

Now Ancelotti has now been sacked, and Chelsea are on the hunt for a new manager. But the glaring, and to me annoying thing is, that. Much of the reasons for the basis of his sacking, were not his own doing. When Chelsea were foundering with Torres in the team, and every Journalist in the country was urging the Italian to drop Torres, the message from on high was that he must be picked at all costs. It was Abramovich who made this decision if the newspapers are to be believed, but who was it that told the Chelsea Manager of this decision? You can be sure it was not Roman himself, but rather one of his subordinates. When we have a situation that a lot of Chairmen of English top flight clubs don’t live in the UK, and are only seen at matches once in a blue moon, it really is light years away from the olden days.

Back then the majority of club owners were from the locality, and most of them would have been fans of said club when they were growing up. Their key motivation was to see their club do well, and not as to how much profit they could make out of it. I remember seeing a piece on the sports news on one of the channels, when some “Football Analyst” with some broker/consulting firm in London referred to clubs as “investment Vehicles” I nearly choked on my breakfast.

How many directors of football have you heard of getting the sack over the last while?? In many instances, they were the very people who brought the players to their respective club, and when the club underachieved, and lurched into a crisis of sorts, it’s the manager who gets the boot, but you never hear (Or if you did it’s a VERY rare occurrence) any criticism at all about the Director of Football, or other similar people at that club.

I’d love to see a lot of those facile “upstairs” positions at clubs done away with, and more powers handed back to the manager. So at the end of the season, or Mid December, a manager can go to the Chairman himself to tell him what players he’d like to sign, and a direct dialogue could take place, as to what players he would be allowed sign and not sign. I genuinely think the game would be a lot more entertaining if that was the case. There would be more cases of a manager getting the players he needs that match the system and style of play he wishes to operate (Or as near enough the type of player he needed that money allowed). Managers would feel they had a greater sense of purpose, and a greater loyalty to the club they were at might even be fostered too. I also think the standard of play would improve overall, and managers would be more passionate about their approach to the job, and more animated on match days, which is always good to see from the spectator point of view! The less faceless people on the clubs payroll, the lower the running costs, means there would be scope to lower ticket prices, and other supporter related outlays.

The closer the supporters really are to the powers that be in their club, the better!