https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/61354478
Probably warrants it's own thread to be fair.
I don't like the common theme in this and several articles I keep reading. It's like the board and football director still haven't decided what type of football they envision for the club and how that should drive recruitment. The manager still seem to have too much say on what type of player to recruit.
I thought the whole point of the restructuring was for the football director to be more responsible for the kind of football we see on the pitch, i.e hiring head coaches and players for a particular kind of football. I expected this to mean a player should be identified has fitting a particular role in the playing style of the club and bought regardless of who the manager is to be.
For example, the guys at Man City definitely did prepare their club overtime for a particular style of play and there was no significant retooling needed even when Guardiola arrived at their club. He did have to replace some aging full backs and the keeper they had then was also not to his liking but still he was able to work with the majority of the squad he met there in playing his style and winning his first title. I also generally don't expect them to deviate even after Pep leaves as regards the kind of players they sign.
So if we've learnt our lesson from the failures over the past decade, should we not be looking past even the short to mid term ETH years and tailor our recruitment process towards acquiring players fitted to whatever style of football we have decided on ( could be any style really, whether possession based, pressing based, defensive or any other style as long as it helps us compete) and then specifically recruiting managers with views aligned to that of the chosen style of play even in the pre and post ETH years.
I guess the question I have is, if this process was apparently already in place after the sacking of Ole why does the manager to be recruited in the summer serve as an impediment to the kind of striker needed by the club at that point, that is, if the particular player profile fit the playing style we had mapped out at that point and now believe ETH to be the best coach to implement, why did we not just go ahead and get the player or is it that they had not decided on the style of play they wanted moving forward as of then?