The only way one can be sure is by results. Of course you may put into context mitigating factors (injuries et al), but nobody should be 'trusted' willy nilly.
The trust has to be earned.
Ratcliffe and the Ineos board 'trust' Ashworth, and good luck to them, but we have no reason to. We have no reason, as yet, to trust Ineos, either.
If there's any truth in their desire for Southgate, well, expect another decade of pain.
I think the biggest issue in this discussion right now is you oversimplifying the world and presenting some sort of false dichotomy: Either it is results based meaning every position in the club is just evaluated on the goal count on any given Sunday, or it’s trust based meaning nepotism, cronies around the campfire sucking the coffers dry doing nothing …
The social world doesn’t work quite like that. Your very extreme and oversimplified results based approach (even the DoF work should be evaluated primarily on football results within two seasons, despite their work being just one of a hundred factors overdetermining those results) is not the golden standard within top athleticism, it is not the norm looking at structures behind football clubs actually getting results.
Sure, you find plenty of examples of that too, but presenting it as some sort of ‘the only way to go’ and ‘the alternative is being Ed Woodward mk II’ is false and just stupidifies the discussion.
The truth is, Berrada and the board will have their ideas about what kind of performance and ‘results’ they will evaluated the DoF from, and we as fans will have no clue about what those are. Match scores and even trophy counts will be far down on that list.
Good one.
