Man Utd set to appoint Director of Football (when hell freezes over)

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JPRouve

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But they do have Segura, Abidal and Ramon Planes running the football side of the club, all of whom had extensive football experience prior to being appointed to those roles. Who is the equivalent at United?
Well that's the point of the potential technical director hiring, to add people on the football side, to say that Barcelona have football men in the board is wrong. Today the club relies on two people, the head of academy for youth football and the manager for professional football, hopefully we will bring people to support them.

Edit: In fact Barcelona current setup could be the example, with Phelan as Segura, Fletcher as Abidal and Judge as Planes(assistant technical secretary).
 
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crossy1686

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Why is Rio being linked with the job this morning? I don't have a problem with it but I'm starting to think there isn't an ex player that hasn't applied for the job at the moment.

Probably why Ince is fuming...
 

JJ12

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Well that's the point of the potential technical director hiring, to add people on the football side, to say that Barcelona have football men in the board is wrong. Today the club relies on two people, the head of academy for youth football and the manager for professional football, hopefully we will bring people to support them.
Whats Abidals title/role?
 

Canagel

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Ferdinand is not a bad choice. He's successful business man and actually one of the few ex players that understand the modern football. Didn't he already know Sancho and his parents on a personal level ? He could be very useful to talk to the younger generation and will know which talent the club needs
 

Infra-red

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Well that's the point of the potential technical director hiring, to add people on the football side, to say that Barcelona have football men in the board is wrong. Today the club relies on two people, the head of academy for youth football and the manager for professional football, hopefully we will bring people to support them.

Edit: In fact Barcelona current setup could be the example, with Phelan as Segura, Fletcher as Abidal and Judge as Planes(assistant technical secretary).
But none of that has actually happened, which is the reason why people have been impatiently moaning in this thread, for 247 pages.

There are no equivalents to Segura, Abidal, and Planes (or Rummenigge, Hoeneß, Salihamidzic, or Van Der Sar, Overmars) at United.

Instead we have a couple of former investment bankers with track records of utter failure in this area.
 

Fosu-Mens

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Why are we not after Luis Campos....

Involved in setting up the recruiting structure at Monaco and now Lille.
Decent article summerizing his history, brief overview of how he operates the recruitement and his preferences on how to play football.
http://breakingthelines.com/manager...-footballs-most-underrated-sporting-director/

Ticks all the boxes except "having been a player/coach at MUFC"...
If we are to bring in one person at the club, it should be him.
 

JPRouve

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But none of that has actually happened, which is the reason why people have been impatiently moaning in this thread, for 247 pages.

There are no equivalents to Segura, Abidal, and Planes (or Rummenigge, Hoeneß, Salihamidzic, or Van Der Sar, Overmars) at United.

Instead we have a couple of former investment bankers with track records of utter failure in this area.
We are allegedly in the middle of a process, I don't really see your point other than venting.
 

Infra-red

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We are allegedly in the middle of a process, I don't really see your point other than venting.
The point was a fairly simple one. Our structure is very different to those at Bayern/Barca/Ajax.

Whether anything is ever actually done to address that, remains to be seen. The title of this thread seems rather apt.
 

TsuWave

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Caught in an infinite loop of “get the boys back together” and trying to rediscover the Fergie magic.

you hate to see it.
 

fezzerUTD

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"Ferdinand isn't a bad choice" no he isn't he's a f awful choice. The biggest club in the world appointing a sporting director with no experience, yeh great choice! Perfect!

Lets get all the ex-players that are on tv so they cant talk bad about us anymore that sounds about right!
 

sincher

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Maybe the objective is to hire all the people who would otherwise be critical of the club on tv. We could have a whole committee of Keane, Ferdinand, Gaz, Scholes etc.

Then we could slide into obscurity with much less fuss.
 

pcaming

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What made VDS and Overmars good candidates for their Ajax roles?

Edit: on a side note I fail to see how persons like Fletcher and Rio would be yes men. If there was issues with Woodward, their close ties to pundits would surely see lots of "leaks" and finger pointing to him. They would actually be the worst hires if Ed just wanted showmen while he still called all the shots.
 

JPRouve

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The point was a fairly simple one. Our structure is very different to those at Bayern/Barca/Ajax.

Whether anything is ever actually done to address that, remains to be seen. The title of this thread seems rather apt.
Fair enough, it's a strange point when the poster clearly knew that the structure were different and the fact that you made a difference between our board and Barcelona's was also strange since they have the same type of board, exclusively made of businessmen. When we compare United to Barcelona the difference is only below the board and the current rumours would see us have the same type of structure, which is apparently a problem for some.
 

Infra-red

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Caught in an infinite loop of “get the boys back together” and trying to rediscover the Fergie magic.

you hate to see it.
Probably something we need to get out of our system. There has been a clamour for the triumphant return of Giggs/assorted club legends to reinstall the Fergie glory days, pretty much since SAF left.

May as well be now, as things can't get much worse so what is there to lose. If it is a disaster, we can start from scratch again in 2-3 years. Maybe it won't be.
 

ErranMorad

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If there somewhere I can read on these Dof/Sporting director/technical director roles? Are they the same, have subtle differences or completely different?

Out of the current top ranked clubs:

Clubs who have them - Bayern, BVB, Inter (?), Milan (?), Juve, City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Real, Barca & A. Madrid
Clubs who don't - United, Spurs, Arsenal

Right?
 

chinukapoor

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Why not Gary Neville? He seems to understand modern football, is a passionate United fan, talks sense and can shut the board up.
 

Fosu-Mens

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Yeah people keep trotting this bollocks out with any evidence.

Maybe ex-footballers know a bit about football?
With the lack of transparency regarding how the club operates it is difficult to know anything for certain: Who decided to buy who, who decided that this or that player deserved a new contract... So it is near impossible to prove anything.
What we have seen is that as soon as there are any "noise" from the fans regarding the upper echelons of the club the "appoint dof is imminent" saga starts again. Since the owners motivation for owning this club (and thus Woodwards main focus) is financially motivated (don't think this is debatable) and not directly related to football, they fear anything that might "damage" the financial potential of the club --> OT not packed, fans protesting etc. So it make sense to appoint well liked former players to positions in the club as the fans are more likely to accept their decisions/actions than people they got positive connection to.

If the footballing structure at this club was working well, stable and not needing radical changes, then appointing a former player with no experience in a certain role would not be the most problematic, as the person appointed would be able to learn in a well functioning environment. Since this is not the case, there are few logical football related reasons for appointing former players that have no experience in the role, or even worse: creating the structure said role should operate within. Why should we appoint a person to "invent the wheel" for us, when said person does not have any experience in inventing the wheel.

Makes a lot more sense appointing someone that has "invented the wheel" at other clubs... Like Luis Campos.
Read this: http://breakingthelines.com/manager...-footballs-most-underrated-sporting-director/
And hopefully you would agree that it would make more sense appointing him compared to the likes of Rio and Fletcher.
 

Suv666

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Not sure if Rio is the right choice. I don't mind us trying to bring in ex players but he is too involved in social media and punditry for anyone to take him seriously. I'd rather have Vidic. Why arent we looking at someone experienced though? Recipe for disaster this. We already have a novice Woody steering us into darkness dont think we also need an inexperienced DOF to help him out.
 

Lynty

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That's always a strange point to make, particularly when you consider the fact that he has spent more time in football and that someone like Berta was an investment banker.
Berta was appointed as Sporting Director in 2002 at AC Carpenedolo before moving to Parma, Genoa and finally Atletico.

Woodward was an investment banker since the early 90s. Even at United he was the Commercial/Marketing Director until 2012, and has since shown why he is more suited to that role.
 

DomesticTadpole

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Why not Gary Neville? He seems to understand modern football, is a passionate United fan, talks sense and can shut the board up.
SAF gave the task to Gary Neville of persuading Aaron Ramsey, a big Giggs fans to join United and he went and joined Arsenal. As to talking sense, not in his commentaries he doesn't.
 

JPRouve

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SAF gave the task to Gary Neville of persuading Aaron Ramsey, a big Giggs fans to join United and he went and joined Arsenal. As to talking sense, not in his commentaries he doesn't.
You are just being mean now.:lol:
 

AgentP

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Looks like our new idea is to appoint as many old boys as possible and hope that they can somehow get us out of this hellhole. At this point, I don't really give a feck. One guy who'll be cursing himself would be Scholes I believe. His harsh criticism of the club could hamper his chances of getting a role at United.
 

Fosu-Mens

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Looks like our new idea is to appoint as many old boys as possible and hope that they can somehow get us out of this hellhole. At this point, I don't really give a feck. One guy who'll be cursing himself would be Scholes I believe. His harsh criticism of the club could hamper his chances of getting a role at United.
He and especially G. Neville has been critical of the owners/Woodward over the last few weeks. Good to see.
 

SteveJ

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Neville makes me want to shoot myself. So, on the whole, I'm not in favour of his hiring.
 

JPRouve

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Probably.:lol: Gary is another one who has a business head, but absolutely no charm whatsoever. I could see him grabbing a player round the neck if he didn't want to join us.
I totally get that, I really think that the club should take guys like Beckham or Ferdinand and try to mold them into club executives because these are the type of ex players that inspire people. Neville reminds me of Van Gaal, while he may coach for the club, you don't want him in public's eyes.
Saha is also someone that has worked in football since he retired and he seems to be a nice and intelligent guy, I wouldn't mind it if he was involved with the club.
 
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