The latest move by Liverpool’s owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) has been to look at implementing a collaborative technical committee at the club, but does this simply leave current manager Brendan Rodgers accountable for others failings? And is it the latest example of FSG’s well-intentioned plans lacking any coherent long-term thought behind them?
John W. Henry stated in his open letter to the club’s fans last week: “We are still in the process of reversing the errors of previous regimes. It will not happen overnight. It has been compounded by our own mistakes in a difficult first two years of ownership. It has been a harsh education, but make no mistake, the club is healthier today than when we took over. After almost two years at Anfield, we are close to having the system we need in place. It will not be easy, it will not be perfect, but there is a clear vision at work.”
In terms of the tweaking of the club’s playing style out on the pitch, under Rodgers so far, there is of course a clear vision at work, with a possession-based ethos at work, but off the pitch, the club still look all over the place nearly two years after FSG took over the club when it was on the brink of financial meltdown.
The Spirit of Shankly group are often widely mocked for the high regard that they hold themselves in, possessing an over-inflated sense of their own importance. However, their demand last week that a recognised executive is brought in to run the club from day-to-day was a sound one.
The departure of Pep Segura will certainly hit home even more now, after being promised a promotion under the previous tenure of Kenny Dalglish that never came and he resigned for ‘family reasons’ last month. While long-term target for a role in the new system, Louis van Gaal has already accepted the position of the national coach of Holland.
Ian Ayre told reporters at Rodgers press conference unveiling: “The structure is a more continental Director of Football structure where you have got a collaborative group of people working around the football area. We don’t envisage, at this moment in time, having a Director of Football per se, but having a group of people that will work collaboratively with Brendan to deliver the football side of things. It’s not signing by committee, it’s analysis by committee. Certainly not a structure where we would force any player on the manager.”
The set-up is likely to consist of a chief scout and a footballing administrator, much like West Brom and Manchester City have with both Dan Ashworth and Brian Marwood, although Roberto Mancini’s very public frustrations with the latter should show that this more continental system does not come without its own faults.
It appears as if Rodgers has been keenly aware of this technical committee being set up for some time, stating on his first day as Liverpool boss: “That was one of the items I brought up when I was speaking with the club, that I wouldn’t work directly with a Director of football. I work best around a group of people. You come to a big club or any club, you can’t do it on your own. There’s not one of us who’s better than all of us.
“Of course there has to be leadership, but if it was a Sporting Director that was something that I made quite clear that I couldn’t work with. What you need at a football club is an outstanding recruitment team, an outstanding medical team, an outstanding sports science team and player liaison team and these are all people who will come into the group and we will form a little technical board. There will be four or five people around that group who will decide the way forward.”
There still appears to be a lack of clarity to the roles at the moment, though, and should the club continue to under-perform, then where will the blame lie? Is it the collaborative panel that will help Rodgers liable? Addressing a shortfall in the club’s current system is all well and good, but why has it taken FSG so long to get going on the issue?
FSG have shown a distinct lack of leadership time and time again over the stadium issue and now whether Rodgers requires a technical committee in place. A deadline day botch-up, the likes of which the club could have avoided with a new, fully-operational system in place like the one mooted above and it smacks of not only needless caution but a lack of certainty about what they want to do with the club – there’s only so long that you can blame the previous regime before people start to take a closer inspection of your own time in charge and FSG need to step up to the plate now and be decisive here.
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