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Gary Neville: The era of the gaffer is over
Southampton's incredible rise has destroyed the traditional model of a football club – we're now in the age of the technical director

By Gary Neville8:15PM GMT 23 Jan 2015 21 Comments
A few years ago, like many others who are close to the game, I would have bristled at the mention of a director of football - a technical or sporting director.
To me, the manager was the ultimate authority on all football club matters. But talking this week to Les Reed, who has overall control at Southampton, has strengthened my belief that 95 per cent of clubs will adopt the model that has been so successful for the Saints.
Southampton, who are third in the Premier League table with 16 games to go, are all joined-up, from the under-7s to the first team Ronald Koeman has coached so well. I spoke to Reed about the club’s ‘Black Box’ – a darkened room he compares to the “Bridge of the Starship Enterprise” – and why preparing in advance for the loss of a manager is just as important as planning which players to buy.
The January transfer window is upon us and there cannot be many clubs better equipped to make good decisions. In the longer term, if Koeman were to leave – for Barcelona, say – then Southampton would already know which coaches would fit their profile. Future proofing and being prepared for all eventualities seems simple but so many clubs fail to get it right.
Reed tells me: “We have a whole department for the recruitment of players, but it struck me some years ago that when a manager leaves, that’s when the club reacts and starts looking for a new one. I think we should be as diligent with that, because of the turnover of managers these days.

“Whether they are fired or attracted to another club, as with Mauricio [Pochettino], you have to be as far ahead with potential coaches as potential players. So I’m always tracking managers and coaches. What’s their style of play, how successful are they, what’s their personality like – so you can be ahead of the game. So I’m always looking at five or six potential managers who have already impressed me. It’s made it quicker. We’re not having off the wall discussions.
“I don’t have the owner appointing a manager and saying: ‘By the way, you’ve got to work with this sporting director.’ I control that whole process. It makes it a lot easier. I’m able to tell them we’re looking to keep them in the job for as long as possible - as opposed to somebody who’s looking over their shoulder and almost looking for reasons to move them on.”
Last week I wrote about a club, QPR, that from the outside looks like it has a complex structure. Southampton are the opposite. As a part-owner of Salford City, I have been scouring the game for the right model. The title ‘Director of Football’ is a loaded one in English football, because it implies interference in first-team affairs – and someone above the manager buying the players – but Southampton have shown it can work, if everyone is aligned.
Reed says there are moves afoot at the Premier League to formalise the role – but Southampton already have their chain of command worked out, with a “slim” organisation of specialists all working as one. “I’m basically responsible for everything to do with football at the club. That goes from the academy right down to the U-7s and U-8s, right through to the first team,” Reed says. “We don’t call it the training ground any more. We call it the Staplewood Campus – and that’s because it envelops everything to do with football development, football research and football support.”
So far so good, but with so many clubs making mediocre or outright bad decisions in the transfer market, I ask Reed who calls the shots at St Mary’s. January signings, for example, would involve him, the chief scout, the head of recruitment and, of course, Koeman.

Unity: Southampton's success will make other clubs rethink their approach
“The first stage is – what do we think we need?” Reed starts out. “We audit the squad. Then Ronald might say – we need another winger, or cover at centre-back, or whatever. We then have a discussion about the type of player. The coach can then leave the recruitment department to discuss potential targets, and these would then be set out for Ronald - 'Do they fit, what would be your preferences in order?'"
Reed and Koeman then discuss the finance. “My role is getting Ronald what he wants. My job is to support him. At no time was it better illustrated than in the summer when we did something like 22 transactions in a very limited space of time and got a good strong squad together for the start of the season.
“Initially my job is to identify coaches who will buy into it [the club model] because of the track record they’ve got and the style they play. We look for evidence that they’ve brought young players through before.
“So far I’ve hit the nail on the head with managers who have a very similar philosophy – and that’s what attracted them to the club. Ronald is evidence of that. It didn’t take long for him to buy into what we’re trying to do. I’m entrusted to do the recruitment from minute one, to the point where I present the manager to the board as the one I want to appoint.
“Someone’s not going to come in here and say – ‘Scrap all that, I don’t want all that, this is the way I do it.’
"We think we’ve done a lot of work and we continue to try and stay ahead of the game, so what we provide for a manager is everything he could possibly want. [Some clubs] go for a personality or a track record and the manager says – ‘If I come to you, if you’re lucky enough to have me, I want this, this, this and this.’ We would never go down that route. We will not be interviewed by a manager - we will interview them"

Crucial: Les Reed - 'We will not be interviewed by a manager - we will interview them'
That last sentence in particular struck a chord with me. A club should not breach its philosophy for an individual.
“We have a very sound business plan. Because this club nearly went out of existence our job is to make sure that never happens again. So we do due diligence rather than gamble.”
Southampton have been so successful in producing young players and recovering from last year’s exodus (Adam Lallana, Luke Shaw etc) that other clubs regularly try to poach their academy staff. “We are a victim of our own success in that respect,” Reed says.
But the ‘Black Box’ I’d heard so much about remains a powerful asset. I ask Reed to tell me more.
“It’s a viewing area for about half a dozen people,” he says. “There’s a big consul desk for the analysts to sit on and stools at the back. It blacks out – that’s why we call it the Black Box – and the screen comes to life. We’ve pulled together all of the software that’s available off the shelf in terms of data, scouting, analysis – all that stuff. We took all that and designed a bespoke piece of software that brings all that into one.
“All of our pitches at the training ground have remote control cameras which come back to the Black Box. An analyst could have any training session, whether it’s under-8s right the way through to the first team. All that data is coded and analysed and it can be used for any age group of players, merged with match analysis, used as a teaching tool. So when our scouts are out doing opposition reports all that’s fed in automatically.
“In terms of recruitment, we have feeds from most of the good leagues around the world. We have analysts who chop them up and code them. When we’re looking at players we have instant access to video material or statistical analysis. It enables us to compare potential recruits with the profiles of our own players. That’s one way we can compare potential recruits with our own academy players and say – you know what, this kid meets the profile anyway. That helps all of our decision-making.
“We’ve got a fantastic group of eyes-on scouts and fantastic analysts – so the idea is that they challenge each other all the time. So when a scout says - this is the best striker in Croatia, the analysts have all the data to challenge it.
“You come out of meetings and you can see everyone’s motivated by it. We have conflicting views and debates. But we have enough back-up to say – this is right, this is right. Everybody comes out of them good friends.”

In charge? Ronald Koeman is not necessarily the most important man at Southampton
This type of joined-up thinking, planning and detail is where football has to and will go. This modern structure where the head of analysis is aligned with the head of recruitment onto the head coach, the sporting director and board.
As transfer fees are getting bigger owners will want a level of due diligence that you would expect in other business sectors. You would never buy a property without doing a valuation, a survey and not knowing how you were going to use it or what it could do for you. You'd also like it to maintain or appreciate in value.
Under Nicola Cortese, the former chairman, Southampton adopted a more top-down approach. The days of the autocrat manager are done at Southampton. The idea of a new manager having the power to rip up the sports science department, shred the academy, control player purchases and take away the stability in its entirety has to be a positive move.
A lot of attention is rightly given to the average lifespan of a manager going down by the year. However, there is no doubt that within the structure Southampton adopt, there is far less upheaval and that the identity of the club, continuity of the majority of the staff and link between youth and first team remains intact.

 :)
Min første Leeds-kamp:
Strømsgodset vs Leeds, 19.september 1973

Jon R

Bra artikkel. Skulle ønske klubben vår var i nærheten av å drive sånn.  ;)

Uansett modell, koker det hele ned til å kompetente folk i rett posisjon. En forutsetning er at de som tar beslutninger kjenner nivået man spiller på og som skjønner hva som trengs  "when the going gets tough"...

Ikke minst må coachen/manageren være tungt involvert i hele prosessen fra å identifisere hvilke posisjoner som må styrkes til beslutningen om hvem som endelig skal hentes inn:


“The first stage is – what do we think we need?” Reed starts out. “We audit the squad. Then Ronald might say – we need another winger, or cover at centre-back, or whatever. We then have a discussion about the type of player. The coach can then leave the recruitment department to discuss potential targets, and these would then be set out for Ronald - 'Do they fit, what would be your preferences in order?'"
Reed and Koeman then discuss the finance. “My role is getting Ronald what he wants. My job is to support him. At no time was it better illustrated than in the summer."
Jon R.

h.b

  • Gjest
Mye riktig her. Men det største hinderet for denne utvikling er pr dags dato Cellino. Han vil ha suksess, på sin egen måte. Han skal styre alt fra ansettelser av vaskekoner til å direkte ha innflytelse på lagutak, spillerkjøp og spillestil. Hvis han kunne tredd tilbake, og latt de som kan det ta seg av de forskjellige rollene i klubben gjøre den jobben de er i i klubben. Ja da hadde klubben vært et stort steg i riktig retning. Greit nok at han prøver å rette skuta opp når det kommer til det økonomiske. Men da kan han heller konsentrere seg om dette, istedenfor å blande seg inn i lag og lagutak.
Har vel hele tiden sagt at klubben må se mot Ajax når det kommer til utvikling av klubb. Se på Southampton, for det virker som om de nettopp har gjort dette