LIVERPOOL
 |
| Brendan Rodgers |
ARSENAL
| Arsene Wenger |
Wenger always has the final say. The board have attempted to put support systems in place around him, such as their purchase of StatDNA, the football data analytics company, which can help to identify potential signings. But Wenger continues to rely on his own eyes, together with those of his scouts. Dick Law is the club’s chief negotiator.
ASTON VILLA
The club have created an informal committee to oversee transfers that includes Tom Fox, the chief executive, Patrick Reilly, the director of recruitment, Sharon Barnhurst, the club secretary, and Tim Sherwood, the manager. With the backing of Randy Lerner, Villa’s owner, Fox gets the financial framework of any transfer deal approved but is not involved in negotiating with the agent, which he leaves to Barnhurst and Reilly. Sherwood is not keen on working within a continental structure – Villa never filled the director of football operations position that was advertised at the start of the year – and likes full control of transfers.
CHELSEA
| Jose Mourinho |
Roman Abramovich has the ultimate say as to which targets are pursued
The owner, Roman Abramovich, has the ultimate say as to which targets are pursued and, while there may on occasion be direct contact between management staff and the oligarch, the discussions tend to go through the multilingual director, Marina Granovskaia, who is an increasingly influential figure at Stamford Bridge. She is essentially responsible for negotiating all transfers in and out of the club these days, as well as player and management contract negotiations and re-negotiations. The Russian-born Canadian national, whose role as a senior advisor to Abramovich pre-dates the oligarch’s arrival in English football, speaks with rival clubs and with agents to see the transfers signed off.
MANCHESTER UNITED
| Louis van Gaal |
MANCHESTER CITY
Txiki Begiristain is the sporting director and the chief fixer of transfers for the club. The club work to the continental model of having expendable managers within an over-arching football structure. This means potential targets are identified in a fluid, quasi-committee basis, though Manuel Pellegrini would rarely have any player forced upon him by Begiristain or Ferran Soriano, the chief executive, who is the most powerful man on the ground at the Etihad Campus.
Newcastle United
Steve McClaren may be on the St James’ Park board but the words “cosmetic” and “semantics” spring immediately to mind concerning the relationship between his directorship and transfers. In reality McClaren remains very much a European style head coach with transfer targets identified by Graham Carr, officially the chief scout but effectively the director of football. Although Mike Ashley, the owner, delegates the day to day running of the club to Lee Charnley – the managing director and the man responsible for getting Carr’s proposed deals across the line – he continues to have the final say on signings. One of the reasons for Alan Pardew’s departure is that he did not want some of Carr’s recruits – the £12m Rémy Cabella for instance. But Carr and McClaren have a better relationship and share closer football visions so the arrangement may work better. It will also help that Ashley is willing to relax a previous reluctance to sign players aged over 26 and of steering clear of the British market.
Steve McClaren may be on the St James’ Park board but the words “cosmetic” and “semantics” spring immediately to mind.
Norwich City
Norwich’s strategy has shifted slightly since Alex Neil became manager in January. Neil has the final say on all first-team recruitment: he identifies the players he requires and transfers are then worked on by the club’s football executive board. The chief executive, David McNally, is the man who leads negotiations and works to complete deals with other clubs. The first signing of Neil’s reign, Tony Andreu from his former club Hamilton, unmistakably bore the new manager’s hand.
Joining McNally on the football executive board are the technical director Ricky Martin and a yet-to-be-named head of recruitment (the position has been vacant since March). It was originally set up last summer to support Neil Adams, Neil’s predecessor, who was relatively inexperienced in a first-team management role. The idea was for a more corporate, shared approach to recruitment strategy, but Neil has been given greater autonomy and McNally was quick to confirm this upon his arrival. “Alex will decide players coming in and ones leaving,” he said. “The other people are there to support him. No way is anyone going to join the club without authorisation from the manager.”
Southampton
The club have a recruitment department, in which a team of analysts monitor players around the world and the data is stored in what is known as the “Black Box”. Succession planning is the buzz phrase and looking far ahead is key. If a player is about to leave, the idea is that the analysts have replacements already lined up. When the manager, Ronald Koeman, wants to sign a player, he and the executive director, Les Reed, specify the position and/or attributes required and the analysts then make suggestions. Reed does the negotiations.
Stoke City
Sunderland
As sporting director, Lee Congerton – a former Chelsea chief scout and Hamburg technical director – is the man responsible for sourcing and securing signings. He reports to Margaret Byrne, the chief executive and Ellis Short, the owner, who has the final say on price. Yet while Dick Advocaat is, like Steve McClaren at Newcastle, primarily a “mud on boots” head coach he and Congerton work closely together and the sporting director is prepared to accept his advice. If theirs promises to be a collaborative relationship, things were much more strained between Congerton and Gus Poyet, Advocaat’s predecessor. Although Poyet was delighted when Congerton beat several rivals to Jermain Defoe’s signing, the pair generally disagreed over recruitment.
Swansea City
David Leadbeater, head of recruitment, Tim Henderson, technical recruitment scout, and George Foster, head of European scouting, are the key figures when it comes to the identification of players. Garry Monk, Swansea’s manager, also draws up his own targets. Swansea like to watch potential signings over a long period of time – André Ayew was tracked for two years and likewise Bafetimbi Gomis – and Monk is heavily involved in the final selection process. The names are fed to Huw Jenkins, the chairman, whose total control of negotiations expedites the process. Monk and Jenkins have to be in agreement for a player to be brought in.
Tottenham
Watford
Luke Dowling, former head of recruitment at Portsmouth and Blackburn, was appointed as sporting director last September and concentrates on the domestic market, while chief scout Filippo Giraldi keeps an eye on the continent (though his role is likely to change if Nicola Salerno, who recently left his post as sporting director at Leeds, joins the club as is widely expected). Watford are owned by the same family that controls Udinese in Italy and Granada in Spain, and much of the process of identifying and recruiting players for all three sides still takes place in Udine, overseen by the former Napoli and Italy striker Andrea Carnevale – though it was interesting that Watford were the only one of the three to officially send scouts to the European Under-21 Championship.
West Bromwich Albion
Jeremy Peace, Albion’s chairman, decided to adopt what he described as a European model many years ago after becoming frustrated with the way managers were spending money but that structure, which saw a sporting or technical director sitting on the board, has just been shelved. The dismissals of Terry Burton, Albion’s technical director, and Mervyn Day, the club’s head of recruitment, mean that Tony Pulis has strengthened his powerbase and can exercise more control over transfers. Richard Garlick, director of football administration, handles negotiations and Peace must approve and sign off transfers, but Pulis now has a major influence over the whole process.
West Ham United
The club’s recruitment is now run by David Moyes’s old scout at Everton, Tony Henry, who arrived in east London last year. West Ham are beginning to broaden their horizons and have already signed Pedro Obiang from Sampdoria and Dimitri Payet from Marseille. There is a growing focus on youth and pace. The co-owner, David Sullivan, also involves himself in transfers. He took the credit for the signing of Diafra Sakho last summer – there were suggestions that Sam Allardyce was unsure about the Senegalese striker – and Mauro Zarate said that he was Sullivan’s choice. However Allardyce’s replacement, Slaven Bilic, will be able to use his knowledge of eastern European and Turkish football to spot players.
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