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Steve Hitchen

DubaiSpur said:
His peers being, who, the lookouts on the Titanic? Because he certainly doesn't belong with other Directors of Football worthy of the name, imo.

And I would disagree anyway. I suspect a proper DoF sees every window as an opportunity to shape the squad, add something new, keep the team going, ship out deadwood, keep the squad in flux so no one gets comfortable.The ones who dislike January are the chairmen, since they have to pay more to get players over the line. Well, the chairmen like Levy, anyway.

If the DoF is echoing the chairman...*our* chairman's position of not liking January because it doesn't have 550,000 weeks in it to haggle 25p off the fee, I don't think he's doing his job properly.
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Since when has Steve Hitchen been Director of Football?
 
Daisuk said:
Here's a list of our "major" signings since 2015, for instance. I'll put the ones that have actually come good in bold, and acceptable ones in italics:

Yedlin
Wimmer
Trippier
N'Jie
Son
Alderweireld
N'Koudou
Wanyama
Janssen
Sissoko
Foyth
Gazzaniga
Llorente
Aurier
Moura
Sanchez
Gedson
Clarke
Lo Celso
Sessegnon
Bergwijn
Ndombele
Bale
Vinicius
Rodon
Højbjerg
Doherty
Reguilon

There's still time for a few of these to come good, of course - but we need a system to accommodate them. So many of these have had 2+ seasons, yet they just don't seem integrated in the squad. Why did we sign Vinicius as a backup striker if we weren't prepared to pay up for him? Seems like it was just a punt all along - so why even bother? Why didn't we use a young striker in his stead? Just the odd example - but the list is littered with weird signings.
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That's your opinion on who has come good etc. And no club gets all their transfers right, it's about 50/50.
 
DubaiSpur said:
Instead of all these imaginary scenarios of him being a frustrated superscout with a folder of great players in his desk, I prefer to think about what he actually said, on camera, attributable to him, directly. Said to the tealady for some reason.

'I hate January'.

For a man whose job revolves around four months - January, June, July, August - to declare that he hates doing his job for 25% of the time he's supposed to actually do it is just ass-kissing Levy to a degree I can barely fathom.

Bad enough he buys dud after dud. That he's a Levy mini-me who also kisses up to the boss is just proof of him being an incompetent promoted well beyond his actual ability.
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So a scripted line said for the cameras in a documentary is what you base your opinion of him on??? That really is grasping at straws.
It'd be worse than me basing my opinion of you based solely on your rants on Levy in here. I'm sure you're a nice bloke and relatively sane, but I'd probably take a different opinion basing only your Levy posts :p

Plenty of managers, agents and those involved in trying to make transfers happen say they hate January because it is so hard to do business.
 
The “I hate January” line, Hitchen probably thought it was a throwaway line. People don’t like certain aspects of their job, I do get that, but he has to have some common sense to know that hearing that isn’t exactly going to endear him to people when as others said, we have certain short windows to operate in to identify our targets and execute a purchase or a loan. If he has any sense he shouldn’t say things like that in public again :D
 
so if a new dof comes hitchen goes?

twitter with rumours of new dof and players unhappy that he might go

https://twitter.com/thespursweb?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author




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billyiddo said:
So much taken from a line said on a puff piece documentary
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It does my head in that people judge him so harshly on that documentary and on that line in particular. Shows all that's wrong with public debate. Condemn a man based on nothing more than a throwaway line with no context.

I've no real idea how good or otherwise Hitchen is because I don't know his exact brief. I suspect most people condemning him know about as much as me.
 
DeanoAustin said:
It does my head in that people judge him so harshly on that documentary and on that line in particular. Shows all that's wrong with public debate. Condemn a man based on nothing more than a throwaway line with no context.

I've no real idea how good or otherwise Hitchen is because I don't know his exact brief. I suspect most people condemning him know about as much as me.
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Spot on. And a comment he made that I think, if interpreted with any good will is actually a very good comment.

To me he effectively said that he wants to work methodically, gain a lot of information over time and plan to try to maximise the chances of success with a signing.

The January window is a window of opportunity signings where doing this becomes more difficult. Have to make quicker decisions when an opportunity arises, with more limited information and fewer options.

I think this shows why interviews in fotball are mostly boring, meaningless, media trained nonsense that at best barely could be distinguished from an auto generated algorithm. Not even current state AI/machine learning, just a semi competent algorithm.

Honesty, nuance, leaving any room for interpretation means people will jump on you unless you're consistently successful - and that's just about impossible. So everything is designed to be bland, boring, lacking of content.
 
MKSpur said:
Unhappy as that means they may actually be sold or have to compete with better players??
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My thought too. Being best-mates with the players is very low down the priority list for a DoF characteristics in my view

Clearly you dont want people in any organisation who are toxic, but I wouldnt be remotely bothered if players were unhappy if he left
 
Sanchez 42
Moura 28.4
Aurier 25
Llorente 15.1
Foyth 10.5
Gazzaniga 2
Ndombele 62
Bergwijn 30
Sessegnon 27
Lo Celso 48
Clarke 11
Gedson 4.5
Reguilon 30
Doherty 16.8
Hojbjerg 16.6
Rodon 12.1
Vinicius 3

Total €384M

From 2017 to 2021, this man killed the club with transfers on his watch. Not one single transfer you would make with hindsight. Not one single player who established themselves in the first team.
 
Agree some horror stories there but some capable players too, Hojberg and Llorente were ok, Reguilon was amazing before his injury, Moura was ok. Nonetheless you look at the failures and ouch!
 
Llorente got us through several CL ties on that run, which more than pay for his fee. Similar argument with Moura - Ajax alone was worth 10 times his fee.

The rest though deserve prison time.
 
Lemonade Money said:
Sanchez 42
Moura 28.4
Aurier 25
Llorente 15.1
Foyth 10.5
Gazzaniga 2
Ndombele 62
Bergwijn 30
Sessegnon 27
Lo Celso 48
Clarke 11
Gedson 4.5
Reguilon 30
Doherty 16.8
Hojbjerg 16.6
Rodon 12.1
Vinicius 3

Total €384M

From 2017 to 2021, this man killed the club with transfers on his watch. Not one single transfer you would make with hindsight. Not one single player who established themselves in the first team.
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I can probably forgive Hitchen for the early mistakes. When we got 86 points in 2017, our summer was very close to being a zero net spending summer. We lost Kyle Walker and I doubt any of our signings, except maybe Aurier, were first choices from his perspective. That was about the time the club were announcing the stadium delays and we all know where the priorities had to be. Hitchen wasn't in a position to land his top targets and therefore we saw some poor players join. I think Hitchen would argue that he brought Poch a good list of targets in 2018, but the club wouldn't sanction any of his first choices, or the players wouldn't join our club. Either way, we signed nobody.

Not sure I can forgive him for most of the rest though, except for Bergwijn who I though was treated terribly by our club and got the first available bus out of Haringey.

Either way I dress it up, it's a horrible list compared to Fabio's.
 
lurker of old said:
Agree some horror stories there but some capable players too, Hojberg and Llorente were ok, Reguilon was amazing before his injury, Moura was ok. Nonetheless you look at the failures and ouch!
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Not all disasters but overall if you were to compare to the list from 21 onwards (@Muttley's point I think)

- Romero, Bentancur, Deki, Bissouma, Richi, Sarr, Spence, Porro, Udogie, Vicario, VDV, Johnson, Maddison, Solanke, Bergvall, Gray

fudge .. even worse if you do position for position
- Romero/VDV instead of Sanchez/Rodon
- Johnson over Moura
- Maddison over GLC
- Porro/Spence over Aurier/Doherty
- Udogie over Reguilon/Sess
- Solanke over Vinicius

... sigh ..
 
Raziel said:
Not all disasters but overall if you were to compare to the list from 21 onwards (@Muttley's point I think)

- Romero, Bentancur, Deki, Bissouma, Richi, Sarr, Spence, Porro, Udogie, Vicario, VDV, Johnson, Maddison, Solanke, Bergvall, Gray

fudge .. even worse if you do position for position
- Romero/VDV instead of Sanchez/Rodon
- Johnson over Moura
- Maddison over GLC
- Porro/Spence over Aurier/Doherty
- Udogie over Reguilon/Sess
- Solanke over Vinicius

... sigh ..
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To add to the story, here's the budget numbers all in Euros (via transfermarkt)

2017 - In 121, Out 103, Net 18
2018 - 0, 5, -5
2019 - 151, 65, 86
2020 - 110, 13, 97
Total - 382, 186, 196
Average net spending per year 49m Euros

Since
2021 - 96, 35, 61
2022 - 180, 39, 141
2023 - 272, 121, 151
2024 - 149, 55, 94
Total - 697, 250, 447
Average net spending 112m Euros

We've clearly been elevated into a different transfer league since the Poch days. I think Jose and Conte started to feel the benefits but there was so much work to do. Ange has it best, and will continue to have that luxury although I don't think it will be at previous spending levels. I could be wrong on that though.
 
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