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Franco Baldini

milo said:
If you are going to place the blame at his door, you first need to be certain which of the summer 2013 signings were his. You also seem to assume that the only criteria that we should judge him on is first team signings, do you think that he has any role at the club outside of this?
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But does this also apply when the players that are signed turn out to be a success? I am not levelling this at you, but I've seen posters praise current and former DOF's in the past for the good signings, but then say "it's a committee" when the players turn out to be not so good.
 
milo said:
Other than people not understanding how it works, I do not understand why people get so worked up about the committee. I am sure that there are multiple people involved in identifying and targeting players at most clubs.
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I'm fine with that. I'm just a bit old school and ultimately believe the final say should lay with the manager i.e. if the DOF or whoever suggests x player but the manager says no, that should be the end of it.
 
Jurgen the German said:
Well yeah, minus Levy though (or what it should be anyway), sorry that wasn't 100% clear.
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I think it'll be Mitchell, Baldini and Poch with Levy signing off on deals and outlining the overall strategy (the budget and policy of young with potential and so on) - under Arnesen and Commoli it seemed as though he let them get on with things within those parameters so i expect the same this time around.
 
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Jurgen the German said:
But does this also apply when the players that are signed turn out to be a success? I am not levelling this at you, but I've seen posters praise current and former DOF's in the past for the good signings, but then say "it's a committee" when the players turn out to be not so good.
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It's the same vice versa

Meh people always seem to need to blame/praise one person in particular for bad/good transfers and i guess what puts people off with this setup is there's not enough room for blame placing.
 
Jurgen the German said:
But does this also apply when the players that are signed turn out to be a success? I am not levelling this at you, but I've seen posters praise current and former DOF's in the past for the good signings, but then say "it's a committee" when the players turn out to be not so good.
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I'm not particularly interested in appropriating blame, we do not have a clear idea of who makes what decision, so it seems silly to start blaming person x or y. I'm happy to to credit the group when we are moving forward and criticising them when we take a step back.
 
Jurgen the German said:
I'm fine with that. I'm just a bit old school and ultimately believe the final say should lay with the manager i.e. if the DOF or whoever suggests x player but the manager says no, that should be the end of it.
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I'm more interested in what works but I think that it is telling that most major clubs in Europe and an increasing number of Premier League clubs do not give the manager a final say.

I think that most of the complaints levelled at DoFs by some managers is just a case of getting their excuses in early and no different to the kind of complaints that used to be made about chairmen.
 
milo said:
I'm not particularly interested in appropriating blame, we do not have a clear idea of who makes what decision, so it seems silly to start blaming person x or y. I'm happy to to credit the group when we are moving forward and criticising them when we take a step back.
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Well I would say we have taken a step back so I can't say I'm surprised to see people questioning him and/or the setup.
 
billyiddo said:
I think it'll be Mitchell, Baldini and Poch with Levy signing off on deals and outlining the overall strategy (the budget and policy of young with potential and so on) - under Arnesen and Commoli it seemed as though he let them get on with things within those parameters so i expect the same this time around.
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Same under Redknapp too.

Levy has some input, I'm guessing he has to be convinced on some signings - particularly if it involves high wages and older players. But the difference in transfer strategy under different regimes is so marked that it seems pretty obvious to me that Levy's approach gives the footballing people a large amount of freedom.
 
mattls said:
This is all i can find what he does when he was first appointed..

"Franco is extremely well respected in the industry, possessing an extensive knowledge of players around the world," said chairman Daniel Levy on the club's official website.

"He will strengthen our football management team, particularly in the field of recruitment, working closely with Andre Villas-Boas and Tim Sherwood across all levels on the playing side."
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And from that you've concluded he's responsible for all transfer dealings? He doesn't sign the cheques, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have the final say in targets - maybe more so with younger players but not sure how he can be held accountable for that area of things....
 
that's a big can of worms you've potentially opened there with regards to Redknapp @braineclipse :D - personally i think Levy would have kept a lot tighter control of him than of the DoFs, but essentially if he was playing ball with regards to signing players which fit in with the clubs policy then yes he would have had similar freedom.
 
Jurgen the German said:
That's what I don't get. Why is there a committee? Surely it should be the manager and the dof TOGETHER in agreement that have the final say with Levy the one who deals with the negotiation in price but staying out of the discussions in terms of who we bring in?
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To be fair is that not what happens more or less? Naturally a lot of the time the coach and dof are going to have slightly different preferences and would just have to come to some sort of agreement. When it all goes wrong a la AVB I suppose it's then easier for AVB to say he didn't want certain players, when they probably had reached some sort of compromise. As for Levy he treats the clubs money like its his own, so to an extent I don't blame him for having an opinion on who comes in. Does anyone know if Levy has any actual footballing knowledge?
 
Jurgen the German said:
Well I would say we have taken a step back so I can't say I'm surprised to see people questioning him and/or the setup.
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Even if we have taken a step back it's not a big step and it seems obvious we are intent on investing heavily in youth which will take a few years to really come to fruition although we are clearly reaping some benefits already. Baldini was previously renowned for bringing in talented young players, Poch for coaching talented youngsters and Mitchell no doubt has the same sort of remit so seems everyone is moving in the same direction...
 
billyiddo said:
that's a big can of worms you've potentially opened there with regards to Redknapp @braineclipse :D - personally i think Levy would have kept a lot tighter control of him than of the DoFs, but essentially if he was playing ball with regards to signing players which fit in with the clubs policy then yes he would have had similar freedom.
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Over a week until the next game - might as well go worm-can-opening ;)

He did get a lot of freedom though, with his type of signings. Keane, Palacios, Defoe, Crouch, Kaboul, Bassong, Friedel, Gallas, Parker. These were not "Levy signings" they were certainly markedly different from the types of players we targeted under Comolli and Arnesen. After the early signings of Walker and Naughton Redknapp commented that we had enough young players, or words to that effect, and the signing of younger players pretty much stopped. Exception being Sandro, who Redknapp himself said was someone targeted by our head scout.

It might very well be that Redknapp had to work hard to convince Levy to sign those players. Proven PL players on very solid wages in their late twenties aren't really Levy's first choice most of the time. But the evidence would seem to show that Redknapp got his will more often than not. Just like it seemed with our other managers, head coaches and DoFs.
 
@braineclipse The difference in how i imagine things to have been is that the DoFs would have been able to scout/approach/all but sign the players of their choosing - at which point Levy would have cast an eye over things and then give the green light. With Redknapp i imagine Levy was a lot more involved (understandably so IMO) in general transfer activity - as i understand it our scouting team was left in a dire state once Arnesen/Comoli had departed so i think Levy was a lot more eagle eyed/cautious with transfer deals, not that Redknapp didn't get the run of things - just that he would have been under tighter control than the DoFs
 
Jurgen the German said:
League positions over the past couple of seasons.

Overall play.

The quality of the squad, or lack thereof.
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Sorry, I meant what point are you saying we deteriorated from? My follow up question would be, do you think that we have only deteriorated from that point or was there a drop and then an improvement?
 
milo said:
Sorry, I meant what point are you saying we deteriorated from? My follow up question would be, do you think that we have only deteriorated from that point or was there a drop and then an improvement?
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We have dropped from a team challenging for the top 4 to a team that is fighting for a place in the top 6. Not a massive drop off, but we have regressed.

I'd say we have dipped since Bale left. The league position will ultimately determine whether this season is judged as progress. We look better going forward, but just as bad (if not worse) defensively.
 
billyiddo said:
@braineclipse The difference in how i imagine things to have been is that the DoFs would have been able to scout/approach/all but sign the players of their choosing - at which point Levy would have cast an eye over things and then give the green light. With Redknapp i imagine Levy was a lot more involved (understandably so IMO) in general transfer activity - as i understand it our scouting team was left in a dire state once Arnesen/Comoli had departed so i think Levy was a lot more eagle eyed/cautious with transfer deals, not that Redknapp didn't get the run of things - just that he would have been under tighter control than the DoFs
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Possibly, but I see no real evidence of that in our transfer history. Do you?

Jurgen the German said:
We have dropped from a team challenging for the top 4 to a team that is fighting for a place in the top 6. Not a massive drop off, but we have regressed.

I'd say we have dipped since Bale left. The league position will ultimately determine whether this season is judged as progress. We look better going forward, but just as bad (if not worse) defensively.
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We've dipped since Modric left. We were clearly not as good overall, or reach the same league position, in AVB's first season after Modric left. We then regressed a bit more after Bale left.

Baldini, like Pochettino, has been overseeing a massive change in the squad though. Not only trying to fill the gaps left by Modric and Bale, but also a whole host of other changes, primarily due to age. Generation shift as well as losing King, Modric and Bale over a 3 year period. If there was no regression it would have been a huge achievement. If we can bounce back relatively quickly (next season) to where we were that would also be rather good imo.
 
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