Complaints against Arsenal’s scouting team are turning out to be similar the complaints against our medical team ie fans who don’t understand anything about the either department making inaccurate assumptions on the basis of a skewed outsider view highly influenced by sensational media.
You don’t need a DoF for any of this. Ivan Gazidis has alluded to a consistent “footballing vision” multiple times in terms of style of play and youth production and has overseen improvements to our scouting (StatsDNA) and youth system (Hale End Redevelopment)
What you need is strong board members and excellent staff to support the manager.
OK, make the case for our scouting department having operated at a high level of success over the last 4-5 years.
Gazidis can allude to a footballing vision all he wants. But can he deliver it? He is a business operations and marketing guy and has no real background in the footballing side of the game, as player, manager, scout, or underling in a football operations shop. If this is your example of somebody on the board doing the work of a DoF, I rest my case.
Interestingly enough it’s rumored that it is Gazidis who wants a Director of Football put in place. If that is really the case than he knows that this part of the footballing side can better be done by someone else.
It was when I said it last season.
There were loads of posters giving me, and a few others, loads of abuse for daring to suggest such a thing could happen.
All I’m saying is, it is more than likely that this isn’t some sort of blip, this is what we have been heading for, and if Wenger stays I can’t see us getting CL football next season either.
This was my opinion not just last season, but this, and I’ve seen nothing to change my mind to suggest it won’t happen again.
If he signs a new contract we are going to fall further behind all our rivals.
No it wasn’t, because Spurs almost finished above us and they really should have done so. That is not the basis for some sort of astounding prediction.
Saying that Spurs could finish above us this season was an entirely reasonable thing to say.
As part of a new management structure, sure, why not. But as this kind of hybrid, get them onboard for some kind of transition while Wenger is still here? What’s that going to achieve?
Is the director going to tell Wenger the kind of football we should play? The profile of player we should sign? How money should be spent? Or do they just spend two years coming up with the succession plan? I can only see it causing issues and Wenger’s still going to be fucking up stuff like team selection and tactics.
