Steve Walsh - no longer our Director of Football

[bluestevon]

..I think he has to be culpable for the recruitment of so many similar players and the lack of progress in key positions. We lack pace and athleticism, we lack team shape and strategy. What we don’t know is the level of his culpability but he is Director of Football.

We have acquired some good players but I suspect he’s in last chance saloon.

In reality, he should indeed be in the last chance saloon mate, a huge amount i would wager will also depend on what the next manager manages to get out these players, if they suddenly start performing in a new system, new methods etc, then a lot of negatives about Walsh disappear, the striker thing is the big one though that he has to accept a portion of the blame for regardless of anything else.

 

[Brisan123]

It's a little bit hard to judge who is at fault for some stuff

The Echo reported as recently as yesterday that Walsh is responsible for identifying transfer targets, but negotiations are still led by Kenwright

So - if Walsh identified the strikers we needed but Kenwright couldn't get the deals done for them, where does the blame lie? I think it's a bit of a grey area

The striker and lack of cover for Baines aren't going to go away and they're glaring issues.

What I would say about our summer recruitment is that I think all of the players who arrived in the summer should get a clean slate from here - we've been a mess and a couple of narrow, possibly undeserved wins against Stoke and Bournemouth have masked the possibility that we may have been the worst side in the whole league up to this point. It can't have been easy for anyone to settle in a situation like that or with the alleged atmosphere off the pitch.

So the likes of Pickford (who doesn't really need the clean slate), Keane, Klaassen, Sigurdsson, Sandro, Rooney, Vlasic (who again has done fine anyway) and even Martina get a pass for what has gone before. We start again and I'll judge them from what I see from now.

As far as Walsh goes - benefit of the doubt as it looks on the face of things that Kenwright and Koeman are more culpable for perceived failings up to this point

Kenwright and Elstone are the 2 major factors holding this club back
Kenwright has a long and proud history of messing up transfers and leaving them till the last minute.
People buy this I’m a blue and I stood in the boys pen crap.
He wouldn’t sell to the City owners because they wanted 100 % control and he wouldn’t relinquish it.
As far as I’m concerned Bill is urinatimg on our backs and telling us it’s raining.
I don’t mind him pooping on the fans but when he rubs it in that infuriates me.
We will never achieve anything while that parasite is on the board

 

[orly]

Kenwright and Elstone are the 2 major factors holding this club back
Kenwright has a long and proud history of messing up transfers and leaving them till the last minute.
People buy this I’m a blue and I stood in the boys pen crap.
He wouldn’t sell to the City owners because they wanted 100 % control and he wouldn’t relinquish it.
As far as I’m concerned Bill is urinatimg on our backs and telling us it’s raining.
I don’t mind him pooping on the fans but when he rubs it in that infuriates me.
We will never achieve anything while that parasite is on the board

I think you may have a weird fetish here

 

[BlueToff]

Again, the grey area is how much of the blame he shoulders. If he is identifying the players and Kenwright and co are the ones who are doing the negotiating (i.e. the ones who chased Gylfi for so long), I don't know how much of it you can lay at his door.

We want a scapegoat for the way the end of the window panned out, but because none of us really know where responsibilities lie anymore, it's hard to pinpoint one

Alan Myers will not be back at the club under the existing management structure, but you're absolutely right about communication

As DoF, one of his major remits (not the only one) is to be involved with transfer negotiations.

I understand he is learning himself, but we knew for six months that Rom was leaving.

To not have an extensive list of striker targets already lined up and having entered discussions with is a travesty.

 

[MartSlinger]

As DoF, one of his major remits (not the only one) is to be involved with transfer negotiations.

I understand he is learning himself, but we knew for six months that Rom was leaving.

To not have an extensive list of striker targets already lined up and having entered discussions with is a travesty.

It was almost as if they wrote down Olivier Giroud and didnt get any further than that. Once that collapsed they all panicked, amateurs.

 

[Eggs]

Team shape and strategy has to be the manager

The decision to get both Rooney and Sigurdsson in is a curious one - difficult to see how they co-exist in any coherent strategy, but I think you could make reasonable arguments about the rest - Klaassen isn't a number 10, for example, as people keep labelling him

..I agree team shape and strategy are the manager but you would hope the DoF acquires players to fit the strategy. This is what disappoints me. If priorities are obvious and players he is asked to pursue don’t fit the team model you would hope he’s at least challenging the manager even if he’s not empowered to do anything about it.

The relationship has to be a partnership, they have to be on the same page even if one has the final say.

 

[Brendan Janus]

They must all be singing from the same hymn sheet !!

 

[Jay]

The fact that Unsworth mentioned Walsh in his conference yesterday (specially the way he mentioned him, saying he and Walsh came and met the team) means he is staying for now and Unsworth likes/wants/ him

 

[Muggins]

I think you may have a weird fetish here

Caveo .

 

[Furey1878]

Nymz, I hate to see it but you're coming off a bit desperate for Walsh to come out of this smelling of roses. Are you his kid or something?

He’s just said Walsh is his mates dad ffs can you not read?

 

[toffeeblue9]

As DoF, one of his major remits (not the only one) is to be involved with transfer negotiations.

I understand he is learning himself, but we knew for six months that Rom was leaving.

To not have an extensive list of striker targets already lined up and having entered discussions with is a travesty.

It's this bit that is the grey area, because from what we are reading, it's Kenwright who is leading negotiations, not Walsh

 

[toffeeblue9]

..I agree team shape and strategy are the manager but you would hope the DoF acquires players to fit the strategy. This is what disappoints me. If priorities are obvious and players he is asked to pursue don’t fit the team model you would hope he’s at least challenging the manager even if he’s not empowered to do anything about it.

The relationship has to be a partnership, they have to be on the same page even if one has the final say.

Yes, agreed, and from what we are hearing the Walsh/Koeman relationship appears to have broken down

But to be fair, the "plan" (if you can call it that) from Koeman, appears to have been to set up around a big target man, get the likes of Sigurdsson supplying him and getting the likes of Klaassen and Rooney around him, scoring goals from deeper positions. On paper, that's their game I guess, but in practice without that striker it's just a big mess and I suspect it would have been horrendous anyway.

Being really simplistic about it, it seems that the manager tells Walsh how he wants to play and the type of player he wants to fit into that. Walsh and his team identify the best players to fit that and then once decisions are made between the manager and Walsh about who the primary targets are, the negotiating is led by Bill and co - I may have that wrong, but that's my broad understanding of it

 

[BlueToff]

It's this bit that is the grey area, because from what we are reading, it's Kenwright who is leading negotiations, not Walsh

Maybe not 'leading', but Walsh is involved and was involved heavily this summer in all of the deals.

You're right though. This needs to be made clear.

Either Bill takes a back seat completely, or both he and Walsh work to certain roles within each deal (i.e. Bill negotiates price or whatever, and Walsh sells the club and the long-term plan, with the manager involved in terms of what player or what types of player he wants).

 

[bicycleheader]

It was almost as if they wrote down Olivier Giroud and didnt get any further than that. Once that collapsed they all panicked, amateurs.

probably spelled his name wrong too

 

[MickA]

It's this bit that is the grey area, because from what we are reading, it's Kenwright who is leading negotiations, not Walsh

Spot on. Maybe on the inside they all have clearly defined roles and responsibilities but from the outside it looks chaotic. Walsh has been promoted to a position he's never held before and seemingly only gets involved with transfers (isn't Unsworth director of coaching?).

Everton need to stop playing at things and implement a proper, robust structure with the right personnel in the right roles, coaching, recruitment, stats analysis, fitness etc etc. Understand what our core values are and how we want to play then go from there. Will mitigate all future manager/coach changes and stop revolution after revolution wrt thinking, tactics and players.

We need to ditch the absurd manager longevity/creating a dynasty obsession and become cutting edge.