Steve Walsh - no longer our Director of Football

[Timak]

I don't understand the need for a DOF. A role which has never worked in our league. Our Clubs have done well for a number of years without one, just more 'cool' foreign stuff, my ass, terrible role, for me the manager should have complete control of everything football, it's his neck on the line at the end of the day.

Pretty much every major club has one, they either call them sporting directors or director of football. They don't even have to be on the footballing side of the club. Levy pretty much performs the role at Spurs.

Chelsea (though there's has just joined Monaco), Man City and Leicester all have people in those roles so that is the last 3 sets of champions.

It makes sense.

All it is is a job to offer continuity. So you pick a style of play and ensure that the coaches and players you recruit fit in with that style and you don't have any obvious gaps in your squad.

Clearly it has been a massive failure here. You don't pick between Silva and Allardyce - who play opposing styles - and you don't go without strikers, left backs or passers for 6 months +

 

[NCLBlue]

How he has managed to avoid the flack whilst letting young foreign lads get rinsed in the media and shown up by Allardyce who has reduced all their credibility despite being good players in their previous leagues.

Absolute dog this lad.

 

[Timak]

Williams - On paper he looked like the ideal replacement for Stones, his stats for shots blocked, tackles, interceptions etc. all looked great. He's never looked like the player he was for Swansea or Wales, starting a riot against Lyon has been his most memorable moment in blue so far.

Because people don't know how to use stats.

Context matters. Same problem with Keane.

Teams that defend deep and defend often will always have higher volumes of things like tackles, blocks and interceptions than defenders who play on dominant teams or defend high up the pitch.

Same with Gylfi - I endlessly whined that people were using the wrong stats to judge him. His deadballs are no better than average, they were just converted at an unusually high rate last year and he took every single one. His 6 open play goals came from 120 shots. Lukaku got 24 from 98 shots.

Lo and behold Gylfi regresses to the mean and has to share dead ball situations and his completions (goals and assists) fall away yet everything else (passes, interceptions, tackles, distance run) stay the same.

 

[leslad]

Director of (shockingly bad) football.

 

[Milkman]

Because people don't know how to use stats.

Context matters. Same problem with Keane.

Teams that defend deep and defend often will always have higher volumes of things like tackles, blocks and interceptions than defenders who play on dominant teams or defend high up the pitch.

Same with Gylfi - I endlessly whined that people were using the wrong stats to judge him. His deadballs are no better than average, they were just converted at an unusually high rate last year and he took every single one. His 6 open play goals came from 120 shots. Lukaku got 24 from 98 shots.

Lo and behold Gylfi regresses to the mean and has to share dead ball situations and his completions (goals and assists) fall away yet everything else (passes, interceptions, tackles, distance run) stay the same.

There was a really good series of tweets in the summer about Klaassen too, if I remember right. Some Dutch stats guy(?) looked at Klaassen's influence on Ajax games throughout the season when he was captain and scored and assisted a lot. Basically showed that the numbers look good, but he completely hides from the ball and has next to no influence on the play. Would love to dig them up again, knowing what we know now.

 

[Azza]

I've reported him to https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

 

[NCLBlue]

I've reported him to https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

lollollollollol

 

[Big Fat Sam]

I didn't think it possible but when it's written down like that it is stark and damning and has made me even more depressed. Thanks a lot.

You are welcome mate!

 

[Little Ralphy]

Because people don't know how to use stats.

Context matters. Same problem with Keane.

Teams that defend deep and defend often will always have higher volumes of things like tackles, blocks and interceptions than defenders who play on dominant teams or defend high up the pitch.

Same with Gylfi - I endlessly whined that people were using the wrong stats to judge him. His deadballs are no better than average, they were just converted at an unusually high rate last year and he took every single one. His 6 open play goals came from 120 shots. Lukaku got 24 from 98 shots.

Lo and behold Gylfi regresses to the mean and has to share dead ball situations and his completions (goals and assists) fall away yet everything else (passes, interceptions, tackles, distance run) stay the same.

This is so true and so worrying at the same time. When walsh came out and said we'd have finished 7th even without Lukaku it just showed he's clearly one of the ones who doesn't know how to use stats and it hammered home why our recruitment has been so poor.

 

[Timak]

There was a really good series of tweets in the summer about Klaassen too, if I remember right. Some Dutch stats guy(?) looked at Klaassen's influence on Ajax games throughout the season when he was captain and scored and assisted a lot. Basically showed that the numbers look good, but he completely hides from the ball and has next to no influence on the play. Would love to dig them up again, knowing what we know now.

I mentioned it when we signed him in the summer. Said his strength was timing runs and finishing but he needed to be surrounded by passers to get anything out of him. Same with Siggy. Our passers were Barry and Barkley and to me the lack of players to play the ball forward is our biggest issue.





Click on second tweet to expand it where he talks about how Klaassen will fare.

 

[Milkman]

I mentioned it when we signed him in the summer. Said his strength was timing runs and finishing but he needed to be surrounded by passers to get anything out of him. Same with Siggy. Our passers were Barry and Barkley and to me the lack of players to play the ball forward is our biggest issue.





Click on second tweet to expand it where he talks about how Klaassen will fare.

Thaaaat's the one!

 

[riddick]

Yeah, the DoF position CAN work, we just decided to ignore what everyone else does succesfully and recruite someone who's biggest attribute is going on holiday. When Martinez was sacked, someone like Favre or someone else who played similar to us should have been brought in. When (that man) was sacked, now someone like Fonseca should have been the immediate replacement. To go from Martinez to Koeman to Fat Sam literally says they have no idea what the long term plan is.

The idea of DoF is that you have the players to fit the system, the manager is then tasked to tweak the system to his style but with the players available. With us, we went from 'lots of passing that never went anywhere' to 'get big men on the flanks and cross in to the middle to a grock' to 'hoof and pray'.

When the manager says "I need an better player in [position]", it isn't asked 'what type do you need', that type of player is in the vein of the ethos of the club already. Like it was stated with Monchi, he has a board with every position with then 4-5 players that they could recruit. We have "let's get a LB......nah, our ONE target went to Arsenal, we don't need any more" or "let's get a striker to replace the one that is leaving. Wait, that ONE striker doesn't want to come here? Nevermind then!"

It's absolutely a terrible way to go about this.

 

[Boss_Rarkley]

This blokes an utter bell get shot of him ffs Everton

 

[Eggsyblueskin]

Yeah, the DoF position CAN work, we just decided to ignore what everyone else does succesfully and recruite someone who's biggest attribute is going on holiday. When Martinez was sacked, someone like Favre or someone else who played similar to us should have been brought in. When (that man) was sacked, now someone like Fonseca should have been the immediate replacement. To go from Martinez to Koeman to Fat Sam literally says they have no idea what the long term plan is.

The idea of DoF is that you have the players to fit the system, the manager is then tasked to tweak the system to his style but with the players available. With us, we went from 'lots of passing that never went anywhere' to 'get big men on the flanks and cross in to the middle to a grock' to 'hoof and pray'.

When the manager says "I need an better player in [position]", it isn't asked 'what type do you need', that type of player is in the vein of the ethos of the club already. Like it was stated with Monchi, he has a board with every position with then 4-5 players that they could recruit. We have "let's get a LB......nah, our ONE target went to Arsenal, we don't need any more" or "let's get a striker to replace the one that is leaving. Wait, that ONE striker doesn't want to come here? Nevermind then!"

It's absolutely a terrible way to go about this.

Absolutely agree with this. Our plunge into chaos actually began with the appointment of Martinez, regardless of his abilities ,his style of play was utterly unsuited to the squad he inherited. His attempts to alter it increasingly disrupted the stability of the team and began the descent into the mire in the which we now find ourselves.

 

[billyblue80]

Utter failure this guy we've regressed massively since he's been here