FAO Ralf Scrampton

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Just continuing from earlier: you're dead right about the need for a happy medium. A board which knew more about football wouldn't interfere as such, but would keep an eye on things, ask the manager to compile regular reports and so on. Otherwise, the entire club stands or falls on the manager, which is crazy given the financial cost of failure.

Either the board, Worthington or both should never have got us into such a position in the first place; and a board with footballing knowledge wouldn't have taken their subsequent decisions either. On Hearts: the weird thing is we're actually closer to the happy medium now than Norwich. For the last year, we've finally had a proper manager who's put his imprint right throughout the club, and made a huge difference. And while the board have more of a say over signings than he does (at any club, the board ultimately sanctions signings or otherwise), that's slowly changing as he gains Romanov's trust more and more.

The DoF/manager structure is not a bad idea per se. The problem comes when the wrong personnel are chosen for the role, if they don't get on, or if the DoF is closer to the board and starts undermining the manager (eg. with Hamilton and Rioch). A lot of British managers seem to have too big an ego to embrace the idea; but on the continent, and increasingly at Hearts, it works very well: because Csaba Laszlo is used to working within such a structure and is fully behind the idea. And when he leaves - which'll hopefully be later rather than sooner - the transition to a new manager should in theory be pretty seamless: because the managerial structure of the club will remain entirely in place.

Posted By: thebigfeller on May 26th 2009 at 17:27:30

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