What is a Director of Football ?

I keep reading people commenting on what George Friend should be doing as Director of Football but as an ex-director of a PLC I see things as a normal business would view them. I realise that football clubs can never bne considered “ normal” but I do feel that the owners are trying to set up BRFC to be run professionally so some of this may be relevant.

The Director of any business is responsible to the Board for overseeing a particular part of the set up – in this case Football related. It is a job like any other and its responsibilities and skills need learning albeit that GF has an audience of fans watching his every move.

From the outset GF is responsible for delivering a team that delivers what the Board want and that may result driven or style of football driven. We are not party to such discussions but we do know that the emphasis is on youth and building up young players to sell on.

When George was appointed MT had already been appointed Manager by the Owners and those of us at the Fans Forum heard Matt emphasize that he was working alongside George and it was nice of George to be talking some responsibilities away from him. Matt was making it clear that George was not his boss and he was not reporting into him. The body language at the table suggested some resentment but I may have been reading things into that.

Caldy is the first Manager who is effectively reporting into GF and so at last he is directly responsible at last for all football related matters.

Speaking as an ex- director of a fairly large company - the last thing that you want to do is undermine any ,member of the Management who report into you. Why would you? – it means that you are having to do someone else’s job and just adding to your own workload.

This means empowering them to do the job and once you are confident that they are doing it well then applying as light a touch as possible. Football Managers are notoriously ego driven and must be tricky to try and oversee. The reality is also that GF has no managerial experience and so he is probably learning from Kevin Bond at the same time.

Of course GF will ask for feedback from the coaches and management so that he can report back to the Board but that does not mean he will impose his own will. That is his decision.

Part of his responsibility is also overseeing transfer activity and whilst GF is known to have been interested in the statistical analysis of players for many years , he was suddenly thrown in at the deep end and asked to find an entire team of players. Maybe it meant gambling with one or 2 players who were perhaps not as well researched as they would like .

We also have to bear in mind his overall goal to deliver the Board's style of football and we dont know if perhaps that put him at odds with MT. Perhaps he was recruiting for a different type of player simply because he knew that MT's way of playing did not fit in with the clubs longer tern strategy . Do you recruoit for the Manager or the club? That discussion was attributed to the coaching staff so why not the players as well?

The best of GF as Director of Football lies ahead of him and it is crazy to judge him so early.

There is an expression that someone is growing into their job and that basically applies when someone is given a job to develop into. I get the impression that GF is growing into the Director af Football role.

The only people who will judge his performance and they are the ones who will fully understand his situation.

The rest of us are just guessing .

All opinions are my own- who else would want them   . #UTG