Ruthless say some, reckless says I.
Whilst people are lining up to praise them for ruthlessly dismissing Comolli for last summer, they’re missing the wood from the trees. The idea that the DoF is perhaps the most long-term role at the football club, and also that it was recklessness on their part initially to hire Comolli in that role through sheer nepotism.
I’ll be repeating myself a fair bit here, so I’ll just quote what I wrote about the situation last weekend:
As I’ve said to royhendo, my personal concern with Comolli – and by extension FSG – isn’t necessarily the job he’s doing but how he got the job in the first place. FSG expect patience over the stadium. FSG expected patience as they dragged out the hiring of Ayre as MD, telling us it was a long-drawn out process and how they had to make sure they did everything properly before deciding Ayre was the man for the job. FSG asked for patience as they dragged out Hodgson’s reign like death by a thousand cuts before finally cutting off the head just before United away in the cup. They are well within their rights to ask for patience, especially if they were undergoing a laborious, all-encompassing process for determining who the right person to move us forward is. It’s only right we grant them that patience, because if they’re correct then it’s to our benefit.
So what process was Comolli subject to before they decided he was the man to become Director of Football at Liverpool? How was his position decided? It is after-all, perhaps the most important role at the club. He has control over the future of the club, both in terms of transfers and the academy. Comolli also has control of the present, given he presides over the first-team coaching staff. It’s a lot of responsibility… So how did they decide that Damien Comolli was the man for the job?
Was Damien Comolli subject to the same extensive vetting that Ayre was, or did he just happen to be on Billy Beane’s speed-dial? Would it be too cynical to suggest that FSG, with all their business savvy, gave control of the football club to a man who just happens to be close friends with the man they respect most in baseball, which is of course the sport they know better?
If Comolli was subject to some sort of interview process then who conducted it? Was it Henry and Werner, whose knowledge of football would’ve amounted to what at the time? Owning Pay As You Play and having the Swiss Ramble in their favourites? Perhaps that tad dismissive, but I’m generally curious as to what the level of football knowledge was amongst those who decided that Comolli was the man for the job. That’s not because I think Comolli is the wrong man for the job, but I would like to know what exactly entitled him to get the job over some of the other candidates available.
When FSG decided that they wanted a director of football who exactly was on the short-list, was there even a short-list? Let’s take into account for a second that with Pep Guardiola and Mourinho in-situ at the two big Spanish clubs there aren’t many bigger clubs available than Liverpool who have a director of football, and those that do tend to have people who already hold a strong association with their club. So with that in mind did FSG consider Corvino at Fiorentina or Monchi? Did they only consider candidates who were out of work such as Txiki Begiristain, who was hugely successful in his time at Barcelona and had experience at running a club who were heavily reliant on a philosophy where the academy was fundamental to its future success?
My concern was given a bit of credence this morning when I had an email off someone who had been told by a pretty sound journo that Comolli’s appointment was basically suggested by Billy Beane, a baseball man, but a close friend of Comolli’s.
So here we have a couple of businessmen who think of themselves as the Thinking Men of sports business. Their first move after getting in the door is to give the most powerful, all-encompassing role at the football club to a friend of a friend on the recommendation of someone they admire in
baseball. Oh yeah, we’re really moving forward and innovating.
It’s arguably a stupider call than Hicks & Gillet using Klinsman as a ‘football consultant’. Arguably that’s exactly what FSG needed. They needed someone who could help them out as they went along, safe in the knowledge that if they were undermining anyone it was a short-term manager who was deeply unpopular with the fans. The total opposite of H&G with Rafa.
But no, FSG with their self-appointed images of being both innovators and gamblers jumped straight in, appointing Damien Comolli to the role of Director of Football Strategy (and then ultimately Director of Football).
As I say, this is an organisation that expects us to grant them time and patience with decisions like the protracted firing of Hodgson, the search for an MD and the non-movement on the stadium front. How can they ask for patience, and expect us to trust they’re carrying out a full and proper search through the best candidates, when they give the role with the most power on the footballing side of things to Comolli on a whim.
This isn’t about the job Damien Comolli did. I happen to think he did alright and that long-term his signings will look better than they currently do. But that’s long-term. Whether you think Comolli pissed money up the wall this summer or not, I think you’ve got to say it is rash to give someone such a long-term role and then sack them so quickly for disappointing.
My point isn’t necessarily about Comolli though – I think he did ok, but I also don’t see what made him the stand-out candidate for the job in the first place, other than he was the only one. That’s kind of the crux of this. Whether you think Comolli was good or bad, the question should be why he got the job in the first place.
There’s plenty on here now praising their vision and their strategy for correcting their mistake so quickly, but once again they seem to have made the decision with no consultation from someone with experience in football, which is what got them into the mess in the first place.
Personally I think a Director of Football is essential at a club our size. I think a coach has to earn that level of power through success, which is what Ferguson and Wenger have done. A club shouldn’t be modeled on the whim of an individual whose job expectancy is usually two years (or at Liverpool probably close to 4-5 in the last 20 years).
You need someone to ensure that the vision remains consistent and unaltered. You need a support system to ensure the manager can do his job with people working around him. It’s about giving Kenny a platform that allows him to do his job. You don’t just give him that platform in name only and then hang him out to dry as has happened countless times this season, specifically with the Suarez case but on other issues as well.
You don’t necessarily call it a Director of Football, because that title carries a certain stigma in this country for some reason. It’s too foreign to swallow perhaps. You have someone in position to carry through that long-term strategy though. If you want Kenny to use more of the kids from the academy you have someone who says that to the press, who says that there isn’t immediate pressure if the results go wrong. You don’t have people giving us a target at the start of the season whilst simultaneously querying why we’re not seeing 5 or 6 home grown teenagers a week (ok, slight hyperbole, but you see what I’m getting at).
I could rant on this a while, but I’m arsed. I’m being asked to place faith in a long-term strategy where people are employed through nepotism, and now we’re being asked to hold faith while they correct that ‘mistake’, with another decision on a whim with seemingly no advice behind it from someone of a football background. We’ll see.