Liverpool in the 70's and 80's, Ferguson in the 90's and 00's, Wenger in the 00's have all been the dominant teams with the manager having a huge amount of power. Guardiola has dominated recently with a huge amount of power. Arsenal have flourished since under Arteta who has a lot of power.
The biggest turnaround in the Premier League has been Aston Villa with Emery bringing in his own DoF in Monchi and having a huge amount of power. Our best seasons over the last couple of decades have been when the likes of Benitez and Klopp had huge amounts of power.
No one in this League has ever had a transformative SD or DoF who has changed things and turned their team into the dominant force.
I know quite a few Arsenal fans, they’re always very happy to remind me that their recent surge is down to Arteta
and Edu. They never talk about power and final say, instead saying that the chemistry/harmony there means nobody talks about it in that way.
Guardiola had the Barcelona lot in at City years before he got there, there’s no doubting he has power there, but he isn’t running CFG and again, it’s as much about the balance of power there as it is just one single man calling the shots.
The point is, every great club has a structure, you’re trying to suggest a structure cannot function if the manager isn’t the dominant figure in terms of decisions and voting power. I’d suggest that at most successful clubs this sort of stuff becomes irrelevant because they’re aligned on all levels. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how you remain aligned on all levels, usually being pretty grown up and transparent goes a long way.
I think pretty much every big club in the world operates in a way where the structure is responsible for strategy and the manager is responsible for coaching and preparing the team. You don’t see Real Madrid giving Ancelotti final say on everything, do you? Nor do you see it with Barcelona. You keep saying Emery brought in Monchi to Aston Villa, Monchi has been a Sporting Director for over 20 years, he’s joined Aston Villa as president of sporting operations, then they have Damian Vidagny as their Director of Football. Monchi brought Emery in at Seville and worked above him. They all work
together and I almost guarantee nobody will be talking about who has final say, who has the most power etc there because the dynamic has already been successful in Seville, it isn’t a talking point unless you’re intentionally looking to create one by insisting there is division or that there’s no way a top club can operate with a ‘head coach’ instead of a manager.
Lastly, I’ll put this in again but it was from an Athletic article on Edwards after we’d just won the league in 2020:
Howe was on a three-man shortlist with Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti for the manager's position and it was part of Edwards' job, then as Liverpool's technical director, to determine who had the outstanding credentials to replace Brendan Rodgers.
Ancelotti, who now finds himself on the other side of Stanley Park with Everton, passed all the criteria in terms of his record in the Champions League and the statistics relating to his teams at clubs including Juventus, AC Milan, Chelsea and Real Madrid. But his transfer record counted against him because the check system devised by Edwards and Liverpool's analysts deliberately placed less emphasis on a manager's recruitment in his first year.
Their theory was that a manager might not have the ultimate say when it came to transfer business during his first season but, in years two, three, four and five, that manager's influence would be greater and signings would not happen without his input.
A lot of Ancelotti's recruits were deemed to be on the older side and that jarred with Liverpool's thinking. Edwards and the hierarchy wanted players aged 26 or under who were approaching their peak years and would still have a re-sale value three or four years later.
I don’t see why that will change under Hughes/Slot. And if Arne is happy to come here under that premise and prove he’s ready to earn the additional responsibility, we should all be happy too and hope that our faith’s rewarded.
