If your Newcastle you would give Edwards a blank cheque and tell him to fill it in to be head of recruitment. The smart thing would be to pair Edwards with an emerging manager like Potter but the shithouses will probably be looking to splash the cash and go for the short cut with big names.
I really hope FSG can get Edwards to stay.
It’s not just one man though. Liverpool have a whole team working on research with the likes of Ian Graham (Director of Research) and Will Spearman (Lead Data Scientist) leading things. That team does all the work on the reports and analysis for recruitment (main remit) but also they’ve published papers and come up with tools for Klopp to have analysis in-game, for example, which helps him make decisions during the game and at HT.
Losing Edwards won’t change all that, and if he doesn’t want to be at the club, maybe it’s best to have a new Sporting Director who does want to be at the club and has ideas of his/her own. His (Edwards) most important work was getting the recruitment dept overhauled and overseeing the setup of the Research dept (which is now run by someone else anyway, who is a lifelong LFC Fan).
The club would probably prefer he doesn’t replicate our success at another club though, so I imagine they will still be trying to persuade him to stay.
