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The old debate about the director of football raises its head once again with the issues at Tottenham, where signing players seems to be a shared responsibility between the manager and the technical director, Franco Baldini.
My view is that the signing of players should be a simple process. The chief scout identifies them, the manager decides who he wants and the chief executive is dispatched to do the deal. If the chief executive cannot sign the players then he is in the wrong job. It really is as simple as that.
At Manchester United it was a very simple partnership between Sir Alex Ferguson and the then-chief executive David Gill.
Both of them were very good at their jobs. Beyond that Ferguson had scouts all over the world who would bring him options which he would discuss and then act upon.In football over the last 10 years, there has been a huge boom in job creation, of which the director of football is just one.
The Franco Baldini signings not good enough for Tottenham
These days, when I look at the bench of a Premier League team I find myself counting up to 16 members of staff.
Everyone has an assistant these days: the physio, the doctor, the kitman, even the man who makes the drinks. There are more staff than there are players!
If I was to become a manager, I would not want someone else to be signing the players for the team that my job depended on.
It pays to keep the people involved with that process, certainly at the decision-making end, much tighter. Keeping those staffing levels low will also save a lot of money.
