New sporting director

Wow, genuinely shocked by this. Is he the one who brought in Pukki and brought their good young crop through?
Great news, he must of felt undervalued at Norwich and I’d imagine we’ve given him a decent pay rise.

Edit - worked under the sporting director at Norwich so it’s a promotion.
 
Is this a rehash of the job title Head of Recruitment operations vacated by Bevington and not refilled or is it a tad more complex? I understand that his Norwich job title was that of Bevingtons which implies more responsibility at Boro, but job titles can be deceiving. I assume he will have greater autonomy in his role at Boro. Be interesting to see how he does. Hopefully he succeeds in improving our talent flow within financial boundaries.. Good luck to him anyway

If he proves as effective as his boss was at Norwich, Stuart Webber, then it’ll be a thumbs up. Nice to see a strategy being pieced together though.
 
Anyone who knows the ins and outs explain where a 'sporting director' sits in the DoF - Manger - Recruitment set up?
There is no industry standard. He will be given a remit, and responsibilities and accountabilities that hopefully suit his talents. You would think based on his previous role he will be expected to sort out our recruitment team, provide links with other clubs and agents, drive youth recruitment and guide our academy setup to provide more first team players, probably part of our transfer committee, maybe even given some autonomy with signing the 'gems' and 'projects'. It's pointless allowing managers who last on average 2-2 1/2 years any involvement in recruitment of project players, anyone below 24 year old should be signed for alignment to the club philosophy not to the current (and always soon to be gone) managers ethos.
 
No not at all, just asking why you think it's relevant to point out that something happens at other clubs, when we're specifically talking about Middlesbrough FC on a Middlesbrough FC board amongst Middlesbrough FC fans.

I look forward to your posts pointing out that other teams lose games, don't sign every player, have ticketing issues etc when someone posts about a situation involving Middlesbrough FC.
You literally listed a series of coaches and other members of the management team at Boro from over the last 20 years and then claimed that all had had untold amount of heat placed on them from fans. This happens at every club and not, as your post suggests, unique to Boro.
 
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You literally listed a series of coaches and other members of the management team at Boro from over the last 20 years and then claimed that all had had untold amount of heat placed on them from fans. This happens at every club and not, as your post suggests, unique to Boro.

Again, I ask you to point out where I claimed it didn't happen at other clubs and was unique to Boro.

As I have said, this is a Middlesbrough FC forum - I couldn't give a monkeys what happens at the other 91 clubs, and so I haven't commented on them.
 
Great, someone new for the fans to blame when we don't storm the championship.

We can decide what we think a Sporting Director does, and then we can decide what he's doing is completely wrong.
You're right. We shouldn't have bothered trying to improve things behind the scenes. Don't want to give a very small percentage of 1500 forum members another reason to moan.
 
I think a lot of Boro fans would have been incredibly frustrated if we were Norwich - right now it looks great and the frequent promotions are fantastic but how would we cope with all the equally frequent relegations? They hardly ever buy when in the Premier - which is really prudent but am sure there would be many fans voicing concern if we did the same.
I do like Norwich and the way they are so patient - the next step for them is to become a Burnley I suppose.
 
I think a lot of Boro fans would have been incredibly frustrated if we were Norwich - right now it looks great and the frequent promotions are fantastic but how would we cope with all the equally frequent relegations? They hardly ever buy when in the Premier - which is really prudent but am sure there would be many fans voicing concern if we did the same.
I do like Norwich and the way they are so patient - the next step for them is to become a Burnley I suppose.
Exactly Rob. I know this forum isn't a true representation of all fans, but so many can only ever find the negatives.
 
Sounds promising. I wonder how long we will stick with this plan (fans and club) if it doesn’t bare immediate fruit….?
 
You're right. We shouldn't have bothered trying to improve things behind the scenes. Don't want to give a very small percentage of 1500 forum members another reason to moan.

I think my post has gone a little over your head, I'm not claiming we shouldn't have appointed him, but that he will be criticised even if he does really well as our (and other teams fans I must point out for the avoidance of confusion ) will criticise him based on their perception of what his job is rather than what it actually is.
 
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I think a lot of Boro fans would have been incredibly frustrated if we were Norwich - right now it looks great and the frequent promotions are fantastic but how would we cope with all the equally frequent relegations? They hardly ever buy when in the Premier - which is really prudent but am sure there would be many fans voicing concern if we did the same.
I do like Norwich and the way they are so patient - the next step for them is to become a Burnley I suppose.
There will always be people with a half full glass. When we were in the prem, playing in Europe and had won a trophy there were still plenty of incredibly frustrated people.

Norwich are a better run club than us, they are showing steady progression as a club, have a playing philosophy for about 10 years now that has been about building a passing game, creative play, athletic fullbacks, and eventually if they continue on their current course it will stick and they will become a prem regular.

We need to modernise too, football is traditionally run very amateurish, it's why a modicum of strategic thought sees success, teams like Brentford, Norwich, Swansea all performing above their average in recent years by managing in a less cottage industry manner. We need the same, we need to stop the short termism be strategic thinkers, adopt good practice, and don't react and break our strategy at the first bump in the road.

For Woodgates failure as a manager, he did discuss strategic thinking that needs adopting, he knew what needed to be done, he just wasn't able to deliver his part of it with the resources available to him.
 
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There will always be people with a half full glass. When we were in the prem, playing in Europe and had won a trophy there were still plenty of incredibly frustrated people.

Norwich are a better run club than us, they are showing steady progression as a club, have a playing philosophy for about 10 years now that has been about building a passing game, creative play, athletic fullbacks, and eventually if they continue on their current course it will stick and they will become a prem regular.

We need to modernise too, football is traditionally run very amateurish, it's why a modicum of strategic thought sees success, teams like Brentford, Norwich, Swansea all performing above their average in recent years by managing in a less cottage industry manner. We need the same, we need to stop the short termism be strategic thinkers, adopt good practice, and don't react and break our strategy at the first bump in the road.

For Woodgates failure as a manager, he did discuss strategic thinking that needs adopting, he knew what needed to be done, he just wasn't able to deliver his part of it with the resources available to him.

Absolutely this, but it needs everyone to buy into it, including the fans, and see that it's about long term sustainability and success rather than short term gain. At a very minimum it needs better communication from the club to get everyone looking in the same direction and understanding the strategy and roadmap.
 
Got to set it up and stick with it for the long haul, not tear it up and run off in a new direction if there’s a few bumps along the way. Tweaks here and there fair enough but not wholesale changes to overall strategy.
 
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