West Brom, previously held up as an example to follow, have developed a QPR-like taste for farce and disaster since the departure of influential director of football Dan Ashworth.
The Baggies, almost relegated into the second division instead of Walsall at the turn of millennium, have spent the last decade or so becoming the model for clubs of their size, including QPR, to follow. A period of yo-yoing between the top two divisions didn’t bring wild spending sprees and subsequent panicked fire sales - money was banked, facilities were improved, infrastructure was put in place, and steadily, from the ground up, a Premier League club and team was built capable of surviving and consolidating in the top flight. They weren’t afraid to splash serious cash if players of the right character, ability, age and fitness record became available - £30m spent over three transfer windows between 2007 and 2009 - but equally they weren’t afraid to spend nothing at all and add very few players if they weren’t: just £10m spent between 2011 and 2013, and that went on Shane Long and Ben Foster who were cheap at half the price.
The whole thing was overseen by technical director Dan Ashworth who would write at length about his strategy in the club’s weird and wonderful matchday programme - a welcome world away from the bland "welcome to this afternoon’s match…” bullshit you get from most "from the boardroom” columns in most programmes elsewhere. For a visit from QPR a few years ago he wrote at length about how the club goes about appointing its managers following previous criticism that he’d undermined Roberto Di Matteo by telling the press they already had a fair idea who they’d replace him with.
His point, beautifully made, was that the way football managers are conventionally sacked and replaced is ludicrous when set against any other business. What other business would remove the man in charge without first considering who might replace him? What organisation would not have a plan in place in case the manager walks out, gets sacked or falls under a bus? What other organisations would hire managers completely different in style and ethos from their predecessor, necessitating the expensive and wholesale changing of the squad and coaching staff? What other business would conclude the recruitment of such an important figure, having started the search from scratch, within a fortnight? It makes no sense.
Ashworth said: "Looking at what might happen next is not undermining anyone, nor disrespecting anyone. When Robbie was here we were never approaching any other coaches, we were simply looking at who might be a good fit here should a change be needed if he went to another club, got sacked or fell under a bus. It’s precisely the same thing we do in terms of footballers. If we weren’t looking at other centre halves, goalkeepers, full backs, strikers, midfielders for the future people would be horrified and it’s just the same in terms of a head coach. You don’t want a decision to suddenly drop out of the sky and you be sitting there twiddling you thumbs thinking ‘what do I do now?’ You need to have some form of succession planning. That’s the same right the way through the organisation be it scouts, doctors, coaches, sporting and technical directors as well I’m sure.
"You have to have options. Isn’t that just common sense? Yet in the football industry that hasn’t been part of the culture. Traditionally things have been done on the fly but when you are dealing with a multimillion pound industry, leaving things to chance is insane. You have to be as prepared for all eventualities as you can be.”
West Brom worked along a more continental ‘head coach’ system where the manager was chosen because of his style and ideals are similar to the existing ones at the club. Players are signed in consultation with him, but not entirely because of him, because they need to be useful to whoever succeeds him. Coaching staff has to be maintained by the incomer, not entirely replaced every time there’s a change at the top, as happens at other clubs.
But of late the Baggies have been almost as equally prone to disaster and farce as our own beloved rag-tag bunch of misfits and accident-prone pillocks. The flaw in the way football appoints and sacks managers afflicted West Brom a level higher up, when the FA showed unprecedented knowledge, foresight and awareness of what’s going on in their own sport by hiring Ashworth to lead development of the national game at the new St George’s Park complex near Burton. West Brom appointed Richard Garlick in his stead and, with a respectful nod towards the size of the boots he had to fill, he’s been something of a disaster.
Steve Clarke seemed like a reasonable appointment, doing reasonably well in the job and securing the club’s highest league finish in 30 years in 2012/13, until he was fired a year ago but behind the scenes this was not a happy camp. Garlick was nowhere near as adept in the transfer market as Ashworth had been, and the signing of Nicholas Anelka in particular seemed a very un-West Brom like move that, predictably, blew up in their face when he started making anti-Semitic gestures in celebration of the few goals he did score. That, in turn, was appallingly handled by the Baggies who were slow to respond. All the sort of stuff we more closely associate with QPR than West Brom.
The process to replace Clarke was laborious with Pep Mel, a successful former Real Betis coach from Spain who had vast experience of managing clubs of similar size to West Brom, installed as an early favourite only to turn it down because he wouldn’t be allowed to bring his own coaching staff in. A month-long search for somebody else led back to Mel, almost at the end of the January transfer window, who eventually agreed to take the job but, with the coaching issue unresolved, always spoke like a man who knew he’d be leaving almost as soon as he arrived. A mutiny among players, who were fond of Clarke, meant he couldn’t implement his style of play and but for a win at Swansea in March, snapping a run of one win in 19 matches, he’d probably have been sacked after little over a month in the job. Sure enough, in the summer, he was on his way.
It has subsequently transpired that the protracted nature of Mel’s arrival, his struggles while at the club, and his swift departure, were all underscored by an uncomfortable situation with director of technical performance and scouting Dave McDonough - a Spanish speaker who’d tried to use the arrival of Mel to grow his own role with the first team. McDonough, like Mel, no longer with the club.
That sparked another wild thrash around the managerial market, with even mediocre candidates like Tim Sherwood refusing to come in and work under the Albion system. Eventually Alan Irvine, once a bright young managerial prospect having assisted David Moyes at Everton but returned to his strong suit of academy management at Goodison Park following fairly dismal spells with Preston and Sheff Wed in the lower divisions, was chosen in one of those left-field appointments that has you reaching for the Sky Plus remote to go back and check you heard that correctly. Irvine, sufficiently confident and emboldened, felt the need to plead for time and patience at his first press conference to announce his arrival.
A reasonable start -three wins, three defeats, five draws from the first 11 games - has given way to a bad spell of four straight defeats and a draw prior to last week’s narrow win against ten-man Aston Villa. Fans have started to call for Irvine’s head, although given Albion’s recent record of picking managers, and the reluctance of proven candidates to take the job, there can be few guarantees that they’ll get it right next time. Tony Pulis is the stock answer for any Premier League club in trouble and considering a change since his miracle turn around of Crystal Palace last season, but given that he walked out of Selhurst Park on the eve of the new campaign in a dispute over who had the final say over transfers, is he really likely to go to a club that spent £10m on Dynamo Kiev forward Ideye Brown during the summer who Irvine admitted he’d never seen play? Irvine has recently said he’ll "have his say” on any January comings and goings. But, crucially, not the final say.
Saido Berahino, recently called up by England for the first time, should be a bright spot having graduated from the club’s youth system and taken the Premier League by storm. Sadly, the 21-year-old Burundi born striker is on twat highway heading west. Attitude so poor that team mate James Morrison felt compelled to spark him out on the training ground last year, he has once again started strongly only to fall away this season amidst outrageous contract demands and lousy behaviour. Dropped for the Villa game last week, the club has called off those contract talks with, ostensibly, their prize asset. He was caught drink driving just two days before a match earlier this year.
The battle between the old-style English set up where the manager is an all knowing, doing, conquering God and the continental style situation where a director of football plots the strategy and ethos while the manager is little more than a head coach continues to rage in this country. Only last week the Soccer Saturday pundits expressed their disbelief that Irvine should be under pressure for the under-performance of players he had little say in bringing to the club, as if the idea is totally foreign. Which, I guess, it is. At Tottenham the director of football situation is uneasy, mainly because Franco Baldini has done little but sign expensive duds since filling the role. At West Brom it used to be held aloft as a shining example. Now it’s ridiculed as the root of all their problems.
In the end the problem just transfers rather than going away altogether. In the English system, you’re only as good as your manager. In the continental system, you’re only as good as director of football. West Brom had a good one, and now they don’t. Nutshell.
Given that the two forwards that day were Victor Anichibe and Berahino, and both were left out last week against Villa, it’s unclear how useful this will be as a scouting exercise but we’ll see. That day they had the most joy hitting Anichibe early with his back to goal, with Berahino dropping off and feeding off the big Nigerian striker. Fabricio Coloccini allowed himself to be pinned far too often and the home side got plenty of joy from that.
On the occasions they engaged in more considered, slower, build up, it simply allowed Newcastle to file back into their recently adopted deep-lying defensive shape which Irvine’s men found impossible to break down. Howeever, it did mean that you could take Berahino out of the game simply by doing a better job on the less technically gifted Anichibe - something QPR should be well-placed to do with Steven Caulker and Richard Dunne revelling in physical confrontations.
In previous meetings QPR have found the energetic midfield presence of Youssouf Mulumbu difficult to handle, but his start in the Newcastle game was a rare one - he’s only started six games in the league this year and former Villa man Craig Gardner has been the driving force in the centre of the park. In this match they switched to more of a diamond midfield in the second half with Graham Dorrans brought infield from the left, and Mulumbu dropped deep into a holding role. It didn’t work. They were too narrow. Stephane Sessgnon replaced Mulumbu and went onto the left wing to correct that, but only after Newcastle had gone 2-0 up.
Watch out, at corners, for a queue of Joleon Lescott, Craig Dawson and James Morrison on the edge of the box. They’ll split as the ball is kicked, running one to near, one to the centre and one to the far post. Difficult to track, if you’re as dozy as QPR are when defending set pieces.
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