on June 20, 2025, 4:51 pm, in reply to "Official announcement of leadership appointments"
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"In line with the vision mapped out in May by CEO Angus Kinnear, the Club has moved away from a Director of Football model in favour of a football leadership team made up of specialists in technical development, football operations, talent ID, data analytics and player trading.
Following a comprehensive recruitment process, the Club has appointed Nick Cox as Technical Director, James Smith as Director of Scouting and Recruitment, Chris Howarth to direct the Club's football strategy & analytics operations and Nick Hammond to lead the Club's player trading activity.
The quartet will work alongside the Club’s CEO in supporting Men’s Senior Team manager David Moyes, and Women’s Senior Team manager Brian Sørensen to deliver on-pitch success, whilst also ensuring the Club’s football operations, youth development and talent ID pathways are working to their optimum."
What I find a little odd is:
- Of the 4 new appointments 3 are "Directors" but 1 is a "Lead". And clearly Cox has a MUCH bigger remit than Hammond. So it's more like a committee.
- Those 4 will work "alongside" the CEO and yet it seems that this structure is his strategy and his appointments. If they were working alongside Kinnear I'd have expected the Executive Chairman, Marc Watts to do the announcement.
- When it comes to transfers I assume Moyes will have input and possibly a veto. Is he part of the "leadership team" or not? If he is, who is responsible for sacking him and hiring a replacement? Without a Director of Football it's not clear who should make that decision, so my assumption is that it's the owner - Friedkin. Therefore Moyes is an internal client of the leadership team, with his own direct line to the real decision maker.
- But if that makes sense for the men's team, it's a fairly glaring omission that the new women's CEO isn't even mentioned! It may be that the "leadership team" "support" the men's team and the women's team, but they can't report to 2 different CEOs. My assumption is that in the same way Moyes is really reporting to Friedkin, Forshaw has her own direct line to the Chairman. But I have no idea who Sorensen "reports" to.
Here's my best attempt to make sense of it:
Graeme28
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