November 21 2014

The Holmesdale Online

Rob Seltzer tells us why the Southampton blueprint must be replicated at Crystal Palace.

With all the talk at the moment of a director of football coming in at Selhurst Park and many people not knowing what the job involves, I think it is very important to look at a successful model, Southampton.

After being relegated to League One, they worked their way back to the big time. Admittedly they have got an extremely wealthy chairman, but they haven’t gone out and bought players on name or overspent on foreigners to appease the fans.

In manager Nigel Adkins, they got a manager that suited the players they had and he had them playing great football; in two seasons they won two promotions and were back in the top flight.

After a decent start they got rid of Adkins. It was brutal but brilliant. The upper echelons at the club had seen they had gone as far as they could with him and it was time to change.

They went out and hired Mauricio Pochettino, a manager that again suited the players they had and the system they played. He turned players like Adam Lallana from a good midfielder into a £20million international and he wasn’t the only player that went from strength to strength.

When the Pochettino moved to Tottenham and Liverpool quickly bought half of Southampton’s first team, they didn’t panic.

In Sir Clive Woodward, they have a director of football that sees the bigger picture. They went and got in Ronald Koeman, another manager that plays an exciting, balanced passing game. They gave him free reign to sign the players he wanted and allow others to leave.

There were a lot of people, myself included, that raised many an eyebrow as Ricky Lambert, Lallana, Dejan Lovren, Calum Chambers and Luke Shaw all moved on, and relatively unknown players were brought in. But these players are hungry, fit in perfectly with the system that Koeman plays and are now second in the Premier League.

On the other hand look at Tottenham. They have Franco Baldini as their director of football. They are the ultimate club for going after a ‘name’ as Baldini had a glorious playing career and then was involved with Fabio Capello with England. When he became available, Spurs thought it would be a huge coup to get him.

They have allowed him to squander over £100m on players that regularly flatter to deceive and were completely over valued.

He just went out and bought ‘names’ he didn’t think what Spurs needed or what players were best in their system. Spurs fans are now paying the price of trying to be Manchester City and Chelsea but not being in the fame financial ball park.

Now in Palace’s situation, I think we have to go to the drawing board. Neil Warnock is a stop gap, we all know that. We need to look at Southampton and what they did. Take our time to appoint someone that really knows what they are doing and can work with players that play a system.

They can then bring in a manager that can play that system and identify players that would benefit. Getting in the right director of football will lead to making the right appointments throughout the football club on the playing side of things.

Someone that can see the bigger picture, they may not have to be a big name within football, as Woodward has proved, but he understands sport and understands the need to have a plan and system and bring people into the club that fit into that system.

With the right director of football, we will attract a manager that will see us go from strength to strength and build a team and squad capable of pushing on, Southampton have shown it works.