A Question of Balance Part 1 The title of my piece this week is taken from a very old Moody Blues LP. Not even CD. This is a very old album. But the title does not refer to music. It refers to the balance of the team assembled for our Chief Coach. The word ‘for’ is one that I have chosen carefully. The word, balance, could refer to many things, and I intend to explore all of them, eventually. It could refer to the balance between youth and experience. It could refer to the balance between left and right. It could refer to the balance between attack and defence. It could refer to the balance between tall and short, quick and strong, constructive and destructive, skilled and determined with strong work ethic. It could even refer to our manner of play and the contrast between being direct and the slower build-up aimed at retaining possession, deep defence and creation of chances at set-pieces versus counter-attack or the use of counter-thrust with pace, defending from the front using the counter-press versus a more organised structure of two banks of four set up as quickly as possible after losing possession. The great thing about the game of football is that there are so many ways to win, and even more ways to lose. The art is to find a way through the confusion, to blend the style that you believe in with the players that you have in order to find a winning formula. It was clear towards the end of his time with us that Hecky had a clear vision of the way that he wanted his team to play the game. It was also clear that the players that were being identified for him did not suit his vision for the way that the game should be played. There was a mismatch, and I believe that it was this mismatch that caused the frustration in him to build. A frustration that eventually broke him and caused him to jump ship in entirely the wrong direction. You see, I am not like the majority who contribute to the BBS. My judgement is not entirely based upon results and league position. I do not laud and condemn on that single, and very narrow criteria. I like to look beyond and find reason and logic. That is partly the reason that my match reports are called, “Minority Report”. So for me, Hecky did not go from hero to zero because he joined Leeds United. He was neither hero, nor zero. He was a guy who had some success with a team that aligned quality with his strategy, and he struggled with a team that had less quality, but which was also misaligned with his strategy. At the time, I believed that the club hierarchy wanted the team to play in a different way, a way that Hecky was not comfortable playing, and they certainly wanted to pursue a different strategy for the business. Unlike many who contribute their views to the BBS, I believe that there was no alternative to selling the players that we sold mid-way through our first season back in the Championship, but I do believe that the players that we bought in to replace those that we sold were bought according to a different strategy, and also to play in a different way, and that Hecky was unwilling to compromise his principles, and because of that, that he refused to pick some of those players in his starting 11. I believe that it was a battle of wills, fought out against a background of potential relegation, perhaps not that season, because we had already built up a sizeable cushion before the player sales, but in the season after if things could not be resolved. In the end, Hecky knew that if he did not move on, he would be sacked with a relegation on his CV. He had no choice. The battle of wills that took place that season was ultimately about balance. The club wanted to change the balance, the way that the team played, the balance of age and experience and the balance between coaching team and recruitment team. It was a change that the Chief Coach was uncomfortable with. The club did not want to sack a Chief Coach at the zenith of his popularity, so it worked it out in a different way. The club was determined to have its own way, but it knew that it had to be clever. It assembled a team that suited the new strategy, even if it did not fit Hecky’s criteria. Hecky was unwilling to compromise and the team started losing. Hecky got out. The club had won. The subsequent relegation was an accident that no-one foresaw, only partially caused by the appointment which followed. Hecky remains bitter because he knew what really happened. The fans remember Hecky as a traitor because they do not know what really happened, and Hecky is bound by his contract not to tell. The fans do not know why, and they have not looked beyond outcomes for possible explanations. Many will read that assessment and they will come to the conclusion that I am a fantasist. This board is not the ideal vehicle for this type of post. The BBS exists for short and pithy reactions. It does not exist as a vehicle for long drawn out explanations and lengthy conversations. These opening paragraphs are merely an introduction to my world. As I say, it is a world where you do not rush to a conclusion based upon your own narrow perception of events. It is a world where your first assumption should always be that the club does not have idiots in control at the top, and that the decisions that are being taken, are being taken for logical and well thought out reasons. If a player is taking up a position that you personally think is wrong, and the Chief Coach does not either correct his positioning, or removed the player from the action, then he is playing like that according to the plan that the Chief Coach has designed. If you start from the premises outlined above, then you are bound to reach different conclusions about things from the assumption that the rest reach, based only upon instant reactions to individual events. The alternative is to try to work out why the things that are happening are not of your design. Work out a reason. Work out a logic, and if you do that, everything does not automatically go from one extreme to the other. Over-reaction is a response to not searching for logic or a reason. It represents over-confidence in your own knowledge, ability and understanding of the game. It is an expression of a reluctance to learn and move on from past beliefs and assumptions. Logic begins the process of working out why and how things have changed in the modern game. So having explained the basis of my logic and my reasoning, anyone who is still on board can accompany me on my journey. It cannot be a coincidence that the title of the guy who picks the team every Saturday has gone from Team Manager to Chief Coach. The change of title must be accompanied by a change of duties and responsibilities. And if the title has changed, and so have the responsibilities, then so must the criteria that the CEO uses for judgement of the success or the failure of the Chief Coach. It is the modern world, and it has left many of us in its wake. When I was a kid, the Team Manager seemed to be responsible for everything except ground maintenance and budgets. That was convenient for everyone, because if results were not right, and the manager’s budget was competitive for the division, then there was nowhere else to go. The buck stopped with him. The Team Manager had to have a photographic memory for players, both those he managed and those in the rest of the league. If the club needed a new player, he could trawl through his memory banks for players who fitted his requirements, who were of the right quality and who the club might be able to afford. Then all that was left was to check out the player’s current form based upon a scouting visit, and a recommendation to the Chairman that he be acquired. It was a more simple life back then. Now, we shop all around the world and no individual can expect to have personal knowledge of every player in every country, so the process of player acquisition is handled in a very different way. The Chief Coach will describe in detail both the system he would like to play, and the way that he would like to play it. He will produce a specification for the ideal player for every position in the team. With this information, the recruitment team will use the subscription based on-line information systems that collect statistics in respect of every player at every club and every week in order to identify a shortlist. The list will be further refined by watching recordings of the players in action. From all of this information, the recruitment team will produce another shortlist. This shortlist will be referred up the organisation until it arrives on the desk of the Chief Coach, who will make his own comments upon the players selected.
A Question of Balance Part 1 (Continued) Of course, one of the main criteria for the players shortlisted will be their age. They will usually fall into the age range of 19 to 23. This criteria gives us a big clue as to another change in the responsibilities of the Chief Coach. The business plan of the company behind the football club involves buying players to improve and then sell on at a profit. It has to do that because the company/club loses money on its football activities and it has to raise cash to replace those accumulated losses. A Chief Coach who does not have total responsibility for the players who are signed, and who does not even have total control over tactics the team uses cannot be judged according to the same criteria as someone whose job title is Team Manager, and that is a big problem for those whose judgement of worth is based only upon results. Given the change in title and responsibilities, it is likely that development of our young acquisitions and the profit on the eventual sale of those players is far higher on the scale of criteria used by the CEO for judging the success of the Chief Coach than his playing results. Last season, our Chief Coach was held in ridiculously high esteem, based upon his results in League 1, when our pay and transfer budgets were higher than the average and players were of a higher quality than most the other teams in the league could muster. It is a judgement based purely upon results. It is a judgement that has been made on a false basis, and one that I will wait to make. That is the difference between running a business, and supporting the football club. In business, management is not tribal. It does not exist solely to win games of football, and in doing so, to make every other club poorer. Business management is not about holding grudges and it does not seek to even out perceived injustices. Business management does not relate to most of the things that are regarded as important to the fans of football teams, especially the younger ones. Business management is about making money and increasing the value of the company that owns the club over the long term. As a consequence of the differing aims, the two interested parties have big problems communicating with one another. The business has to try harder, because the fans are its customers, but in doing so, the management of the company cannot afford to be too honest, because if the fans realise that their hard earned cash is being invested in a soulless money making machine, they may start asking difficult questions. So the whole process is carried on at arms-length and under a veil of secrecy. The fans are never trusted to know the full story. Fortunately, it is the modern world and even though I am deeply cynical about these things, I can set that to one side, turn up every second Saturday, and support my team. You see, I do think that fans can be trusted with the truth. I do think they can reconcile the two extremes of success on the Balance Sheet and success on the football field. I do think that fans can balance those two extremes, just so long as they understand need to do so, and they appreciate the reasoning and logic behind the financial decisions fully, no matter whether they like it or not. After all, we are all adults who run our own lives perfectly successfully. We can all relate the decisions that we all have to make in our own lives, some of which are very hard, with the decisions that have to be made by the management of the football club, many of which are equally hard. As the season progresses, I will be explaining the financial side of running a business, about the identity in law of the limited liability company that owns the football club, and why that identity is separate from both the shareholders and the Directors, and the CEO. I will explain how a company can raise additional capital and why it is essential that financial considerations are part of every big decision. These considerations do not rank that high on the list things that interest the majority of football fans, and when most fans pontificate on what the board ought to do. It is why spending vast sums of money often come very high on fan’s lists of priorities. Nevertheless, cash flow, and sources of new money will always be at the top of any rank of priorities when a shopping trip is being contemplated, and it is a shame that most fans totally ignore it, because by doing so, they see only half the picture. It is entirely up to the individual of course, as to whether they read this stuff, but at least it will be out there for those who are prepared to devote the time and effort.
