Andrew Neville

- I don't actually know what his job is any more. But I can say that he did an abysmal job when Sven was here

- Sanctioned huge sums of money on average players in a one season attempt at promotion. Matt Mills, Beckford, Pantsils wages etc etc, all rubber stamped by him.

- I think Terry Robinson was brought in on the back of his awful track record in the owners first season - I have no idea what he's still doing at the club

Do we really know enough about this man and what happens behind closed doors to comment on it?

Did Sven and now Pearson get the players they want? I guess so. Would we ever really find out about the players that 'got away' anyway? Probably not.

If things weren't being done properly behind the scenes Pearson isn't necessarily the sort of guy to bring it up in a press conference anyway.

I guess we are all questioning him because transfers aren't happening with the main one being Cambiasso. Let's not forget this player is a free agent. Does anyone seriously think Terry Robinson is the reason this hasn't happened yet?!

Look at the elite clubs in this country and there transfers. The Suarez, Fellaini, Mangala etc transfers dragged on for ages before being completed. Getting transfers completed slowly isn't a situation unique to us.

Neville was Director of Football in the management shake up when Sven was appointed and took on the role of player acquisitions.

Speaking to the Mercury in 2011 he said

"If you get your acquisitions right you should be successful. Get them wrong and you won't be successful, and it will end up costing you quite a lot of money."

This was shortly before approving Svens multi million pound transfer requests which subsequently put us in a very difficult financial position with FFP.

Here is a link to Neville talking to the BBC in early 2012, post Sven, admitting the club had too many players and an unbalanced squad

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17018425

Neville still describes himself as Football Director however player acquisitions are handled by Terry Robinson after Svengate.

The only decent thing Neville did was to persuade the owners to re-appoint NP after Sven left.

Fair points. What's he done (or not) recently?

Interesting one Dunge. He does seem a rather shadowy figure at the Club these days - apart from appearing at Everest base camp for charity! I can only think that if he wasn't doing a useful job as part of the club admin, then Susan Whelan et al would have given him the push by now. I believe he has a background in accountancy so maybe he sorts the wages!

He doesn't appear to be a self-promoter. Or, if he is, he's very bad at it because most of us forget he's there much of the time.

He just seems to me to be a club man; maybe being on the money management and accountancy side is the best place for him, and that all the responsibilities of being solely in charge of player recruitment/contracts were too much for him.

But do people think that he's /still/ doing a bad job?

Dunge, I read an article that he had been club secretary since 1998 and in 2011 he became DoF. He said that his job was the same but he and his team had now become responsible for player acquisitions.

Since the appointment of Terry Robinson however, I would imagine he has gone back to counting the coppers, although his job title is still Football Director