Why do we need a director of football?

If we're going to analyse why things are going wrong and where the problem lies then I would suggest that the manager/coach is only as good as the players he has at his disposal.

Revie, Wilko, Shanks, Bob Paisley, Fergie, Dalglish, Busby, Cloughie didn't need a director of football bringing in players and being told to run with them. They all knew what they wanted in order to achieve success. Wilko bought Vinnie to get us out of Division 2 and then effectively replaced him with Gary Mac after promotion because he recognised the need for a different style of football in order to compete in the top flight.

What credentials does Orta have to dictate transfer policy and which players will be the right ones for the tactics and the standard of football the players will be competing in? He's never been a professional player, nor has he managed a football team. Perhaps it's no wonder that Monk walked out. Imagine being an Olympic athlete and your coach buys you a pair of clogs to run in instead of high quality running shoes? Or a F1 driver for a team and the management get you a Reliant Robin to race instead of a Ferrari?

I've never been convinced of this role in football. To my mind it undermines and de-values the position of the manager, as if to say "you can't be trusted to make those decisions so we'll give you the tools and you do the job and get the results."

We've seen recently the interference of an owner (nutcase Cellino) buying players and then firing the manager when results are poor. Perhaps it's also significant that most of the players coming in have no experience of Championship, or British football. More games are played in a season than on the continent and there's no winter break as there is in some countries. Add to this the bleak weather that shrouds our winter and players used to training in the sunshine for a less intensive season and quite literally, coming to England can be a shock to the system as the season wears on.

Fitness, intensity, passion, will to win, commitment, experience of the league and its demands, are all essential qualities to be able to compete in this league and it doesn't appear that the players we have are equipped at this time to cope.

We have a fledgling coach and a host of players from across Europe who have been thrown together by an owner/director of football and asked to succeed where countless others have failed.

As far as I'm concerned, it's the director of football who should carry the can and walk the plank, not the coach. The coach can only work with what he's got, and who's to say that the players will fit in with the style of football the coach wants to employ?

Monk went out and spent millions on the players HE wanted and if he fails, then it's only right that he should be sacked. I don't think the same applies to TC, so it isn't entirely fair to judge him alone. Signing players for the future is all well and good but you can't wait years to see if they come good. We need horses for courses now and I believe AR needs to stand back and re-assess his master plan for the short to medium term (if he has one) because that's where the reality is. We've seen all to often good, young promising players being snapped up by the big fish because of our failure to achieve success by not addressing playing needs now. Wilko didn't hang around to wait for the academy to bear fruit. He went out and bought tried and tested players to do a job. There was no middle man to answer to. He dealt with the chairman or managing director who went out and got him what he wanted and he subsequently delivered.

Orta might be a big man on paper with a proven pedigree abroad for his type of role, but if he's going to be instrumental in spending the owner's money on players, then he has to carry the responsibility when it all blows up in the coach's face.

Apologies for the loooong post, but I don't feel it's a matter than can be discussed in brief, and also I don't post articles too often, so I tend to make up for the long periods of silence when I do contribute.