A ‘Head Coach’

Quoted from mimma

At the end of the day, it's just a title, a label. They will be in charge of the team be it as a manager or head coach. Don't think there is a difference.

It’s not though is it. A manager assumes wider control and responsibilities including recruitment, budgets and other personnel. The head coach more often than not reports to a technical director or a director of football, as is part of a much wider decision-making process regarding recruitment and structure of a club. A head coach is brought in to suit the existing philosophy in regard to personnel and playing style. A manager is responsible for shaping that.

Quoted from HertsGTFC

Born in Coventry according to Wiki, that said loads of football experience and oddly enough caretaker before PH arrived at Portman, wouldn’t it be bizarre if PH had but him on 1878s radar?

He grew up in Grimsby and played at Clee Juniors at the same time as me, which makes him about 64. No doubt he has done very well in youth development and coaching generally but I just cannot see him moving at his age.

Widely reported that Paul Hurst was given 100% control for all first-team footballing matters.

So in effect he was (nearly) a Director of Football/Head Coach/Manager all rolled into one.

Perhaps the owners have decided that's too much for one individual, and are planning accordingly. Think I'd agree.

As I understand the role, the idea is that the DoF remains in place as the Head Coaches come and go.
No reason (that I can see) why this couldn't work provided the owners have 100% faith in the DoF.
But what seems to happen more often is that when the Head Coach gets fired, the DoF who was responsible for the appointment
gets the bullet too.

In which case the DoF simply becomes the fall-guy for the owners when things turn sour.
"It's not our fault the Head Coach was a serial loser, the DoF appointed him..." (and hope no-one asks who appointed the DoF).

I give credit to Jason and Andrew for being prepared to try different ideas.

UTM

Sorry Davmariner, I have to disagree.
When Fergie was manager of Man. Utd he had complete control over everything, but was the manager, not coach.
All clubs have a structure where there is someone in overall charge of the team, coaches and players, and usually will have an assistant.
DOF is different.  That is someone co-opted onto the board with a detailed knowledge of the game, ex player for example. Football boards are made up of businessmen with money with no knowledge of football so the DOF is vital for the board to be able to make proper disisions when it comes to running a football club.

Personally, don’t like the DoF/Head Coach model but would be ok with it if it works.

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

I mentioned the other day that Hurst is the least qualified manager for the incremtal improvement approach which has been mentioned many times, and the approach you have just outlined would seem to suit their philosophy much better.

For all his strengths,  PH did not have a set style and all his many signings were not brought in to enhance any particular format,  and the current squad typifies a team brought together but not knowing really how they are expected to play.

The owners will not want to decide what style of play to adopt, and will want to leave that to a football man who can then get a head coach who also believes in that way of playing so it does make more sense and will start to give the club a much needed identity.

If that is their approach I am all for it but a big downside to it is sometimes egos get in the way but I am sure they will be a clear differention of who is in control of what from the outset.

Where within a managers CV does it have any reference to how good they are/have been on incremental improvement? How do you quantify incremental improvement? How on earth do you arrive at PH being the least qualified?

Any manager that gets employed at any club will want to win games. That's it. There's a recognition that it is highly unlikely that you won't, each division is competitive in it's own right by design and you won't win everything, you just aim to win as many as you can, nothing we don't already know. At no club do the owners or managers say "we'd like you to only win this many this season, and then next season we want this many wins and the season after we want this many wins so we can showcase incremental improvement".

In my eyes, incremental improvement has nothing to do with the points on the board, it's to do with the culture and ethos - mainly on the playing side - but of the club as a whole.

If you look back to Newell and the urine artists he had in and the way we played, referencing the Paul Linwood podcast feature where he outright admitted that players didn't care, to the Bignot era when players didn't like him then you can see how a poor culture does nothing to encourage a belief that you will progress and can readily contribute to a decline in on-pitch performance as a result of poor standards.

PH Mk1 had us improving year on year. At no point in his first 5/6 years could you say that his playing staff take their foot off, that he coasted or that we saw a decline in standards, he constantly pushed for more and if the rumours are to be believed then it was JF not supporting his desire to keep progressing that caused him to move to Shrewsbury. How you viewed the football is open to individuals but as a club overall, PH halted the decline and built some foundations that provided the platform for us to go forwards rather than continue backwards.

After he left, slowly but surely different managers changed and those foundations were eroded. When he came back we were all over the place and although he couldn't save us, he again built foundations very quickly alongside 1878 that helped us achieve promotion at the first time of asking and then progress us to our highest place finish in years and an FA Cup quarter final. Whether you liked PH in either spell for his football, I don't think it can be argued that his ship was a tight one and he at the very least brought stability to a club that has sailed stormy seas for much of the last 20 years.

Everything mentioned above - in my opinion - is proven by the fact that we're all sat here now recognising that the team we have is capable of much more. The stability and foundations he has provided have effectively proven to be his own sword to fall on. We believe we should be challenging much higher, some even of the belief for play-offs as a result of the improvements PH has made. To say that PH is the least qualified for incremental improvement completely ignores the fact that he has pushed our ceiling of expectation higher than any point in the last 20 years, if that isn't incremental improvement then I'm not sure what is.

Edit: Quarter final not semi final - confusing reality with dreams.

Quoted from mimma

Sorry Davmariner, I have to disagree.
When Fergie was manager of Man. Utd he had complete control over everything, but was the manager, not coach.
All clubs have a structure where there is someone in overall charge of the team, coaches and players, and usually will have an assistant.
DOF is different.  That is someone co-opted onto the board with a detailed knowledge of the game, ex player for example. Football boards are made up of businessmen with money with no knowledge of football so the DOF is vital for the board to be able to make proper disisions when it comes to running a football club.

I think the issue with any club operating at L1 or below, and especially much smaller clubs like ourselves if you place all of your eggs in one basket then every time you change the manager if it isn't working then you effectively start from scratch every time.

Imagine if Fergie didn't win that infamous FA Cup tie, what would have happened to United then? Completely unknown. In modern times I don't believe there is, or ever will be another one of him. Someone who dictates the level of control at any club based on the success he has delivered.

I can see why 1878 would go down the DOF route. When they talk about long term planning and with Joe Hutchison and the data aspects we've brought to the club, it's clear that our recruitment and our model will be similar to that of Peterborough or any other club who unearth gem players, benefit from their talents whilst here and then sell for profit.

If you give a manager 100% control, if it doesn't work out then everything gets recycled and he'll inevitably want to bring his own players in and we constantly go round in circles. The idea of DOF and Head Coach is that a team will be responsible for identifying an ethos of how we play (within reason - I doubt it will dictate every fine detail of HOW it must be done), and they'll sign players that fit the profile. I've said before it looks like we're trying to be more expansive and possession based, perhaps this is by design of the hierarchy and is the friction in how it hasn't quite worked?

The Head Coach has the responsibility to then work with the players he's provided with and nurture them into a successful team. If he does, brilliant everyones happy. If he doesn't then a new coach is sought but the consistency of the long term plan is held by the DOF and the recruitment team.

I'd believe that there will be a high level of involvement between the two, there's no benefit to being mutually exclusive so I'd bet that a lot of things are worked on together but again, that long term consistency that you can't guarantee with a manager you can achieve with a DOF.

This is the thing with 'improvement'.  It means different things to different people.

Are we talking the number of fans coming through the gates, the style of football, the quality of the players, the league position, the bank balance, the general feel and atmosphere at the club?

Some of those you can measure very easily with numbers, others are much more difficult and why consultants will charge a very large fee to give you a metric of such (often still open to much ambiguity).

If we are are looking at the number of fans coming to watch us and indeed the bank balance, then Hurst has definitely played a huge part in moving us on a notch or two.  League position wise...as much as I like Hurst I'm genuinely not sure you can argue he has.  I do believe he was on a hiding to nothing when he first came back but we're in a very similar league position to where he picked us up from.

In his first spell I would say it was more a case of us consistently knocking at the door and eventually we fell through it rather than getting better year on year.  In a bizarre way and despite having two quality strikers that season, I felt the side that actually got promoted was the lesser of the ones from the two seasons before it.  14/15 was the team that I felt really should have gone up of all of them.

In his defence, incremental improvement wasn't the remit in his first spell.  It was all about promotion with no future planning at all.   I'm not gonna slate the guy for not improving us year on year because his margin for movement was so slim and the focus was heavily aligned to getting us out that godforsaken league.

To my mind he's had 3 opportunities to move us on a level, player wise.

Summer of 2016 - He failed.  His recruitment weakened us.  Of course his hands were tied, Fenty interfering in deals for Amond and Arnold, not getting an increased budget etc. etc.  But considering we lost the likes of Amond, Arnold, Clay, Toto and replaced them Vernon, Chambers, Berrett and Boyce is a huge downgrade.

Summer of 2022 - He failed.  The failure was lesser so here but to my eyes we definitely didn't upgrade from the side that got us promoted.  Fox out for Hunt (?) hasn't worked out.  I still don't think we've properly replaced Sousa as a winger who can carry play for 30/40 yards upfield, we didn't get an effective targetman in so were left with a spent force in Ryan Taylor.

Summer of 2023 - Individually, without question.  Collectively, no.  Certainly not when reflecting how he's used them.  Mullarkey, Rodgers, Conteh, Eisa, Rose, I think Wilson too are all improvements on what we've had with attributes we've lacked.  But that they couldn't effectively play together in a Hurst way has to go down as a downgrade.  If the side that started against Doncaster 2 days ago started against the side that played Doncaster 7 months ago, I know which side is winning.  That's not down to individual ability, it's about the cohesion of the unit, their collective knowledge of the job at hand and their ability to work together.

I think what we will be able to do in the future, with the wonderful benefit of hindsight is say that Hurst significantly and consistently improved what the club is overall.  3 years ago we were a laughing stock and clubs were recalling loan players because of bad feedback from young lads just left to struggle on their own in bedsits with crap training.  Today we've got a reputation as a club that looks after young players and develops them.  There's a reason Hull loaned us Harvey Cartwright, it's because we did a good job with Andy Smith for two consecutive season.  There's a reason Luton were happy to loan John McAtee back to us, because word gets round that we look after players.  There's a reason Hurst has been able to attract a seemingly higher calibre of player this summer, because our reputation as a football club has improved.  

Quoted from gtfc_chris

Where within a managers CV does it have any reference to how good they are/have been on incremental improvement? How do you quantify incremental improvement? How on earth do you arrive at PH being the least qualified?

Any manager that gets employed at any club will want to win games. That's it. There's a recognition that it is highly unlikely that you won't, each division is competitive in it's own right by design and you won't win everything, you just aim to win as many as you can, nothing we don't already know. At no club do the owners or managers say "we'd like you to only win this many this season, and then next season we want this many wins and the season after we want this many wins so we can showcase incremental improvement".

In my eyes, incremental improvement has nothing to do with the points on the board, it's to do with the culture and ethos - mainly on the playing side - but of the club as a whole.

If you look back to Newell and the urine artists he had in and the way we played, referencing the Paul Linwood podcast feature where he outright admitted that players didn't care, to the Bignot era when players didn't like him then you can see how a poor culture does nothing to encourage a belief that you will progress and can readily contribute to a decline in on-pitch performance as a result of poor standards.

PH Mk1 had us improving year on year. At no point in his first 5/6 years could you say that his playing staff take their foot off, that he coasted or that we saw a decline in standards, he constantly pushed for more and if the rumours are to be believed then it was JF not supporting his desire to keep progressing that caused him to move to Shrewsbury. How you viewed the football is open to individuals but as a club overall, PH halted the decline and built some foundations that provided the platform for us to go forwards rather than continue backwards.

After he left, slowly but surely different managers changed and those foundations were eroded. When he came back we were all over the place and although he couldn't save us, he again built foundations very quickly alongside 1878 that helped us achieve promotion at the first time of asking and then progress us to our highest place finish in years and an FA Cup quarter final. Whether you liked PH in either spell for his football, I don't think it can be argued that his ship was a tight one and he at the very least brought stability to a club that has sailed stormy seas for much of the last 20 years.

Everything mentioned above - in my opinion - is proven by the fact that we're all sat here now recognising that the team we have is capable of much more. The stability and foundations he has provided have effectively proven to be his own sword to fall on. We believe we should be challenging much higher, some even of the belief for play-offs as a result of the improvements PH has made. To say that PH is the least qualified for incremental improvement completely ignores the fact that he has pushed our ceiling of expectation higher than any point in the last 20 years, if that isn't incremental improvement then I'm not sure what is.

Edit: Quarter final not semi final - confusing reality with dreams.

I read incremental improvements to mean the club as a whole by the owners, and on the playing side by a manager who would gradually improve the squad in terms of quality and the teams method of playing.

I said PH was least qualified because his method of operating is to keep bringing in and then discarding a huge number of players rather than making incremental improvement, say by coaching what seems to be decent players when they were brought in.

Had he stayed we would have started the process again in January.

This is one reason why he was sacked - there have been no incremental improvements on the playing side despite increased budgets. They will try to circumvent this problem in future by bringing in a head coach who without shed loads of money will produce incremental improvements in the team, and importantly existing players. If indeed that is their plan. That's the way I've interpreted it anyway.

With regards the term Head Coach, I'm absolutely certain it's not a case of semantics.  

1878 are always well measured and very articulate in what they say.  They could have issued a statement with no mention of Head Coach or Manager at all, just saying that in the interm Ben Davies and Shaun Pearson are in charge.  No-one would have batted an eyelid at that.

It's very deliberate and the start of a new way of working, albeit as someone else has said Hurst was effectively the DoF anyway with complete control.   If someone does have that oversight and total remit, it makes sense that they're not the coach of the side too.  As with this situation of Hurst leaving, all his ideas and his thoughts leave with him when he goes.  If it's a culture we're trying to build, it has to be more than the guy who's picking the 11 on a Saturday.