The importance of structure, clarity & belief

Agree, a clear plan is needed, because if the plan is a Walsh/Allardyce model, I'm out...has there ever been such an odious pairing??

A clear aim and clear objectives are required. Pick a playing style and set up our whole club to work towards it – is it that fucking difficult???

Everton FC – the club without an Identity, Heart or Courage –a perverse footballing Wizard of Oz story!

It's been said many times by a lot of great football minds that football is a simple game yet it gets fucked up constantly.

You're right though... Have a football philosophy, stick to it, do it well, and choose the right players to carry it out.

Liverpool and Man Utd have been doing it for decades with great success.

Leeds, Forest, the Sheffield clubs, Blackburn, Sunderland and Villa et al have all suffered the drop after lauding the arrival of wealthy benefactors who proved to know far less about the game than those they replaced.

Of course, there is no lack of advisers, agents and pundits from whom to take advice but the trouble is that not all are as genuine and well meaning as they appear to be. Of course, for the mega rich, it's only a case of changing the personnel until it begins to come right but, for the majority, it has led to muddle, confusion and the slippery slope. As with most things in sport, Luck plays a major roll – Moshiri had better start rubbing his lamp without delay. Or send for one of us!

I look at this club and see a complete lack of a vision. That then translates to no real objectives. And then zero accountability. So people come up with their own objectives.

Sam's is just to stay up. Who knows what Walsh believes his responsibilities to be? How do they align with Moshiri?

What does Moshiri want? And exactly how did the appointment of Sam Allardyce fit with it.

It's pretty basic leadership. Right now a new manager might give us an improvement but it will be through luck more than judgement.

If that's the case, then I suspect he had a hand in chasing the Columbian defender as he was after him last year.

All we need now is a manager to work with him; let's hope those rumours are true too but it looks like there may be big changes (again) coming...

It can't be. A fellow with zero experience at a big Club in a top league did it for years on a shoestring: Moyes.

If having a Director of Football was the key to success, every club would have one. What I see is some clubs have one, some don't. Some clubs have had success with a DoF. Some haven't.

I'd much rather we look at similar clubs to us who have had success, like Atletico Madrid. They seem to have a conveyor belt of talent that they develop. They seem to sell a player, and have his replacement lined up already. Costa replaced Torres. Griezmann replaced Costa etc. If we'd done this when we let Lukaku go, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.

Atletico have also built a new stadium. They also have a long-serving manager. This stability and vision, which the whole club seems to buy into, is surely the way forward?

Massive 12 months ahead. We need a clear vision and everyone singing from the same hymn sheet.

You talk about a conveyor belt of talent and that is pretty much exactly what the director of football or sporting director is responsible for. Creating a team identity and finding players to fit in with those needs and more players to replace them if they leave.

So maybe not a red herring at all...

Why people keep writing it off is beyond me.

Guardiola was a Barcelona head coach, he had a sporting director and what did he ever win? EVERYTHING.

The sooner people move on from this notion that English football is a special case and start applying the best known methods, the better.

“This Director of Football role is the biggest red herring in football.”

“We need a clear vision and everyone singing from the same hymn sheet”

We at Everton seem to be suffering from some confusion about what a ‘Director of Football’ or ‘Sporting Director’ does (there may be other titles doing the same job as well). From reading ToffeeWeb I’m convinced that the fans are confused, and from watching the club in action I fear the people at the club are also confused. This brings me to my main point: I see your first and last sentences as direct contradictions of each other. I see it as the role of the Director of Football to provide ‘a clear vision’ and ‘make sure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.’

I don’t think Steve Walsh is capable of doing that, and I think he is emblematic of the confusion between ‘scouting and recruitment’ and the much bigger Director of Football role. Frankly, I could tell you what players to sign using Transfermarkt.com and a couple of computer games, and I’d probably have the same success rate as most real world ‘experts’ (I’d certainly claim to have been more successful over the last few years than Everton have been in reality).

The Director of Football needs to oversee and link everything from Scouting, Recruitment, First Team, U-23s and Youth Development, with a separate ‘department head’ in charge of each area. As such I believe it’s the most important role at a club, making them ‘manager proof’ and consistent over a long period of time, not dependent on the personal ideas of whichever bloke was available when we felt we had to sack the last bloke. One of Everton’s biggest problems since Moyes left is that this role has essentially been done by Martinez and Kenwright, not someone with any actual aptitude for it.

As such, the overseer will hire the manager, or Head Coach, and will also hire all other coaches down the line to the kids' teams. There will be a clear philosophy and the overseer will ensure that this is adhered to.

So, that said, Allardyce will be removed as soon as the overseer is in post (Brands?), and then he will work his way down. This will begin with the appointment of the new Head Coach (Fonseca?). Everton will then get its identity, and hopefully, if it is Fonseca, reports have said that he can adapt and manage games like Mourinho, and can attack with style and pace like Klopp (yes that's right) or Guardiola. Bring it on.