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5 reasons West Ham should bring in a long term director of football

By Scott Johnson

West Ham behind closed doors. (Photo by Will Oliver - Pool/Getty Images)
West Ham behind closed doors. (Photo by Will Oliver - Pool/Getty Images) /
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The current recruitment structure is just not working

West Ham United’s French striker Sebastien Haller (L) celebrates with West Ham United’s Brazilian midfielder Felipe Anderson after he scores his team’s second goal during the English League Cup third round football match between West Ham United and Hull City at The London Stadium, in east London on September 22, 2020. (Photo by Alastair Grant / POOL / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or ‘live’ services. Online in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No video emulation. Social media in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No use in betting publications, games or single club/league/player publications. / (Photo by ALASTAIR GRANT/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
West Ham United’s French striker Sebastien Haller (L) celebrates with West Ham United’s Brazilian midfielder Felipe Anderson after he scores his team’s second goal during the English League Cup third round football match between West Ham United and Hull City at The London Stadium, in east London on September 22, 2020. (Photo by Alastair Grant / POOL / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or ‘live’ services. Online in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No video emulation. Social media in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No use in betting publications, games or single club/league/player publications. / (Photo by ALASTAIR GRANT/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) /

Whatever your opinion about who should be doing what, it’s clear to anyone with half an idea of how football works that West Ham have just not made consistently good transfers over the past five to six tears. And when you’re hiring a recruitment network in one season and firing them 18 months later with the manager who brought them in, as we did with Manuel Pellegrini’s backroom team, there’s no surprise we’re struggling to make high percentage moves.

At the moment the club only has one permanent scout, a data analysis team and contacts with many freelance agents in different areas. The scout and data analysis side highlight targets through subscriptions to programs like Wyscout, and if there are particular targets of interest they get freelance scouts to go to matches and provide a report. In theory, this could work quite well. However, there are signs it just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Firstly the freelance scouts do not have loyalty to the club, and there are multiple ways to make money off of a deal if you’re careful about it. You’re not getting regular payments from a club, so you want to maximise where you can. Secondly, if it works so well, why did Moyes insist on sending his own team to scout Jarrod Bowen and Tomas Soucek ahead of their January moves? Why double up if the system is working? Surely it’s a coincidence that those two are probably our best value moves of recent windows…

And now we’re back underway with the season, we’re reportedly still drawing up a list of targets. Why is that? Why have we, as a club, not got a list of targets depending on budget ready to go as soon as we get the cash? Quite simply there are not enough people planning for what could happen and are just simply reacting to it. I mean, we didn’t have a plan for when Dimitri Payet was sold either. We went for Robert Snodgrass who, although a hard-working player, didn’t play in the same position as the Frenchman until Slaven Bilic tried to shoehorn him in there. There needs to be a man with a plan at the club because we’ve shown time and time again that we don’t have the structure in place to deal with things on the fly.