"If you have a director of football, I still think the director has to defer to the manager/head coach. In the end, it's quite simple, right? You live or die by your results. And how do you get results? Through the players." — Jamie Jackson, on the Amorim firing and United dysfunction

"It's a good system. It can be adversarial, but it creates accountability. Whether a team are playing well or not, it puts those who are truly responsible for the side's construction under the spotlight. They are the people best equipped to answer most transfer-related questions." — Sebastian Stafford-Bloor, on German sporting directors in the mixed zone

There was an era when running player personnel was not a full-time job. A manager could lead both coaching and recruitment because neither demanded what they demand today. That era is over.

The player market has become bigger and more efficient. The best players find their way to top clubs at a higher clip, from more origins, than ever before. Missing on a player costs more than it used to. Hitting on one is a bigger reward. Personnel now requires full-time, specialized attention

Sitting atop the structure selecting who comes in, who goes out, who moves through the academy, who gets released — this is a full-time job. Being head coach setting tactics, training, selection, and man-management is also a full-time job. One person cannot do both well. Ferguson was before the market reached its current scale. The clubs that understood this first — Brentford, Brighton, the Red Bull network — have had disproportionate returns. At progressive clubs, the manager-as-king model is already dead.

Jackson is right that players drive results. So who should ultimately decide on player personnel?

Not the coach. The director of football.

Coaches get fired on short timelines, often unfairly. They might not survive a bad February — and yet we want them to make decisions that shape the squad for years? The DOF thinks in multi-year windows. If you're building a squad for 2028, the person making those calls needs a 2028 horizon.

Jackson argues that managers should have final say because they bear the public weight. He's describing a real unfairness — managers face criticism for decisions they didn't make. That's a genuine cost. But the solution isn't to give managers more control. It's to put the actual decision-makers in the spotlight.

The DOF is a steward — temporary custodian of something that belongs to the supporters, responsible for explaining how they're managing that trust. If the DOF is the decision-maker, they must answer publicly for those decisions.

This doesn't mean sharing your exact evaluation functions. Keep your competitive advantages. But your orientation, your philosophy, your rationale for major decisions — these aren't secrets. What you tell your front office staff is what you tell the supporters. There is no second message.

And what of competitive advantage? It doesn't matter if they know your thinking. They still need to execute. Execution requires conviction — if you don't have the conviction behind what got you to those answers, you can't execute strongly. Knowing answers and acting on them are different problems.

Executives who can't articulate their philosophy publicly are telling you something. Either they don't know their own vision, or they're protecting themselves from accountability. At the highest levels, the job requires synthesis and communication. In discussing restructuring an NFL team's front office with their leadership in 2022, I kept returning to what separates good executives from great ones — the ability to combine analytical rigor with the capacity to explain it. Mark Carney on what makes a great central banker:

TYLER COWEN: If you meet someone who possibly is an eligible candidate to be a central banker, do you think you can tell how good of a central banker they will be, if you know them a bit?

MARK CARNEY: If you know them a bit, yes. I think particularly for the higher levels of central banking, where you're trying to combine analytic rigor and synthesizing that into an ability to communicate, which is often the toughest thing.

— Conversations with Tyler

The Germans understand this. Sporting directors in the Bundesliga appear in mixed zones after matches, available to broadcasters — publicly accountable. Stafford-Bloor calls it adversarial but accountability-creating. The Americans understand executive primacy differently — there is no longer a contest between coach and executive. Andrew Friedman is recognized as the Dodgers' decision-maker; Ohtani's contract has an opt-out if Friedman leaves, not if Dave Roberts leaves.

The Premier League is stuck between these models. Being progressive requires executives who can evangelize — inside their organizations and outside them. The DOF is a steward of the club. If you want the authority to run personnel, you must bear the weight of explaining it.