Just read Martin O'Neil's comments about his time as Sunderland Manager, saying he was never in charge with too many other people trying to run the ship. I seem to recall when Clough was being considered for the managers job, he was rejected as he insisted on being in charge, as he was in Derby and Notts Forest, but our then hierarchy were not prepared to take a back seat. Failure of an organisation always starts at the top, and it seems Sunderland are not good at chosing the fat cats to be in control. I recall my Son worked for Sky for a time and worked at both Sunderland and Newcastle games. His view was that Newcastle were better organised by some way, it took me a few years to forgive him ... but !!!
It's a nice theory but you do need a solid plan and direction to run anything and you're going to struggle to going to get that from a mass of people. They should certainly be brought into the process, as a country we should have learnt from the German model decades ago as regards not just football but companies in the whole (whereby 50% of the board are made up of employees representatives). I'd say there's no one way to do it but you can't chop and change, it needs to be well established and run for years. Inconsistency is the death of many clubs. There are a lot of clubs where you have to wonder what job everyone is doing at the top but I'd never hold Newcastle up as being a good example. Our "board" consists of one person, Lee Charnley, who is the lowest paid chief exec in the PL and hugely out of his depth. As a result I suspect the manager gets a lot more power with us than most clubs, it's just that the budgets are set by a certain Mr Ashley and I don't think much gets past him. I always felt that under Short he liked SAFC but kept putting the wrong people in charge above the managers. The managers and players would then get the blame (and they were not without blame) but were a result of problems higher up rather the causes.
The manager should be in charge of all team issues, including having the first and last say on all player transfers - including fees and wages. After all, he has to get the team gelled together and, as we know to our cost, one selfish fat cat in the squad can do a world of damage to team performance.
As the manager is invariably the one who takes the blame by being sacked when things go wrong he should be in charge.
Different models with different chains of command work for different clubs. Simple as that. Sure. Fergie was United. Give some washed out pie gorging bustard like Bruce that job and see what happens.
