A Sunderland director of football would suit Sbragia

Dec 23 2008 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

They are dirty words in English football, but could a director of football allow Sunderland to keep their winning formula in place? Stuart Rayner ponders the prospect

IT is the job description which strikes fear into the hearts of every English fan, but a director of football could be the answer to Sunderland’s managerial problems.

Ricky Sbragia is making a pig’s ear of not getting the full-time job as Black Cats boss. The caretaker followed up his first game in temporary charge – an impressive but unrewarded performance at Manchester United – with resounding wins over West Bromwich Albion and Hull City.

The clamour for him to be given the job on a permanent basis extended way beyond those Sunderland players who shouted as much as they walked past Sbragia’s televised post-match interview in Hull.

With every game it is gaining momentum. Little wonder chairman Niall Quinn seems in no rush whatsoever to put the new man in place, in contrast to the way Paul Ince was rushed out of Ewood Park last week and Sam Allardyce rushed in.

Quinn’s problem is that Sbragia (pictured left) insists – publicly and privately – he does not want to be a football manager.

Sbragia’s natural habitat is the training pitch. Having had a relative mediocre professional playing career, he is regarded as one of the best in the business when it comes to coaching by luminaries such as Sir Alex Ferguson, who took him from the Wearsiders six years ago.

But, at 52, Sbragia values the quiet life and the more relaxed, friendly attitude with players his job brings too much to step into management. Roy Keane was driven to an almost fanatical extent, yet even he was criticised for not spending enough time at work.

Long hours and public scrutiny just do not appeal to the man Keane brought back to the Stadium of Light. Twenty-first century football managers are expected to be many things to many people, and coaching forms only a small part of their job description.

Keane was a rare sight at the Academy of Light partly because he had so much faith in Sbragia and the backroom staff he assembled, and partly because he felt his energies were needed more pressingly elsewhere.

The football manager is a wheeler-dealer, the public face of the club, the head selector and the arbiter of discipline at the same time as running the rest of his club’s pyramid structure beneath the first team.

They are largely tasks which do not sit easily on Sbragia’s shoulders, so why not allow someone else to bear them, while leaving Sbragia to do what he is doing so well at present – picking, coaching and motivating the team?

What would suit Sbragia well and allow chairman Niall Quinn to keep him in control until the end of the season would be, in effect, a director of football. After all, with the increasing suspicion that Sunderland powerbroker Ellis Short wants to go down the route of a new, big-name continental manager, they may find the other names on their short-list want to work with a director of football anyway.

The problem is that in this country they are viewed with a mixture of contempt and suspicion.

But directors of football do operate successfully in the Premier League, just heavily disguised. Of course there are exceptions – Newcastle and West Ham United take a bow – but Brian Horton (Hull City’s assistant manager), Wigan Athletic’s general manager John Benson, John Rudge at Stoke City and a handful of others beyond the Premier League have shown it can work as well here as it does on the continent.

David Dein, under the guise of Arsenal chief executive, played a similar role at Highbury and the Emirates in the days when Arsenal competed for the top spot in the division, rather than the fourth one. Avram Grant did it well for Portsmouth and Chelsea, Frank Arnesen (briefly) at Tottenham Hotspur.

The Sunderland equivalent could take charge of transfers – which should largely be out rather than in this January – and the overall structure of the club.

Unlike Horton, Benson and Rudge, who operate so well by keeping a low profile, he could raise his head above the media parapet and share the limelight Sbragia seems reluctant to stand in. It would be a job for a former manager who wants to stay that way, with a bit of media savvy.

The problem with most English directors of football is that, rightly or wrongly, people see them as frustrated ex-managers who want to get back on the horse sooner rather than later.

The division of labour between manager and director of football is often blurred, the arguments start and Kevin Keegan, Alan Curbishley, or whoever walk off into the sunset bemoaning their lot.

So if Sunderland really do think Sbragia is the man to take them forward, until the end of the season or beyond, appoint a director of football and start thinking about what to call him instead.