This afternoon, the official site has confirmed that Michael Henke, former assistant manager of Ottmar Hitzfeld, has joined the club under the newly create job title “Head of European Scouting”.
For fans, the appointment of Henke will signal a move towards a more progressive attitude at the club with an ethos being built at a deeper level than any single manager. Whilst Paul Lambert will have invariably be involved in the an advisory capacity when it comes to finding people to work with, the fact that the club are changing, or rather modernising, their attitude towards player acquisition is a move with no drawbacks.
After all, one only need look back through recent years to see that transfers made by Aston Villa have not always paid the best dividends. Sure, the club has managed to profit on several players – Ashley Young, Stewart Downing, and James Milner being three candidates – but the consistent overpaying for overrated English youngsters has often seen Villa get poor value for money.
By investing in a sound structure with which the club can potentially acquire better value players – the signings of Karim El-Ahmadi and Brett Holman being cases in point in both fee and wage terms – then the club will be run in a more financially astute manner leaving more money to spend if needed.
Fans should obviously laud such a view as positive. To a casual analysis, spending less money may indicate a negative, as though the owner seemingly wants to plough less cash in than before. However, such a view would be well wide of the mark as there are inherent positives in simply getting better value from players – why pay £5m and £50,000 a week for a player if you can pay £2m and £20,000 and get the same results?
Of course, nobody is saying that these moves are going to reap dividends in the short term, or at least nobody can guarantee that kind of return. These kind of moves are long term, but long term planning is both positive and recommended with more modern structures being of benefit to the club no matter who is manager or occupying any relevant position.
So
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