Johan Lange

[Tomaszk]

1 minute ago, TRO said:

but can they all be done that way?....just asking?

I still think Brentford, Leicester, Brighton and even Fulham, have done well, in recent times.

You can find plenty of mediocre players with great data.

I would say it's nearly impossible to find a great player with mediocre data.

Balanced approach is fine, data should just be included.

[maqroll]

2 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

Does that mean Purslow and Emery need replacing too?

There's a lot more to Lange's job than recruiting.

 

Purslow too!

[ozvilla28]

His hit and misses we're do you start Nakamba ,Sanson , Chambers , Bailey that's just a few.

[gwi1890]

38 minutes ago, ozvilla28 said:

His hit and misses we're do you start Nakamba ,Sanson , Chambers , Bailey that's just a few.

Big Miss there mate, Nakamba was signed by Suso .

[gwi1890]

40 minutes ago, ozvilla28 said:

His hit and misses we're do you start Nakamba ,Sanson , Chambers , Bailey that's just a few.

What about the continuation of developing youth ?  Tying assets like Martinez  and Luiz to long term contracts? What about signing Kamara on a free?

[thabucks]

Chambers on a free was great business ! 

[ozvilla28]

What continuation of youth your on about ?. There is a lot more misses then assets.

 

[villa4europe]

3 hours ago, ozvilla28 said:

What continuation of youth your on about ?. There is a lot more misses then assets.

Again though, he's not chief scout or head of recruitment

And for whatever reason we seem very good at scouting and signing youngsters, definitley better than the first team, you could now start to look very closely at lange and the academy and then the loans he's sent the older players out on and then the next stage which is the integration to the first team, the club have blatantly set it up as something they want to do so I would say its more of a KPI for lange than the scouting

And also on top of all that the "misses" it would be interesting to know how they are regarded internally and we never will, we won't know the remits that these players were signed under or how they are judged, I don't believe that they will be judged as harshly internally at the club as they are by fans that's for sure

Edited February 14, 2023 by villa4europe

[useless]

Every academy above a certain level has more misses than hits, that's just the name of the game, but we've got more hits in our academy at the moment than most other clubs. Mark Harrison is the Head of Academy, and Stephen Hopcroft is Head of Academy recruitment, Man Utd tried to get Hopcroft whilst he was at West Brom, he's highly rated, and since he's been with us our academy recruitment has been mostly excellent.

Lange's role with academy I think from the little I've read is more about mapping a pathway for talented youngsters into first team, for instance we have or had a principle where we would have a certain amount of academy players training with first team squad on certain days, for the ones that impress the most that would become more of a full time thing and those players would also become more involved with tactical sessions, and travel with first team even if not in squad, it's probably Lange working with Harrison, that's responsible for initiatives like that.

[useless]

As for our recruitment at first team level it's not even that bad, I think people get confused and think just because the squad needs improving it means we've made bad signings, but for the most part that's not the case, we need new signings to take us to the next level, we were never going to go from barely surviving to a team that should be good enough to challenge for Europe within a couple of seasons.

People cite the likes of Brighton and Brentford as having better recruitment than us, but if we had Emery from start of the season or any decent manager we would probably be ahead of both of those teams now, I certainly wouldn't swap our current squad for Brighton's or Brentford's, especially in Brighton's case people look at high profile cases where they sign a player for a low fee and sell him for big money, but completely ignore the tens of millions they waste on players that do nothing, I looked at a list of their signings from past few seasons and of the ones they've spent millions on I've barely heard of most of them, they and Brentford are overachieving, but we should have more self respect than wanting to be like them, we have loftier aims and ambitions, if they could attract and sign the players we can sign then trust me they would, they do what they do out of necessity, but will only get them so far, and both probably just a bad transfer window or managerial appointment away from potentially being ain a relegation battle, they're like the modern day equivalents to what Swansea and Southampton were five or so years back, I remember their 'models' being lauded as something we should follow as well.

Of course we've mad mistakes here and there in transfer market, but same for every club.

I actually wouldn't be surprised to see Lange replaced in the summer, but I don't think it will be particularly because he's done anything wrong, would be more a case of bringing someone in more tuned in to Emery's modus operandī.

[gwi1890]

5 hours ago, ozvilla28 said:

What continuation of youth your on about ?. There is a lot more misses then assets.

 

We keep signing young players and have multiple academy players on loan throughout the English pyramid it seems like a plan with continuity me. 

[CVByrne]

We've lost two games in a row so of course we have this thread up top with people laying all the blame on Lange. 

[useless]

If I've worked it out right since Emery came in we've averaged 1.6 points per game, that would average out to sixty points over a season, during that spell of the nine PL games that we've played, four of them have been against Man Utd, Liverpool, Spurs, and Man City, by the time we play Arsenal next week, half of his first ten league games will have been against the so called top six, not many if any other teams will have had as difficult run over the same period, we also played Brighton who of course have been in very good form as well.

Point being as a team overall we're actually doing well, which is more what recruitment should judged on rather than individual cases,  season as an whole just doesn't look as good as it could have done because we had Gerrard in charge for first ten games, the mistake was not making a change there, especially when Beale left, club should have recognized that if we needed to poach another club's manager and pay millions doing so to assist Gerrard then that was probably a sign in of itself that SG wasn't the right man for the job, no point dwelling on that now though, as it's now been put right.

[Pinebro]

10 hours ago, gwi1890 said:

What about the continuation of developing youth ?  Tying assets like Martinez  and Luiz to long term contracts? What about signing Kamara on a free?

We are trying to develop youth they're just not very good. 

[sharkyvilla]

Duran is a litmus test, apparently we had been tracking him for a long time behind the scenes which suggests that it was Lange and the recruitment department identifying and getting the deal done.  There was an obvious shift to going for tried and tested supposed 'winners' under Gerrard and that's been a bit of a disaster, so if Duran does look the business then it may strengthen Lange's position.  I hope we go along identifying young players that have gone under the radar, we should really have spent more of the Jack money in that way, especially getting a replacement for Targett rather than two 29 year olds.

[gwi1890]

52 minutes ago, Pinebro said:

We are trying to develop youth they're just not very good. 

It’s a step up from where we were when’s the last time we had 5-6 players on loan in the championship?

[The_Steve]

If Durán flops = Lange bad, told you so

If Durán succeeds = Emery’s call

Johan can’t win. No wonder he’s not smiling as much. 

[The_Steve]

2 hours ago, Pinebro said:

We are trying to develop youth they're just not very good. 

Based on what exactly? 

[useless]

Not sure why people using our academy, good or bad, to judge Lange anyway, as above, our academy has it's own Director of Football, Mark Harrison, and it's own Head of Recrutiment, Stephen Hopcroft, they're the ones along with Ryan Maye and others responsible for how the academy operates and the players that are brought in at that level. Lange will have a certain amount of involvement just because the academy feeds into the first team, but if it was the case that our academy is failing he wouldn't be answerable for that, just as he wouldn't take the credit if our academy is producing lots of good players.

As it happens the academy is actually doing very well, at the moment, providing more England Youth internationals than most other teams, they've won three or four trophies since the end of last season, and U16s and U18s both in this season's Premier League Cup semi-final, U15s progressing in PL Floodlit Cup which is probably biggest Youth competition other than FA Youth Cup, then there's the players out on loan that have done well, not many other clubs will have five or so player around nineteen good enough for Championship.

So even if Lange was to be judged on how the academy is doing it wouldn't be a negative against him, the opposite in fact.

[VillaParkAvenue]

Lange is sporting director and in charge of everything football related. He’s not supposed to be a scout or to find individual players, he’s supposed to build a great scouting organization, an effective academy and so on.

He should be judged by the money spent on recruitment overall while he’s been here, compared to the level of the current squad and academy. Good enough? Great, continue.