NEIL: DEALS ARE MY CALL
Potters manager insists that he will continue to have the final say on moves in the market STOKE LEGEND’S SON OUT TO UPSET ENGLAND: PAGE 43
ALEX Neil insists the buck for transfers will always stop with him as Stoke City busy themselves in the background for his first full window as manager.
Neil has been in Dubai this week overseeing a week of training before returning to England next week to step up preparations for the first Championship game back, at home against Cardiff on December 10.
But there are only four games remaining until January and a chance to make potentially important tweaks to a squad in a division that is so tightly packed and only eight points separate the play-off and relegation zones.
Ricky Martin has been brought in as new technical director to ‘tie everything together’ across departments, including recruitment, but Neil is clear that ultimate responsibility will lie with him.
He said: “Like with every club now, the manager will have the final say. If I don’t want a player I won’t be signing a player. However, it’s not a dictatorship. It’ll be a discussion, people put a case forward.
“As always, we will have a recruitment team who look at players and then I’ll say something like, ‘I need a right winger,’ and I’ll say, ‘I want one that’s quick, I want one that’s technical and can go on the outside, I want one that is 6ft and can track back and can do whatever…’
“Then they will go and piece all that together.
“What Ricky will do is tie the knot at the top and bring everything together and it will get presented to me and the staff and we’ll have a look at it, we’ll have a discussion about it.
“I might not like something but someone else might say he can do something else instead and between us we’ll have the best educated decision. However, there always needs to come a point where someone has the final say and I will have the final say on that, that’s quite clear.”
Martin arrived at Clayton Wood last week and has been in Dubai with Stoke too as he gets his teeth into a senior role again after three years in charge of the academy at West Ham.
Neil said: “Me and Ricky worked together at Norwich, when I went into a club which had just come out of the Premier League and I thought in terms of structures, processes and strategies off the pitch, they were as good as I’ve seen really.
“What Ricky will allow me to do is to focus on the football side of things and make sure I get all that right. But football clubs, particularly the size of Stoke, are vast networks now, there are a lot of people employed and a lot of different areas that need to be covered and need a handle on them.
“Ricky will basically oversee all the departments from academy, to sports science to medical to recruitment. All those departments will report into Ricky and then me and Ricky will discuss how we make sure we’re in the best shape going forward.
“You also need to drive every department. There needs to be accountability in terms of what we’ve done, how we do it, why we’ve done it and who is responsible for what.
“Every time we lose a game at Stoke City Football Club, the whole club should feel partly responsible because every single person has a part to play. There shouldn’t be a person who thinks they only do this or only do that.
“Everything we do off the pitch transmits on the pitch and you need someone in that role to make sure everything is functioning as well as it can.”