Sean Dyche Interview - Leadership And Attitude

Really he's the polar opposite of a Pozzo manager. No overseas recruitment and thorough background checks of his signings, building a culture of unity, leadership and hard work that is currently completely absent at the vic. It's ironic that they sacked the best manager they had at Watford (in terms of results and player
sales but not football style) before he'd managed a single game for them. It's also ironic that Dyche has outperformed the Pozzo model so emphatically in terms of promotions (2 out of 3 v 1 out of 3) league position, net spend and player sales income. It's sad he doesn't feel he can achieve his goals with black players in his team but as a manager and a leader he's done an incredible job. Also interesting that he describes Deeney style leadership as out of date. He's right.

 

Lol at the idea of a) Dyche being OK with having little control over anything, and b) getting the best out of the Zola squad. Shame in a way, but it was always going to be unlikely that he'd be as successful here as he has proved at Burnley, and we've had our fun since he left anyway

 

He’s a got a disk beeeeard

A DISK BEEEEARD

 

‘Excuse me sir, have you been slurping tomato soup straight from the bowl? You appear to have some on your face.’

‘No you slack *******, that’s me disk beard!’

 

What are you upto eh lad

Also I don't understand the promotions performance idea 100%, to be honest.

 

Dyche had 2 promotions from the champo in 3 years Pozzos got 1. Dyche has achieved higher placed PL finishes and also generated more cash from player sales and had a lower net spend. Obviously the big drawback is the football he plays but the insights he gives into team building are very enlightening and WFC would do well to go back to this type of approach. Dyche talks about so many aspects of his leadership that unfortunately are sorely lacking at Watford. We were relegated due to gross mismanagement and a complete failure of leadership. I think we should adopt a lot of Dyche's ideas on leadership, mentality, authenticity and culture. If you watch the video you'll get what I'm talking about. It's really interesting stuff.

 

Yeah, I'm not denying that Dyche has many strengths in areas that we are currently sorely lacking, but as norniron has said, in that time period during which you credit him with doubling our promotion achievements, we were by contrast just staying in the league in the first place, which frankly seems like ever so slightly more of a win for us.

 

Also maybe I'm just being dense but who has Dyche masterfully sold to eclipse whatever all our other player sales are added to what we got for Richarlison?!?

 

Ings went for a tribunal fee of about £10m iirc, who else?

 

The same year Gray came to us for £18m they sold Michael Keane to Everton for £26m.

A year later Vokes went to Stoke for £7m+

Last season Tom Heaton signed for Aston Villa, again for £7m+

 

Two promotions + one relegation = one promotion.

I got a B at GCSE Maths

 

Not to mention that if you just add Iggy that's another £20m on its own...

 

You're welcome Dychey! Some great pieces of business there, oh to be a club who can get rid of a recent England international and not be impacted at all, or getting a decent sum for an average, ageing PL centre-forward, not to mention always seeming to unearth good quality centre backs

 

Yes but regardless of the reason, to get promoted from the champo 2 out of 3 seasons is a great achievement.

 

Sold Trippier and Austin too for about £7m combined. The club also sold Rodriguez the summer he arrived so he had to deal with that loss and rebuild. I'm talking net spend, there's no comparison. Oulare Sinclair Success and Peneranda alone cost us around £30m and added nothing to the squad.

 

We spend a lot more so our net spend is a lot higher

 

I know some people yearn for the Dyche/Burnley model but it was/is just never an option with Gino as owner.

It’s also worth remembering that when so much of your success is down to one person, when that person finally goes its almost inevitable you’ll decline.

Man Utd are a great example, as are any PL Pullis side, Curbishly at Charlton, it will also be interesting to see what happens with Bournemouth now.

Although we’ve made some catastrophic mistakes this year with regards to decisions around the manager, I’d actually be willing to bet our model will be more successful in the long term, because it doesn’t all hinge on one man.

 

When Dyche leaves Burnley have no debt, Premier League income and a decent playing squad. Imagine the state we would be in if Pozzo left with our massive external debt and after he had shuffled assets to Udinese. I believe we have poor owners and it will only become apparent to many after they leave.

 

But when all is said and done they’re an unfashionable club in an arse crack of a location with a very small ground and fan base. Their success is entirely down to the manager, remove that manager and they very likely sink to a lower level, so the lack of debt/PL income become irrelevant.

 

I'm sure that's likely true, but that's not what you said/doesn't address the claim that he's generated more cash from player sales, in fairness.

 

I agree, I just think we need to incorporate a lot more of Dyche's practices into our management, leadership and team building. We are really weak and behind the times in our approach to this. Corporate buzz words and caveman captains are laughably out of date.

 

You're right, I shouldve just said net spend. Dyche completely blows the Pozzos out of the water on net spend. But it's true about sales. Richarlison Ighalo Lukebakio and Vydra is about £90million already. But £30 million of that would cover the purchases of Peneranda Success Oulare and Sinclair.

 

We certainly have wasted our fair share of money on what have turned out to be total duds, and I'm not for a minute entirely defending the Pozzo transfer plan, because it's been appallingly deficient in key areas for several years leading us to be in exactly the mess we currently find ourselves.

I do think one thing we can't take away from them, though, is an ability to spot talent and provide a scenario in which, if there are any signs of it being fulfilled, it gets sold on for a great deal of money. They have a very consistent record of producing big players; not, of course, from their youth academy, but from noticing something in them before anyone else of a similar or higher stature does and acting upon it.

Obviously, Alexis Sanchez is the biggest recent example, but there's also Allan, who was bought from Vasco de Gama, and Bruno Fernandes, signed from Novara, who were in Serie B at the time. When Richarlison came, even 'South American Football Expert' Tim Vickery went on record as saying that he didn't see him succeeding in England, and look at him now. These are just the three that come into my head as we speak, there are still plenty more Pozzo 'products' dotted around the top divisions.

We can't give them too much credit overall, as of course this focus on spinning wonderkids for profit has proven directly detrimental (to a varying/debatable degree) to our own here-and-now prospects, and it goes hand-in-hand with all those failed kids; they're two sides of the same coin. But they do still remain capable of that kind of operation in a way that Burnley, for instance, certainly aren't. If they could get back to doing that whilst not taking their eye almost entirely off the actual playing squad side of things, then we really might be cooking with gas once more.

 

They know a player when they see one, it's the best thing about them. It's getting them a path to our first team which is the problem

 

I agree, we definitely need to move more in that direction, but we’ll never run with the Burnley model with our current owners.

One obvious example I forgot in my earlier post was our very own GT. Pre pozzo no other manager was ever really able to replicate his success.

One interesting thing is that no other clubs have ever seriously gone after Dyche, yet. Despite him obviously being a good manager, clubs that have the choice are generally very wary of sacrificing playing style for results. A lot of our fans are looking on longingly wishing we had Dyche and Burnley’s approach, but in an alternate reality where kept Dyche and let him have all the control he wanted you can bet your bottom dollar a lot of us would have grown tired of the playing style.

 

They certainly buy a few duds, but that’s par for the course with their model. Sarr is probably the first time they’ve actually spent real money on a player, prior to that any money they’ve spent has still represented a gamble of sorts. The only exception to all of that is Gray. I’d say we got what we paid for, £18m is not a lot for a PL goal scorer, but for the Pozzos it was a very odd signing because £18m was very much top dollar with absolutely no upside potential, it was an Everton type signing, not a Watford one.

But Gray aside, do they actually ever lose much money or any money on the duds? The duds are mostly cheap and loaned out long enough for loan fees to cover their transfer fee, then eventually sold for around the same price we bought them for. I’d say with a lot of the supposed duds we probably actually make money, it just doesn’t benefit the first team unfortunately.

 

Given the 'reported' or even just 'undisclosed' nature of so many financial dealings of ours and the odd way we/they do things, it's hard to know; there are the wages to take into account, but no, I think you're right in that they're certainly not chucking money away hand over fist on these gambles.

There are two counters to that, though: the first is that, even at £5-6m, say, for Oulare (at the time, 5 years ago, in particular), instead of taking a serious gamble on a child striker who was a slightly odd choice to begin with, that could have gone into a solid, dependable first team squad member/starter, especially in defence. The second is obviously that whilst we expended little on the young gambles themselves, the act of unearthing them and the subsequent seemingly almost obsessive focus led to them taking their eye off the ball so spectacularly that we have now been relegated (without even having benefitted from any play from the majority of them) and so in that way, they have cost us tens of millions. Both are nuanced and have to been seen as a part of the wider context as a whole, of course.

What's fairly clear is that the balance as it is at this exact moment is not entirely correct/where it should be. That's the key challenge and focus of the upcoming season: whether it gets corrected or not.

 

Definitely wouldn't want Dyche under the Pozzo's as I wanna see better football but we could learn a lot from his philosophy. We need to reform how leadership and management work at the club from Gino down to the new captain (whenever he is appointed). We also need to return to the authentic grass roots identity and culture of the club. Dyche would be a great management consultant. Shame he's already got a job.