The next part of the fans' forum Q&A looked at the prospects for new head coach Valerien Ismael, how players are being recruited for him, and also previous coach Rob Edwards - and that famous 'hell or high water' comment...
If you go back to 2019, Javi Gracia had four games, Xisco had 20 or so, then Rob Edwards 10. Isn’t that insanity in a way? You’d have sacked Steve Cooper wouldn’t you at Forest? My question is how long does Valerien get? If we’ve only got 16 points from 10 games, would you sack him? I’ve a feeling the fans are more patient than you are at times. It would just be good to know for the fanbase. We look for stability and a coaching style. You know we’re quite a patient fanbase so does Valerien get more than 10 games if he’s only got 16 points on board?
GP: “As I was saying before, you only get to see the coach once a week. We get to see him every day. So maybe we are less patient because we see things happen every single day. When you mention with Javi Gracia – if you look the dip in form started the year before. I think it was, like, out of the last 16 games we lost 13 and won one. We’re not just looking at the last game.
“We see what’s going on with the team and we saw there was a negativity here. You also have to remember that at that time, in all the games that we were playing, he didn’t see that either Deulofeu or Sarr could be an asset to the team. He was not playing any of the two players. He played Deulofeu in the semi-final and he came in at the very last.
“There was clearly, as I said, a disalignment between certain ideas that we wanted to carry forward and what the coach was thinking. So we didn’t get results for a relatively long period of time. It becomes difficult to say ‘well I’m going to support him no matter what’.
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“We know that in order to be successful we need to find stability in the coach. What you have here is stability within the club. If you are looking around what we have here has been stable over the years, and is what we have been able to build on.
“Of course in order to achieve extraordinary results on the pitch – we have achieved some very good results – in order to improve that we need to find the right coach. We all know that.
“The thing is that so far, looking back, you can probably blame some appointments. But do I regret not having in charge any of the coaches for much longer? I personally don’t. I don’t think that any of the coaches that we had, that done a good job once, was the perfect fit.
“We are a bit like that in that sense. We are professionals. We push some concepts to the limit and I do appreciate that we all would enjoy some greater deal of stability. But we do need to find the right shape and in that sense we are also being, I think, improving the staff and the people around in order to help the coach in his work. And we are getting closer and closer to that. And we feel well about the next appointment because we feel that the style, the approach that he has, the philosophy is what the coach wants.
“I think football has changed in general. You see that managers anyway don’t stay in one place for too long even when they are successful. So you cannot count on the coach as it was before to give stability. So we prefer to offer stability through the Technical Director and all the people around, the scouting, that provides this ability of signing players that have a sense for the club. And then we have to find the right coach that brings all this assets together.
“Of course they need to stay with us long enough to develop this plan. That is a challenge and that is what we are doing in our work.
“Nevertheless, even with this change, the kind of the coaches that have been with us has not been ideal but the results that we have achieved I think has been impressive. At the end, even without this ideal philosophy we’ve still been able to deliver some exceptional results on the pitch.
“We know what we need to do. We clearly need to have a stable coaching staff with us in order to move to the next level. But even without them, if you look at the change of managers how would you expect to have the kind of results we have achieved? That means whatever we are doing in the back is really giving a solid base to this club. If we keep on going, if we get the appointment right, if we get the right man, we can have a coach that, most importantly, not only stays here. Many of the coaches we probably don’t want them to stay any longer because it was not a good fit for us.
“If we are able to actually share this philosophy and have this philosophy then we will have even greater success. We are all looking forward to that.”
You talked about a new group of players being assembled. Will we recruit the players to the manager’s style? In terms of Rob Edwards, where we started with this, and the fact he was playing Kamara on the right because he didn’t have a right wing-back. Everybody was looking at what was going on and expecting something to be done. Are we going to recruit to Valerien Ismael’s style?
GP: “As I was explaining before, we had a philosophy this time to also have an early appointment. With the coach we are able to share with him the idea. What is he looking for? We then do not ask the manager for specific names, more the style of a player. With the ability of our coaching staff we will be able to bring names that are better than what the coach is proposing.
“Because of course if you look at a coach that has played in the Championship then most likely he will be bringing names from this league. Our coaching staff is really looking at players all over the world.
“Then we go back and once we have identified the prospects, of course we go back to the manager. We share with him the kind of profile and we always accept what the managers have to say. In this particular case with this particular manager, the signings we are doing currently are all signings we have agreed in terms of style and profile.
“And the players that are staying is just the same. That process doesn’t work with the young players for example. We have very young players that we’re scouting and then signing, and then they are not having an immediate impact. For example, when we went and signed Asprilla or Pedro, we didn’t ask the manager.
“We signed Pedro, we brought him over and then eventually the manager finds that he has Pedro. If Joao Pedro becomes an important player of course you want a manager who, when he comes in, doesn’t tell you he doesn’t want to play with Joao Pedro.
“It’s important that you find a manager who actually knows how to work with your best assets. Because when you bring together your best players with the right manager then we believe we will achieve the best.”
On the head coach appointment and particularly Rob Edwards, there was a very memorable quote at the start of the season with regards to ‘hell and high water’ and then obviously the statement Rob Edwards had left the club made by yourself Gino. In terms of how that’s been over the years, is there any sort of animosity between yourselves?
Scott Duxbury (SD): “Yes [joke]. I think, with hindsight, every decision can be questioned and probably regretted. At the time we were resetting in the summer, and wanted to do everything in our power to give all the support, from the supporters, the club, everything.
“So everybody I think, unanimously, was behind Rob and behind the club. Even though we’d been relegated we’d had the Elton concert and it felt like the start of a new dawn. And we genuinely believed that’s what it was.
“Then we go back to Gino’s comment about observing the training, the work etc. I don’t need to go over the reasons why Rob unfortunately left. But at the time we genuinely, and I genuinely, meant what I said. We wanted to give Rob all the support and all the backing, and take away the stigma around coach removal, and we’re finally going to have a coach that stays.
“To take Gino’s point about the changing of the coaches – we were talking about this yesterday. Everything about this club is really good. We’ve got a great scouting network, a great foundation. We’re just one appointment away from that next level. If we can get that coach, if we can get that stability – which I fully agree with that we need – we can move to that next level.
“People laud Brighton and their scouting network. They've got Estupinan, who was here. They signed Pedro, who was here. We’ve got one of the best scouting networks in the world. What Brighton have got is that continuity of coach. When Potter left they continued the same style, with a clear vision. We believe we’ve got that now which hopefully this coach can take.
“We are that one appointment away from moving back to where we were. I repeat what Gino said: the reason we achieved great success over the last 10 years, six years in the Premier League, an FA Cup Final. Would I sign for that for the next 10 years? Absolutely.
“We achieved that with the constant change of coaches because of the stability behind the scenes. But do we want the stability of the coach and move onto the next step? Of course we do. And hopefully we’ve found that.”
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