Should Mladen Sormaz be sacked?

Indeed, the facts hold true should never be a scenario for abuse

 

Bump (assuming anyone wants to change their vote)

 

Somebody just did according to the numbers

 

Am l missing something or maybe this is modern football, but WTF is someone with the below experience doing as Director of Football? Shouldn't he be in the analytics office...

Sormaz's rise is a great illustration of the changing face of professional football in this country. He originally did a Sport and Exercise Science with Psychology degree at Leeds Beckett University, before converting to Psychology at Sheffield Hallam University. His PhD, at York University, was in Modelling Neural Brain Responses and Pattern Recognition.

After graduating he worked full-time for the statistical analysis website Football Whispers, as well as doing one and-a-half days a week as a First-Team Data Analyst at Huddersfield Town.

“Statsbomb gave me the chance to do my first football analysis blog and then Joe Mulberry ran a hackathon about three years ago, which was the first time I’d really watched football data," Sormaz told TGG in 2019.

“I’m very grateful to both of them - and to Football Whispers and Huddersfield Town for the opportunities that they’ve given me.”

After Huddersfield, he became Leicester City’s first Head of Head of Analytics in 2019, a position he held for more than three years. Edd Webster now holds that position.

 

If he stays here 3 years where playing 2nd division football soon

 

Baffling appointment. Absolutely terrible.

 

correct. Now think through what a role profile of a director of football should look like and we can then see how far we are off with this appointment.

 

Because bizarre advertised that we were appointing a director of football and then paid a recruitment agency to bring in a sporting director. A question that needs answering is why

 

According to some posters on here he deserves more time to turn things around. . I worry for the club's future if he is left to oversee the summer's transfer window.

 

I'm not sure what you're getting at with this mate?

Sporting director/director of football - same thing. It used to be fashionable to call the position director of football, it's now more often called a sporting director. The reason for the change in naming convention is that the bigger clubs introduced the role of director of football operations. If you've got a director of football and a director of football operations, then it gets confusing, so the title of the former was changed to sporting director.

Arsenal's director of football operations is James King - sorts out legal stuff and contracts.
https://trainingground.guru/pfas-king-appointed-director-of-football-operations-at-arsenal/

They're currently hiring a new sporting director, looks like it's going to be Andrea Berta
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...o-join-arsenal-as-clubs-new-sporting-director

We don't have a director of football operations, but we do have a sporting director, the position that used to be called director of football by many clubs.

 

We don't have a director of football operations but we did hire a head of football operations just a few weeks after changing the advertised director of football role to sporting director.

Suggests to me that we initially intended to hire a director of football but something changed last minute and we decided to do as you say. The question is why the last minute change? Or were we simply a bit incompetent for a change in advertising that we wanted a director of football because we were too thick to realise that the name was confusing?

No conspiracy, just wonder why and how the name change came about. Initial incompetence in advertising the wrong job title? Or short term planning not expecting to appoint a head of football operations a few weeks later?

 

My opinion, and I can't back this up with any evidence, is that they simply decided on a name change between advertising the role and announcing who had got the job. They wanted a director of football but after starting the process realised that all the top clubs in the country were now calling it sporting director and they preferred that.

You've said that this is incompetence, but I don't really agree. If I did I'd have to admit to being incompetent because I often call Sormaz our director of football*. The reason being is that I hadn't realised there'd been a change in what this role is now called. It was only after Sormaz was announced that I looked at what Liverpool/Man Utd/Arsenal/etc were calling the position and found that they were going for sporting director.

*What I actually do most of the time is forget that he's sporting director, write director of football, then remember his proper job title, go back and change it, but miss one reference to it and end up calling him both a director of football and sporting director in the same paragraph.

 

Up to a couple of weeks ago I was 50/50 on him and giving him the benefit of the doubt. But his continued lack of communication and his contribution to the Clarke statement last week has meant I’ve lost all faith in the guy. He’s employed to provide a successful direction for the club on the pitch and surely part of that is to communicate the plan/strategy with fans, particularly at a time like this when it feels completely rudderless. This downward spiral cannot continue and the fans deserve to know what’s in place to arrest this, other than just being told we’re going back to high pressing football. That’s a style that many of this seasons recruits wouldn’t be suited to, either because of their fitness or play style. I’m not someone who makes a habit of calling for people to leave the club, but something has to change because apathy is growing and nobody knows what the club is trying to do. Judging by the results of the poll I’m not the only one who feels this way.

 

Because he was appointed by people who may be well intentioned but have no experience at running a football club. The only one who has any kind of experience at board is James Cryne and he himself is an analytics man so it may have seemed like a good idea.

 

Thank you for putting the information on....interesting that part of his cv is psychology. I say that because judging by what I see from our players that most of them do not have enough application in their own game.
So I'm guessing there is nothing of those attributes on the spreadsheet, when choosing players.
My dad (former scout) was telling me he was sent to watch a player while he was at Middleboro, rave reviews/ good stats etc etc, very talented player and doing well, this was the third time he had been watched (first for my dad)....within 15 minutes dad told me he had a decision, yea good player but picked his games (not enough desire)......that is what is missing from our recruitment and a good old fashioned scout to assess properly players and how they fit (they didn't sign him btw and he never did much)
As usual they can point to all their degrees and previous but we need practical football people, who can do this and assemble a proper squad.
Our team is screaming out that we have (midfield) really good technical players and good stats but played all together it doesn't fit because they pick and choose their games and have no bottle...that is not on our spreadsheet....and our head of recruitment MUST carry the can for the appaling squad we have assembled.

 

Does Mladen have family on here? Only way that would explain 14 people voting that he should keep his job!

 

Since the start of last season we won 15 from 28 games under Neil Collins.
From Mladen being appointed on 2nd Feb 2024 we've won 6 out of 18 under Collins and 15 out of 37 under Clarke/Hourihane (1)
That's 21 wins in 55 games for Mladen Sormaz.
Collins won 53% of games prior then dropped to 33.3% on the appointment


Mladen Sormaz has a total win rate of 38.1%.
All the data and the stats with that show a massive drop off under his playing style.
I keep lecturing the point, it isn't without coincidence, Neil Collins had a winning formula for getting results until it was messed about by a certain someone, he didn't just stop doing what we'd been doing 28 games previously, the goals dried up for Cole and here we are.
I'm very very fearful that he's left in his role and I have an awful feeling he will be if its left until EOS, it won't give the club time with a successor and summer recruitment.

 

Agree 100%