Friday, April 13, 2012

Werner Explains Comolli Exit

Liverpool chairman Tom Werner has revealed that exiting director of football Damien Comolli was "probably not the right person" for the job.

Comolli left the club on Thursday after overseeing the spending of nearly £125million in just three transfer windows.

The strategy was perceived to be part of the 'moneyball' theory favoured by the club's American owners and had been so successful at their other high-profile acquisition, the Boston Red Sox baseball franchise.

But the likes of Andy Carroll, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson have failed to ignite Liverpool's season and the club lies well adrift of the Champions League places.

And while Werner feels the strategy remains the right one, he claims Comolli was not the right man to implement it.

"We've had a strategy that we have agreed on. There was some disconnect on the implementation of that," Werner told Liverpoolfc.tv.

"That strategy is a strong one and it will continue.

"We need to build a strong system under the first team. We're hard at work identifying transfer targets and we will be better next year.

"Frankly, we make these decisions with a great deal of care because it's our track record in Boston to give people authority and we've had great success with our manager, who was there for eight years, and our general manager, so we prefer stability.

"But when it's time to act, we need to act. We're coming close to the end of the season and the transfer window for the summer, and we felt it was important to make this change expeditiously.

"We feel there is enough talent on the pitch to win and I would say we certainly have the resources to compete with anybody in football.

"But we're also talking about the future - we have a strategy we need implemented and we felt Damien was probably not the right person to implement that strategy."

But Comolli's exit does not mean that the role of director of football has been abandoned.

"We're still confident the structure we've discussed is the right structure," added Werner.

"That doesn't mean we won't look at tweaking it, but we feel a collective group of people making football decisions is healthy.

"The debate is healthy. Part of the reason we made this decision now is because we want to start the process of finding an excellent replacement.

"We've been dissatisfied, as most supporters have been, with the results so far.

"We feel we are a club that needs to be perceived as the strongest club in football and we want to get there."

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