Steve Hitchen

  • The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

HITCHENS IN OR OUT?

  • Total voters
    195
Sort by date Sort by reaction score
Doc said:
Ndombele apparently Poch's #1 transfer desire. Rodon apparently a link with some Swansea-affiliated person who joined the club this past summer. N'koudou, Bergwijn two you can definitely assume were Hitchen driven.
Click to expand...
Rumours at the time were that Pochettino loved N'koudou from some video work. No idea if true.
 
Doc said:
Ndombele apparently Poch's #1 transfer desire. Rodon apparently a link with some Swansea-affiliated person who joined the club this past summer. N'koudou, Bergwijn two you can definitely assume were Hitchen driven.
Click to expand...
It's Hitchen's job to vet all these players though. To be really worth his corn, he needs to be able to make the difference - find the future stars and veto those who won't cut it.

With hindsight there were warning signs with Ndombele. Even the Lyon fans were saying he was inconsistent, and there were the fitness/attitude concerns at Amiens. So £55 million and £200k/week was bad business in a window where we could have used the money to buy Fernandes.

It's obviously not easy to pick winners in the transfer market, but we need someone absolutely top class in that role and its hard to make a case that's Hitchen.
 
A clear sign of how incompetent this moron is can be seen in the documentary when Bergwijn was about to sign and Hitchen was proudly proclaiming how he was “EXACTLY what this team needs.”
A young bumbling winger was quite literally the last thing this team needed at the time.

The guy is a complete and utter clown. But like many others at the club, the buck ultimately stops with the even bigger idiot who hired him.
 
Juicy Sushi said:
I think that Hitchen gets a lot more stick than he deserves.

Scouting/signing is a process. You get judged on results, but the scouting team are not really responsible for the results, in the sense that they don't coach the player, do their physio, or get their shit together like family might.

We also don't really know who made what decisions during the Pochettino-era. When Pochettino joined, first there was the tail end of Baldini. If he was running the process then we could fairly clearly say it was not very good at identifying talent, or convincing them to come. After Baldini exits, Mitchell comes along from Soton. He had worked alongside Pochettino, so there was a pre-existing relationship. Yay. But we don't know, of his signings, who did he pick, who were we already looking at, and what the process was. Given the way we were signing players, there seemed to be some solid use of data (and his subsequent long time at Red Bull would indicate that he knows how to do it properly), and we definitely had a plan. But he left quickly, apparently not a fan of being the fifth wheel in the Levy-Pochettino bromance. After that, we got a committee which was led by Pochettino. And that, I think we can clearly say, did NOT work. We couldn't find decent talent, and the guys we did sign didn't make a big difference for the squad. Pochettino was a brilliant coach, but the Fergie role of doing everything was clearly beyond him. And so we moved to a committee with Pochettino, Levy, and Hitchen. And signed no one that summer. Based on rumours and stories after the fact, it seems that Pochettino would not accept substitutes, but none of his preferred players wanted to join. So, nothing happened. And the squad burned the candle at both ends, got top 4, a CL final, and a major case of burnout. We then belatedly started to rebuild the following summer. Targets were identified and signed, data seemed to be used as the players were all prospects which had plenty of other suitors. But, the rebuild had started too late and Pochettino needed to go. Then we get Mourinho, and a summer where we seemed to mostly be signing the kind of guys he liked, but clearly on a COVID-imposed budget. We don't know how much was club directed, how much was Mendes required, or who asked for which players.

If we don't know what Hitchen was told to look for, then we cannot judge if he was any good. If he was asked to find aging warhorses for a bus-parking asshole, then hell, he seems to have done quite well. If his job was to find young talent to rebuild the squad, then perhaps not. If his job was to do both at the same time, then you can only feel sorry for the guy.

My point is just that you cannot just look at the players signed and draw conclusions. If we don't know the manager's requests and board restrictions then we don't know what he was being told to do. And if we don't know who the short lists for each position were we cannot judge how well he and his team identified talents vs Levy and Mourinho's ability to get them to join the club. And once players joined, we don't know how well they were coached, or how their fitness was taken care of. Neither of those things are Hitchen's job, but they affect how we judge the player. Football isn't a video game, and it isn't what the media says it is. It's actually really bloody complicated and we never, ever get the true stories of what goes on until many years later, if at all.
Click to expand...
Very well judged and fair. But do we judge Hitchins on what has gone right or what has gone wrong ?

Might be that my work pace is much less risky, but I never shy away from challenging those around me, below me or above me.

Maybe the problem with Hitchins is that he might have failed to do that correctly ?
We won’t ever know.

All we do know for sure is that he is on public record saying he hates parts of his job, which is troubling when he is saying that at a time when a key part of his annual objectives need to be delivered. Gedson Fernandes (puffing cheeks) Bergwijn (crying) signed when Amazon was watching. He’s a bit simple if he wants the whole world to see that happening on his watch.

Anyway, I blame Gerry Francis.
 
It can't be too hard for a team the size of spurs to get in a good scout. There aren't many bigger jobs out there, levy is obviously the constant here
 
CollyQC said:
It can't be too hard for a team the size of spurs to get in a good scout. There aren't many bigger jobs out there, levy is obviously the constant here
Click to expand...
Probably they have a list of options from
Football Manager 2019 and at their first committee meeting Levy crosses off the top 5 from every list and says “Go get me the 6th choice, but do not pay the asking price” How else do we go from Bruno Fernandes to Gedson Fernandes?
 
LeeMcl said:
Probably they have a list of options from
Football Manager 2019 and at their first committee meeting Levy crosses off the top 5 from every list and says “Go get me the 6th choice, but do not pay the asking price” How else do we go from Bruno Fernandes to Gedson Fernandes?
Click to expand...
Bruno to Gedson, sums it up brilliantly!!
 
LeeMcl said:
Very well judged and fair. But do we judge Hitchins on what has gone right or what has gone wrong ?

Might be that my work pace is much less risky, but I never shy away from challenging those around me, below me or above me.

Maybe the problem with Hitchins is that he might have failed to do that correctly ?
We won’t ever know.

All we do know for sure is that he is on public record saying he hates parts of his job, which is troubling when he is saying that at a time when a key part of his annual objectives need to be delivered. Gedson Fernandes (puffing cheeks) Bergwijn (crying) signed when Amazon was watching. He’s a bit simple if he wants the whole world to see that happening on his watch.

Anyway, I blame Gerry Francis.
Click to expand...
I hate large chunks of my job. I still do them, but I know that the situation can be ridiculous and is done in the wrong way. That was the impression I got of his opinion on January. It's not a good time to be doing transfers as it is not a good opportunity for long-term planning, and the psychology of the participants means you get panic buying or selling instead.
 
Juicy Sushi said:
I think that Hitchen gets a lot more stick than he deserves.

Scouting/signing is a process. You get judged on results, but the scouting team are not really responsible for the results, in the sense that they don't coach the player, do their physio, or get their shit together like family might.

We also don't really know who made what decisions during the Pochettino-era. When Pochettino joined, first there was the tail end of Baldini. If he was running the process then we could fairly clearly say it was not very good at identifying talent, or convincing them to come. After Baldini exits, Mitchell comes along from Soton. He had worked alongside Pochettino, so there was a pre-existing relationship. Yay. But we don't know, of his signings, who did he pick, who were we already looking at, and what the process was. Given the way we were signing players, there seemed to be some solid use of data (and his subsequent long time at Red Bull would indicate that he knows how to do it properly), and we definitely had a plan. But he left quickly, apparently not a fan of being the fifth wheel in the Levy-Pochettino bromance. After that, we got a committee which was led by Pochettino. And that, I think we can clearly say, did NOT work. We couldn't find decent talent, and the guys we did sign didn't make a big difference for the squad. Pochettino was a brilliant coach, but the Fergie role of doing everything was clearly beyond him. And so we moved to a committee with Pochettino, Levy, and Hitchen. And signed no one that summer. Based on rumours and stories after the fact, it seems that Pochettino would not accept substitutes, but none of his preferred players wanted to join. So, nothing happened. And the squad burned the candle at both ends, got top 4, a CL final, and a major case of burnout. We then belatedly started to rebuild the following summer. Targets were identified and signed, data seemed to be used as the players were all prospects which had plenty of other suitors. But, the rebuild had started too late and Pochettino needed to go. Then we get Mourinho, and a summer where we seemed to mostly be signing the kind of guys he liked, but clearly on a COVID-imposed budget. We don't know how much was club directed, how much was Mendes required, or who asked for which players.

If we don't know what Hitchen was told to look for, then we cannot judge if he was any good. If he was asked to find aging warhorses for a bus-parking asshole, then hell, he seems to have done quite well. If his job was to find young talent to rebuild the squad, then perhaps not. If his job was to do both at the same time, then you can only feel sorry for the guy.

My point is just that you cannot just look at the players signed and draw conclusions. If we don't know the manager's requests and board restrictions then we don't know what he was being told to do. And if we don't know who the short lists for each position were we cannot judge how well he and his team identified talents vs Levy and Mourinho's ability to get them to join the club. And once players joined, we don't know how well they were coached, or how their fitness was taken care of. Neither of those things are Hitchen's job, but they affect how we judge the player. Football isn't a video game, and it isn't what the media says it is. It's actually really bloody complicated and we never, ever get the true stories of what goes on until many years later, if at all.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. But I'd have to argue that someone who is designated to be largely in charge of recruitment should be judged on the recruitment of the team. No matter the hurdles that get placed in their way, whether it be Levy's meddling or Mou's reluctance to play ball. Someone really worth their pay would ideally circumnavigate those issues and succeed nonetheless.

It must be a bloody hard job and I don't envy it! But he has to be judged on his results, just as the players and coaches are.

I don't doubt he has some skill and that some of the players he's brought in could be proper talents under a different regime but that's not the reality right now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom