Roger Moore scores: No Clifford Chance

It’s no surprise to find our club losing another member of back-room staff this week, with coach Simon Clifford on his way back north. We seem to go through more coaches than Dick Turpin, after all. But perhaps this time, the camel’s back might strain a little heavier under the straw.

Finding and retaining the right people is the biggest challenge in any organisation, be it sporting or business or both. Matching personal ambitions and expectations with those of the wider group is not easy, hence the almost permanent movement of players between clubs. But to lose coaches and management staff with the frequency of Southampton Football Club is beyond unlucky, it’s a genuine cause for concern.

The idea of Sir Clive Woodward working behind the scenes at Saints was always a recipe laced with more than a sensible helping of chilli powder. Explosive he may not be, arrogant and self-assured he most definitely is.

While those qualities may have earned us the William Webb-Ellis Trophy and endeared Sir Clive to a title-chasing Chairman, it was never a qualification to work hand-in-glove with our boy-made-good manager from the set of Eastenders.

Give Clive the licence to appoint coaching staff blessed with the Clifford taste for publicity as well as the Clifford name, and you really are throwing in the cayenne pepper and jalapenos too.

Good coach or bad, what baffles me is that frankly so few people saw this coming, least of all our illustrious board with their chequered (and that’s being generous) recruitment record.

I don’t recruit people often, but when I do, I tend to be looking for some specific qualities and not always blonde hair and more curves than a Spirograph. But more important than qualities I value are those valued by the team around me.

Can someone new work with the people we have? Are they made of the right stuff or am I likely to find blood on the carpet before the day is out? And I’m happy to admit that when it comes to the final choice, it’s not my decision to make but a democratic verdict prevails. If the majority can work with the incomer, it’s beholden on those who think they can’t to adapt.

And perhaps there’s a thumping great lesson here for the SFC board. Having overseen 10 managerial selections in 10 years and appointed more coaches than South West Trains’ refurbishment programme, surely someone somewhere is asking questions about our recruitment policy. I mean, might we not have foreseen travel problems for a bloke who runs Garforth Town working on the south coast with or without a vision expert?

So how much of a blow is it to lose Simon Clifford? Well, who knows? And this cuts to the heart of the problem.

We seem to have so many staff without truly defined roles. To find our manager on the sofa with Chris Kamara describing the Performance Director’s job as ‘you know, working with the kids and that’ is just evidence of the worst kind of bugger’s muddle.

And who, like me, was astonished to find Clifford was our ‘Head of Sports Science’? I thought he too was here to work with the kids, and that’s how it’s been portrayed throughout his short history with us.

Perhaps these fluid roles are all part of the ‘radical new plan’ required for promotion, but under whose guidance I’m just not sure. And if you want my honest opinion, I don’t think the Chairman is either; which is why I advocate that he steps away from the recruitment reins at least, and we look to a more proven football structure where the Manager selects his own team as part of a long term plan.

So what happens when there’s a failure of my own democratic system for finding new staff? Well I have the casting vote of course; which might explain our new Project Manager with blonde hair and a figure we don’t need a vision coach to appreciate either…