Everyone raves on about that Dan Ashworth fella saying he knows what his doing & is linked to every big club going. Brighton to Newcastle after their takeover was classed as a coup for them at the time.
Yet only last week I heard that Man Utd are possibly preparing to poach him to go and join their new ownership model there as a Sporting Director type role.
Now Dan Ashworths clearly doing something right but does he have that thing called pedigree people on here refer to?
A football career taking in Norwich (youth level), Eastbourne Town, & Wisbech Town certainly didn't earn him his pedigree tag on playing career alone.
Peterborough Utd, Cambridge Utd & West Brom were where Ashworth started his coaching career with their respective youth team set ups, before getting a higher profile role with England Elite Development set up. Its is from here he left England to become the Technical Director at up & coming Brighton.
So let's not kid ourselves that an amazing DOF type person needs to have pedigree or an amazing background in football or necessarily be a household name.
So we have Ricky Martin in the role of technical director at Stoke who for all intents and purposes is our Dan Ashworth. His career followed a similar pathway of academy lead at both Norwich & West Ham & was appointed at Stoke to fufil the technical director role.
Now I'm not in any way suggesting that Martin will be as good or renowned as much as Ashworth is but I could see why JC would have made this type of appointment.
Whether he be classed as a Technical Director, DOF, Head of Football Operations, CEO, I'd imagine all these titles refer to the similar if not same type of role.
I guess as Ashworth was judged on his successes at Brighton, Martin will be judged on his time at Stoke & the next few months could well see him coming out as a self proclaimed hero if we do somehow manage to scrape to safety and successfully build next season.
Or he'll be seen as an abject failure if we end up getting relegated after his first full season in charge & a future Dan Ashworth he'll most likely not become! Interesting times ahead.
