What us fans want and what the board want / do are very different things.
In ideal circumstances, we would have a good DOF who has a clear identity for the club and all appointments are on board with that.
However we are not in that position, as a club you could say since we introduced a DOF, 15 years ago, 5 of those years were successful and that was the Ashworth era.
In the 4 seasons under Lai, we have gone through 3 x DOF (Hammond, Terraneo and Dowling) and through 6 x head coaches / managers (Pulis, Pardew, Moore, Shan, Bilic, Big Sam) and we are currently in the division lower than when he first took over!
So the facts state, what we are doing isnt working, one or two appointments go wrong, you stick with it, when you have got through 9 staff in 4 seasons (plus their own staff they would bring) you know somethings not right!
We are spending fortunes hiring and sacking people, its well known we are up for sale, we have stuck with a DOF for the sake of it, cut the middle man out and just get a manager for our current situation.
Football consultants sound fine but somebody at the club presently has to identify the right consultants, whats to say we dont end up with the Terraneo / Dowling equivalent of the football consultancy world?! 9 staff in 4 seasons should be standing out we arent very good at this!
Big Sam it would seem was advising the board, he is our consultant, i would say to him, recommend a manager and if we go up, Big Sam gets a commission, he is money motivated, that would suit him.
I would even be tempted to try and get him back for the actual job, any romantic notion of future planning, vision, identity for the Albion has gone in my view until Lai has sold up, he wants out and the quickest way to do that is go up.
Lets keep it simple, football worked fine for over hundred years without DOF, Football operations, etc a forward thinking club needs those things, we are not a forward thinking club, we are going here and now so dont keep wasting money on DOF, their entourages, etc.
The right manager should have a contacts book and scouts they use, go that route for a couple of seasons, we may end up where we are now but at least its one person making the decisions for the playing side instead of a few people doing and nobody being happy and getting what they want.