Diary of a (football) CEO: 'Hiring Askou was a calculated risk, selling Miller was excruciating'
Brian Caldwell, Motherwell. Part Two
Welcome to part II of award-winning sportswriter Stephen McGowan’s observation of the life of a football club chief executive officer — Brian Caldwell of Motherwell. Yesterday, Brian told us about the particular challenges associated with a fan-owned club.
In Part II today, Brian lifts the lid on the hiring of Jens Berthel Askou and the smart recruitment which turned the team into one of the stories of the Scottish season.
Part II is for paid subscribers. Been waiting for right moment to support our indie journalism? Then sign up for our Nutmeg season ticket offer now…
By Stephen McGowan
Over three decades as one of the old stagers of British football, Brian Caldwell has worked with 17 different managers. Three of them have come during a dramatic 12 months when turmoil at Motherwell turned to triumph.
In January Stuart Kettlewell left after two years, citing the effect of abuse from fans. Replacement Michael Wimmer lasted a mere 12 games before family issues drew him back to Germany to join third-tier club Jahn Regensburg.
When a type of manager fails, football clubs have an impetuous urge to rip up the model they favoured before and go in a different direction. When the time came to ponder Wimmer’s replacement, a three-man selection subcommittee consisting of Caldwell, chairman Kyrk MacMillan and Well Society board member Greg Anderson held their nerve. Despite cutting his time short for personal reasons, Wimmer had won five and drawn three of his 12 matches.
While the patient had died, the operation had been a relative success and the Wimmer blueprint still felt like the way to go. Sticking to their guns, Motherwell turned to a 42-year-old Dane who had once managed IFK Goteburg and had served most recently as assistant manager at FC Copenhagen.
While the culture of Scottish football continues to flummox overseas managers of bigger clubs, Jens Berthel Askou has been a success. Propelling the Steelmen from mid-table mediocrity into a top-four title contender, a possession-based attractive style of football is based on short, sharp, quick passing and counter-pressing.
Caldwell is already quietly bracing himself for the possibility of another manager knocking on the door of his Fir Park office.
“I’ve had that twice already this year and both have come from left-field,” he tells Nutmeg FC.
“Stuart Kettlewell came to speak to me one day. And I had pretty much the same conversation with Michael Wimmer as I did with Stuart.
“They knocked on the door and I asked, ‘Everything okay?’ And the answer from both was ‘No.’ The Stuart bombshell about why he wanted to leave was well documented. Michael’s personal family situation was difficult as well.”
While a football CEO looks after the club’s business operations, the most important decision he will ever make revolves around the first team manager. Get it right and the tills ring a little faster than before. The mood around the club — and fanbase — lifts no end.
Caldwell was the most experienced recruiter on the selection panel which sifted through 90-plus applications before settling on a Danish candidate barely anyone in Scotland had heard of. Like previous boss Wimmer, Askou was a bold, imaginative and risky appointment.
“People keep asking, ‘Where did Jens come from?’
“When the Michael situation happened we agreed to keep to the same principles generally. Michael worked out in a football sense. It was a one-off situation where his personal circumstances with his family were very difficult to legislate for or expect.
“But we felt as if Michael had taken us on a journey which showed that we had done the right thing. What we needed was someone to continue what Michael did.
“Because we went foreign the previous time we were more open to it. But that meant that we had to analyse every single person because I had never heard of Michael Wimmer before he was put to me by somebody down south. That experience taught me not to discount anybody because you have not heard of them.”
A game-changer in the selection of players, opinions are divided on how useful data analytics can really be in the selection of managers. Jamestown Analytics, the most renowned data-based set-up in Scotland, recommended Neil Critchley to Hearts and it didn’t work out.
Undeterred, Motherwell asked their head of recruitment Nick Daws to benchmark Askou’s data against Wimmer, Kettlewell and the most successful managers in the Scottish Premiership outwith Celtic and Rangers. Along the way, Caldwell’s years of experience in picking managers proved invaluable.
“Football is not all about data. It’s also about having a gut feeling a lot of the time and seeing how they fit into the environment,” explains Caldwell. “Would they fit into fan ownership? Would the candidate be the right person for us all to get on with it?
People will be looking at our manager, people will be looking at our players as well
“Jens has been brilliant since he came in. He is just a very good type. He is very relaxed and very composed and the only time he has knocked on my door so far has been to come in for a chat or an update.”
This week, at least, Askou has others to chat to. The Dane describes his professional estrangement from his family kin as “complicated”. He recently flew home for a whistlestop visit after a bout of flu and, after the 1-0 win over Dundee, his wife and children arrived in Scotland for the festive season.
Askou has already thanked his family for the opportunity to go and “chase some things” and Caldwell has been around the block long enough to know how the chase could end. Bracing himself for the possibility of a club with deeper pockets lifting the phone, Motherwell recognise the price to be paid for a period of success.
“Listen, you always have to expect the unexpected in football,” acknowledges the Fir Park CEO. “We’ve had a successful few months. We’re fourth in the league and people will be looking at our manager, people will be looking at our players as well.
“So you are thinking, ‘We need to plan for the future a little bit and the eventuality of someone going.’ Not that we want to lose anyone, but if you don’t bring ambitious people to the club and give them a platform to move on to better things you’re not really doing your job.
“We hope that people will come here as part of a journey and help us to recruit other players who see Motherwell as a great stepping stone to the English Championship or Serie A.
“We don’t want to be selling our players all the time, but that is reality.”
The summer window ended in the sale of Scotland midfielder Lennon Miller to Serie A outfit Udinese in a club record deal worth £4.7million. While Motherwell are propped up by donations from the Well Society, the biggest sale since David Turnbull’s £3m move to Celtic was a welcome boost to the club bank balance.
“That was about four weeks of negotiations with the Italians. In my 30 years, that has probably been the hardest negotiation I have ever had. It wasn’t an easy process. But we had a player who wanted to move and an agent involved, a family involved.
“So you are trying to keep everybody happy at the one time while also looking after the football club.”
Spending the windfall wisely was the next challenge. Adopting a holistic approach towards strengthening the foundations of the club, the board invested in the youth system and infrastructure. Utilising data analytics and managerial nous, they signed well.
Former Scotland under-21 international Elliott Watt has been one of the stand-out midfielders in the SPFL Premiership. Identified by Daws before Askou’s arrival, the new manager looked at the data and video footage and waved the move through. The impressive Elijah Just was a player Askou knew from Danish football.
“Jens is very particular on the type of player he wants,” says Caldwell. “He is very specific and that helps Nick with the data. Who would fit that category and who would fit the wage structure as well? Jens will watch footage for hours on end to make sure that players are right.”
If the key to successful recruitment is signing more hits than misses, then Motherwell have a few credits in the bank. Celtic loanee Stephen Welsh, Austrian Lukas Fadinger, left-back Emmanuel Longelo and former Ross County top scorer Regan Charles Cook have all nullified the need for the Steelmen to spend the balance of the Miller windfall in the winter transfer window. While Caldwell can’t rule out picking up some bits and bobs for the squad, the bigger concern is an unwelcome move for his manager or key players.
“January is horrific. It’s a horrible window to sign players,” he says. “We are fourth in the league now and in a good place, but we need to be asking, ‘Is there better out there?’
“Nick, Jens and I will probably speak every day from now on. We are probably not in the situation we were in during previous windows because we have had a successful start to the season. We don’t want to sell anybody, but if a club comes with an offer for one of our players then we have to consider that as a board.
“If you get your recruitment of your manager right and you get your recruitment of your players right, it’s half the battle. While that sounds simple, it’s really not.
“It’s the magic formula. And it’s about doing as much due diligence as you possibly can to try to minimise the risk. Everybody you take in, everyone you employ on the football side has a risk element attached.
“But listen, everything has aligned for us this year. That might be through design, luck or both. I think you need a bit of both at times.”