The John W Henry Interview - Part Two

Posted by Veinticinco de Mayo on November 15, 2010, 09:41:14 am

I am delighted to say that this morning we received the next set of answers to the questions you set for John W Henry.  The questions are below but I thought that I would introduce them with a short little anecdote that a fellow RAWKite kindly shared with me by PM.

Mike Forde, Director of Football Operations at Chelsea gave a presentation at London Business School last week in which he talked in depth on football operations, team culture and specifically their player recruitment process.   In the process of this he discussed his travels to different sports institutions around the world in some depth.  He also has apparently spoken to Billy Beane from the Oakland A's several times, and is really impressed by the sabermetrics approach.  The interesting bit was his recounting of his last conversation with Billy - Billy told him he thought the Red Sox are perhaps the best run sports organisation in the world.  In (roughly) Beane's own words - "the difference with the Red Sox is that there's an organisation with both the brains and the money to succeed.  There's a lot out there with the money, and a lot with the smarts, but almost none with both"

So, on to the questions.  Once again he has provided some full and interesting answers.  Please feel to comment or discuss them but PLEASE, LETS NOT MAKE THIS ANOTHER MANAGER THREAD.  We know that the overwhelming opinion of posters is that we need a change of manager and there are plenty of threads available to discuss that.

And a little note to any other sites that might want to use the answers, you are more than welcome to do so, all that we ask as usual is that you acknowledge the source and provide a link through to this thread.

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