The Sheffield Wednesday manager, Garry Monk, has given his version of how the recruitment process works at Hillsborough – and insisted that he did have an input in each of the Owls’ January deals.
Monk brought in Alessio da Cruz, Connor Wickham and Josh Windass – who played under his close friend James Beattie at Accrington Stanley – on loans until the end of the season.
But the trio have not always been the first names on the 40-year-old’s teamsheet – something he has repeatedly put down to a lack of match practice.
Despite that, some Wednesday fans have questioned the amount of involvement had by Monk away from the pitch, with the continued presence of Amadeu Paixao, the Portuguese agent (seen below, far left) who is rumoured to advise the Owls chairman Dejphon Chansiri, a particular concern.
And the former Leeds United boss revealed at the weekend that he has had to respect certain decisions made by the club, which led to a grilling from the BBC’s Mike McCarthy at Tuesday’s pre-Manchester City press conference – at which Paixao’s name was not mentioned.
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Asked how many parties make up the recruitment process at Wednesday, Monk replied via the club’s official Facebook account:
You have the recruitment department (David Downes and Dean Hughes), you have the owner (Chansiri) and you have myself on the football side of it. That’s who’s involved in that process. My side of it is to give my view on the football side of it and (where) I feel the squad’s at and what could help it, ins and outs and that type of thing. You have the recruitment department who are obviously out there assessing players, watching and analysing for those specific needs or specific areas and then you have the owner and the club, that side of it, the financial side of it, who take care of that side of it. That’s how it works, that’s how, generally, it works at every club.
Monk was also asked: Who are the key people?
I think it’s an accumulation of the three. Ultimately, the club will have the final say. And it will always come down to the financial detail and the restrictions financially, whether it’s within the financial parameters you’re working to or not. They will always have the final say, in terms of whether that’s doable or not. In terms of the rest of it, it’s an accumulation of myself on the football side of it, what I feel we need and whether that player you’re recruiting fits into that what you need. And then the recruitment side of it who identify those players and suggest those players from an analytical point of view. But ultimately it will always be the club that have the final decision because it will always come down to a financial decision in the end. You can do all that work and put it there but it will always come down to a financial decision because it’s whether that fits into the financial parameters you’re working to.
Then: How crucial was he to Wednesday’s January deals?
Of course, I wouldn’t agree to a player that I didn’t think could help us, or give my opinion on that. So, yeah, in terms of the three lads that came in, they came with understanding from the recruitment side of it, understanding from my side, can they fit in to help us, and yeah, of course, then it’s for the club to agree, which obviously was within the parameters we could do and, like I said, all of that process was agreed.
Regarding the comments he made at the weekend, Monk said:
Look, we’re not all going to agree on everything. I give my opinion, the recruitment (team) will give their opinion and the club will give their opinion. That’s the way of the world. I’m not unhappy with anything. We can all think different things and all think things can be done this or that way, or (we) could have done a little bit more on that. Everyone will have that opinion. But at the end of the day, we did what we could do. As I said, it will always come down to a club decision and that will always mostly be from a financial point of view, whether that’s a player leaving, if that financially makes sense and if that’s enough for the club, and coming in, if that’s affordable for a club. So those things are always going to be decided by the club. That’s the same at every single club that I know of and whether you agree with them or not, that’s just part of the process.
After being pressed on outgoings, or the lack thereof, at Hillsborough in January, Monk sought to put an end to McCarthy’s line of questioning.
“At the end of the day, I’m not here to discuss the club,” he said. “My priority is winning games.”
The former Sheffield Wednesday centre-back did, however, insist that there is a time and a place for such discussions and that the issue can be revisited at a later date.