Instead of having one overarching Sporting Director to oversee their football department, Everton instead have a leadership team, comprising of Cox (Technical Director), James Smith (Director of Scouting and Recruitment), Chris Howarth (Head of Football Strategy and Analytics) and Nick Hammond (Head of Player Trading).
Chiang will report into this team. Richard Battle was Everton’s Head of Football Strategy from June 2018 to June 2019. He has previously spoken to TGG about the importance of longer-term strategy at football clubs – and how it is often neglected.
“The application of strategy is notoriously difficult in football, because it’s a sport that looks one week to the next, one window to the next,” he told TGG. “However, I do believe there are huge benefits in applying some strategies and principles and making sure there is a resource that has the ability to think ahead.
“Strategy is never an end in itself, it is a means to achieve other things. The strategy needs to be meaningful in terms of the club’s overall vision and goals and also relatable for the individuals who work around the club.”
At Everton, Battle said there were two main parts of his job. The first was asking “what are the things we want to be good at, what does being good at those things look like and how we measure our performance over time in those things?”
The second element was projects.
“Something comes up that requires resource, attention and thinking time that doesn’t fit neatly into one individual’s department, so you’re a resource to lead those projects and develop them over time in collaboration with others around the training ground.”
One of Chiang’s big projects at United was helping develop a ‘proof of concept’ for a data science strategy. This included deciding which departments would be involved, what the inputs and outputs should be, which roles were required and the profiles of the appointments that needed to be made.