Technical director Gianluca Nani has been given the elbow by David Sullivan. Nani overall performed well during his 2 years with the club bringing in Behrami, Diamanti, Ilunga, Kovac and Franco. Players who West Ham might not have otherwise picked up on.
His errors were the loan signing of Jimenez from Inter that didn’t work out and famously the signing of Savio from his old club Brescia for £5 million in a deal that could of risen to £9 million. The spin put on Savio’s move by Scott Duxbury as a result of Craig Bellamy’s departure compounded his failure to break into the first team. He was sold to Fiorentina 6 months later and is now at Bologna.
Nani’s other controversial signing was that of Walter Lopez. The squad player was signed for a season against the wishes of then manager Alan Curbishley as the board tried to force Curbishley out of the club at the same time selling Anton Ferdinand and George McCartney to Sunderland.
Sullivan and Gold have publicly repeated the need to cut costs and eliminate unnecessary expenditure. Sacking Nani may cut costs but we also lose a very good scout. David Sullivan is not a football manager and could of done with the advice of Nani when it comes to scouting young prospects, as a long term strategy ‘the project’ was well founded. This sacking marks the death of that deliberate approach.
I’ll remember Nani for showing his allegiance to the claret and blue and rising to the occasion when our support sang ’stand up if you hate Millwall’ whilst Duxbury panicked over the possible PR.
More from Exeter on the forum:
I’m 50/50 with it really, as a large part of Nani’s job (spotting young players from wider afield, who should make the grade), won’t really come to fruition one way or the other until a couple years time, so who can tell.
Also, unless you’re ITK at the club, which I’m most definetely not, it’s hard to say who was the driving force behind some of these transfers.
Get the suspicion that G&S and possibly rentagob got rid of him, without fully assessing whether he was doing a good/valuable job one way or the other.
“Director of football – Yeah, supporters don’t want/understand that, Italian as well eh?….get rid, nobody will give a fuck”…
He well may have been costing more than his worth, and the Savio deal was hardly a coup, but some of the players he(?) bought in as listed above have done a very decent job, and I think you’ll be able to add Daprella to that list eventually.
Thought it was a bit unfair that he was critisised for bringing in a fair few from the Italian leagues – that was his area of expertise, fair enough that his first few ’spots’ would come from there, or did people think that Belgium and Paraguay were his main haunts for spotting good deals?
Also, it’s said that players like the ones he did get in were hardly unknowns anyway – yeah, that’s true, but it’s no good just naming a dozen decent players playing in Europe – suspect that through his contacts and experience in these matters, he picked up on decent players who ALSO for one reason or another were at a stage in their career when a move would suit both parties and they’d actually be interested in coming to West Ham, with us not paying through our noses.
without him at the club, I doubt for instance that we would’ve even looked at Behrami, let alone considered whether he’d be up for a move to us or not.
Anyway, fuck him, well rid.
