Chief executive Nigel Clibbens has been explaining how Carlisle United had to change tack on the appointment of a sporting director.
It was always the club’s intention to appoint a sporting director before a head coach, but things have worked out differently.
Bringing fans up to date on CUTV he said: “This is a really interesting one, and it’s one that I never thought I’d experience in what’s recently gone on and how things have panned out.
“Obviously, at the start of the process, we decided we needed to make a change in management and we went public and we said that our approach was to appoint a sporting director first and then a head coach.
“We were very clear on that. The process that we undertook was really quite simple. We invited expressions of interest in the sporting director position.
“We built a long list, talked to lots of people, probably two dozen different people we had conversations with and we narrowed that down.
“In parallel to that, we were looking at the sort of head coach that we would like to bring into the football club who we felt shared the values and was aligned in terms of the vision of how we wanted to take the football club forward.
“So they were kind of running in parallel but it was always the intention that the sporting director would lead the way.
“We undertook that process and it went really, really well. We were able to have interviews with potential candidates and we narrowed that down.
“And during that process, we were saying to the sporting directors: okay, we’ve explained to you what the vision of the football club is, this is what we want to see moving forward, who would you be bringing in here as head coach?
“So as part of that process, we were then getting a feel of what the sporting directors were thinking and how aligned they were in what we were thinking.
“That worked really well. We got to the point where we had a preferred candidate, we offered him the job, he accepted the job, he handed his notice in to his current club and we started then planning to bring in a new head coach. That all accelerated really quickly because we were all aligned on who we wanted to get in.
“That process carried on for probably three or four days and then after four days or so, the person that we thought was going to join us changed their mind. It’s never happened to me in football in 15 years. People change their minds but generally not after such a period and being so committed or saying they were so committed to our project.”
Carlisle have not confirmed the man involved but it’s generally thought that Liam Sweeting from MK Dons was the one who changed his mind.
Clibbens continued: “That threw a spanner in the works for us in terms of our process. But what it meant that we could still appoint the head coach because at that point we were 100% certain that Mike was our man from the process that we’d gone through with the sporting directors and the head coaches because his name was always coming up and it aligned with us. So we were totally comfortable with that.
“We also felt that in the interests of the club we didn’t want to wait. Mike was our man and we wanted to move on him so we did that. Not ideal in that we’d said that we wanted the sporting director first and we hadn’t delivered on that but that’s life.
“Things change and you’ve got to react to it and one thing that I have learned in my time in football is you don’t always get what you plan for. So you can’t plan too far ahead and you can’t be so wedded to your plan that you can’t adapt and change. We’ve brought Mike in, brought his team in, we’ve focused on settling them into the club and we put the sporting director position on the back burner for two or three weeks.
“We now started that process again, looking at people who have since come forward, since Mike’s come in and we’re advancing that. One of the things that we wanted to do was we wanted to appoint someone who we’ve looked into their eyes and spoken to.
“So with the ownership back in Jacksonville we felt it important that we needed to wait until they returned. We’re now in the process of getting ready to start those interviews again with our preferred candidates.
“They’ll probably start pretty quickly as soon as Tom and the family arrive back in the UK which might be early next week, depending on the weather, because looking at the forecast in Jacksonville today after the hurricane they’ve got another one coming which promises sadly to be a really tough one.
“We’re all looking to make sure everybody’s safe and well in Jacksonville and we’ve got to react to that. We’re progressing it but we’re comfortable where we are.
“We’re going to take our time, we’re going to get the right person, someone who’s totally aligned with where we want to go and we’re confident we’ll get that person and that’s life.”
