The Croat In The Hat

So let's try and tackle these things one at a time.

The hat's debut

Basically as far as I can see, Velimir came into a no-win situation straight away. He's working away at Panathinaikos and gets a job offer from a Premiership football team. Sounds great! When do I start? Obviously "Director of Football" is pretty standard stuff over on the continent and so to be asked to do that sort of job at another club in one of the biggest leagues about is a nice opportunity. But whilst I have no doubts that on the one hand Milan genuinely wants to push the club forward off the field, you'd have to be rather naive to think that it wasn't also partly due to the big old loveable ego nightmare with Harry.

So here we are back in Portsmouth whilst all this is going on and suddenly we hear that Harry might be leaving and some unknown is on his way - so already Zajec is on a shaky footing before he's even started through no fault of his own. And especially the couple of weeks people seem to forget between Harry leaving and then joining Southampton when there was a real split in the fans, especially since the whole thing seemed to be a massive set-up; not a comfortable ride for those making the decisions at the time.

And England being England, jobs with titles like "Director of Football" are treated with fear. Just because the vast majority of clubs around the world use "Directors of Football" and "Sporting Directors" is not important - it's not the English traditional way therefore it's not right. Even now you'll get people complaining about these supposed bizarre methods introduced by foreign coaches; things like playing with four goals in training. Not that the England national team also do the same thing. But everyone knows that footballers should just do jogging, play only in one set formation and never use the ball in the week because it makes them more hungry for it at the weekend. Well, according to coaches 40 years ago until more "continental methods" got introduced, and look how much they never caught on.... oh.

Still I digressed from "Zajec" to "blinkered English football fans" far too quickly there, back to the point.

Now technically Harry didn't leave because of Zajec. Remember at the press conference? He certainly said it enough times. Now I'm not suggesting that Harry Redknapp is a lying weasel for one moment but I think there's an outside chance that Velimir's arrival may have had some knock on effect, so let's presume for an entirely hypothetical situation that Redknapp DID leave for that reason - as was certainly the general consensus. Once again it's another way to get off on the wrong foot if the manager who has been at the club for a couple of years and won promotion suddenly clears off because of some new guy with an uncertain role.

Without the hat

And perhaps the cherry on top of "first impressions" is that he wasn't a media happy ever-quotable attention whore, unlike the man he replaced. This gave the chance for him to be built up as some crusty old twat who was considered boring, to have no sense of humour and hated by all. But another factor was his reluctance to do any interviews - it was about two months in that I actually found out he had a voice - which made him seem out of touch with the club and fans, or as if he didn't really care. I'd say that's probably quite harsh and as he said himself many a time he wanted the players to be the stars, not the management. After the days of Redknapp it was quite refreshing for the club to keep things behind closed doors and not be in the papers every single morning, although writing for this website became slightly dull by the new found professional attitude which is probably why some like Mark Storey opted for ever reliable Smertin/Basinas themes.

But I digress again.

That's enough of the potted history about why he got off on the wrong foot - for the most part he'll be measured by his managerial record. Which as far as I'm concerned is a load of crap because he'd never been a manager before, he didn't come here to be manager, he was looking for another manager from the minute he was appointed himself and was learning as he went along. Still, his record stands at;

Played 21 Won 5 Lost 12 Drawn 4

All fairly average stuff. The problem is when we went from 1st February to 9th April without picking up a single win, regardless of how some of the performances really deserved more credit than they got. And to be honest, I think Zajec would've kept us up. However I can agree with the critics who didn't rate his style of play - one up front away at Watford? Taking the ball to the corners and playing for a draw with five minutes to go - at home? Odd formations jamming players out of position across the park?

The thing for me is that being the happy type I will remember Zajec for games like Bolton, Palace, Liverpool and Newcastle. I'm sure a lot of people will think of Villa, Blackburn and Watford - games when we failed miserably.

And his other major failing was the transfer market. Although I will still argue that Skopelitis is an option as a squad player the majority do not - so we'll say that all of his signings were failures. Chalkias, Skoppy and Rodic will just be a comedy blip on the map in the same way as Carl Tiler or Marc Keller.

No hat, but hair

So far so bad. Now we come to the time when Alain Perrin came in and Zajec was actually allowed to return to behind the scenes and do the job he was brought here for, perish the thought. As far as I can see the idea of DoF is a very good one because whilst the manager can stay at home with the squad, there's someone with football knowledge who can do anything that needs doing in that area - scouting networks, finding the new training ground for example. But the number one use is for negotiating with players and agents, and if you look back through the summer you'll see a lot of players who mention Velimir when signing on as helping convince them to join. (And yes, I know that players always say the right thing like little lapdogs but it's the principle, dammit). It doesn't mean he picks the players, it doesn't mean he tells Alain who to buy, it means Alain can just name his players (within Milan's budget, needless to say) and leave it in the capable hands of those in the boardroom and get back on with his real job. It's just the typical English view of a cackling over-bearing wannabe-manager in the boardroom causing upset and unrest whereas for guys like Perrin and Zajec it'll be completely normal.

So why is he seemingly off? We can only speculate on the broad topic of "personal reasons" and the conspiracy theories will be chugging away. Here's a few to start off, simply cut and paste them onto various messageboards and we'll see how many we get back.

- Milan is selling up and trying to cut his losses
- Zajec isn't very good at his job so Milan wants to sack him quietly
- Zajec is fed up with getting abuse all the time
- Alain and Zajec had a punch up at the training ground

People will always try and play down Zajec's role and what he's done for us just because he isn't very popular generally. And, just like players, managers can be boo boys too; how often have you heard someone at Fratton Park bemoan a player and then say "I bet that Zajec signed him"? The classic example is Karadas - someone who Perrin tried to sign for Marseille and Troyes - but he hasn't done well so far so it MUST be Zajec who brought him in. He's just clueless Johnny Foreigner isn't he! Coming over here, stealing our jobs and our women. The filth.

A hat

It seems I'm very much in a minority though and that he won't really get the respect for any work he puts in, but so be it. If people judge him purely on his managerial record then it's hard to argue much because we played some pretty dull stuff at the time (although it's worth remembering he picked us up off the back of three straight defeats and got us to 9th by Boxing Day). I'm sure some may even have a pop just for writing this column as no doubt it's another accusation of Fratton Faithful towing the party line, but personally I have sympathy for him - comes to a new country, gets stuck into another job he doesn't want, now judged entirely on it.

Good luck to him in the future anyway.