Shrewsbury's Micky Moore: Director of football role can be misunderstood

Moore has been appointed as part of a shake-up at Town after the departure of chief executive Brian Caldwell, while a new senior management structure has also been introduced.

He arrived from League One rivals Cheltenham after a successful five-year spell with the Robins, and Moore has explained what Shrewsbury fans can come to expect from him.

He said: "There is a misconception as to what the role is and what it does and what it stands for.

"Predominantly it is football decisions, whether that is the recruitment of players or the recruitment of a new head coach or the academy.

"There are three real departments that you are overseeing and in control of.

"We are in the midst of finding a new head coach which will be something different for the football club because the model the club have used in the past is a manager.

"We will be looking for a new head coach whose role will be to come and coach the team and not really look at the rest of the football club.

"That will be left to other people, like myself and the outer football board.

"So first of all in terms of the head coach, we need to look for a new one and we are going to go down probably something a little bit different in terms of what you call a traditional manager.

"It will be a coach, someone who has a coaching background. They might have come through the under-21s or under-23s route.

"They might have been an assistant manager or a first-team coach or they may have coached as a head coach somewhere else."

During his time at Cheltenham, Moore signed a variety of players and perhaps his most successful signing was securing the signature of Alfie May – someone the Robins now stand to make a considerable profit on.

He currently has 12 players in the Salop squad for the new season – and while also bringing in a new head coach he must also build a squad to compete in the division.

Moore continued: "And then my responsibilities are also the recruitment of players. Traditionally managers will go out there and look to sign the players and everything like that but that responsibility will fall upon me to look and bring in the right players for the club.

"With the academy, which is massively important, we need to create a pathway for our home-grown players.

"I had five years at Cheltenham and the one thing we did start to look at, over a period of time, was changing the age of the group of players.

"We were quite old when I went in, and I leave the group now they are quite young and they have a lot of sellable assets in there.

"We have created a pathway for the academy players and hopefully that will flourish now that I have gone and I want to try and do that here.

"I want to try and get a pathway for our young players. We have a fantastic academy and the staff and David Longwell have done really well.

"We need to create a pathway. We have Tom Bloxham at the moment who is in and around it, we need to develop him as I think he is one for the future definitely.

"But we also need to create other pathways for players, there is a misconception in terms of players at the moment with where we are and what we are doing, but the window does not open until Wednesday so there is no need to panic or worry.

"There is a process in place, and could signings happen before a head coach comes in? That could certainly happen.

"What people need to understand is that when the head coach comes in he is already going to have 11 or 12 signed players already.

"Which he will know about as they are signed and when we go through the interview process they will be aware of what we are after and what we are doing.

"And the type of player we are looking to bring in.

And Moore has talked about bringing down the average of the squad and targeting certain players with specific attributes.

He said: "One of the big things that I have identified is the average age of the squad, very talented squad, very good squad but it is predominantly an older squad so I will be looking to bring the age range down and looking to bring in more youth athleticism pace, mobility and physicality into the team.

"We will look to do that with younger players because if we can get good young players who are sellable assets,then we can look to sell them while creating that pathway for our own academy and not stifling that as that is so important as well.

"My role is to sit between the chairman and the head coach. So I am that springboard between him and the head coach and be a sounding board for him to come and speak to.

"There will be frustrations, there will be times when he is disappointed, which I have had in my previous job when they have needed a pick me up and I have been that buffer to help them.

"I know there are lots of strands to the role that I do, and people will judge it in many different ways. People might judge my success by what we do on Saturday and Tuesday. Do we win games do we lose games?

"My job is not just based on football results, I appreciate it is a part of the game, and that is important, but also I cannot make emotional decisions, I cannot be emotional in it. I have to put the right processes in place.

"I need to make sure that when we do go on difficult times, as everything does go on difficult times, that we have a structure, that we have an identity we are sticking to a process and that takes time.

"There is no quick fix to what we want to do. It is a process and it is going to take time. I appreciate everyone wants things to happen quickly.

"I hope the fans start to see small gains as the season goes on in terms of what we are trying to do.

"Hopefully over time, I will be judged on all aspects of our football not just what happens on a Saturday afternoon or a Tuesday night."