There will be lessons learned from Foster's appointment, but I don't think we should rip the whole process up and stay over. He still fits the mould of the type of manager we should be looking for, but I'd imagine that some key points may need to stipulated for the next appointment.
1. Experience of managing full time at a professional football club.
2. An understanding of and agreement with our long standing and fairly successful recruitment process. Players should be Argyle signings rather than 'new manager signings'.
3. He must have a recognised back room staff ready to go, or be willing to work with the ones we have.
4. Able to evidence tactical dexterity. Ie - has a plan B and C for games where we are struggling. This needs to be factored into recruitment and a 'horses for courses' team selection to maximise the impact of our squad.
5. For the Argyle board to review the stats and data for the stipulation of 'must play attacking football'. How do you evidence this statistically? XG? Possession? Chances created? I don't know if this is something that can be defined statistically. Mr H said that for the Foster appointment, the data showed that his philosophy and tactics were consistent with Argyles identity of playing attacking and risky football. That was obviously not the case. We did look like a crap version of England under Foster, as opposed to a sort of Brazil C team under Schuey.
6. Proven ability to engage effectively with media outlets and the fans. Foster never came across well in interview (even before it started to go wrong), he wasn't as charismatic as Schuey and that disengaged the fan base.
7. Preferably a more than modest professional career, which in my view would get the instant respect of players in the squad and give the manager more presence.
I don't know who that leads us to, but I'm confident that if these requisites was sprinkled across the existing principles then we won't have the same problems that came to the fore under Foster. Obviously, some could tick all those
boxes and it could still not work outbutt for me, that would be the learning we could take from Fosters appointment