André Villas-Boas says that he wants Tottenham Hotspur to appoint a technical director in order to make them bigger players on the transfer market. The Roma general manager Franco Baldini, who previously held a similar post alongside Fabio Capello in the England setup, is the favourite for the job.

The Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is an advocate of the two-tier continental-type structure, which can aid the continuity of player recruitment and, having inherited David Pleat as the director of football upon his arrival at the club in 2001, he went on to employ Frank Arnesen and Damien Comolli as the sporting director.

The results were mixed but Villas-Boas says that it would benefit him to work with such a figure, particularly one with the "experience of dressing rooms" rather than, for example, a boardroom executive. He worked productively with Antero Henrique at Porto.

Villas-Boas refused to say whether Baldini might be appointed at Tottenham, where Levy has not replaced the former chief scout, Ian Broomfield, who was central to player recruitment. Broomfield left to join Harry Redknapp at Queens Park Rangers. Levy sacked Redknapp as Tottenham's manager last summer.

"The chairman and I have been outlining the route ahead for what we want to do in terms of the club structures and, hopefully, the arrival of somebody else in the structure for the recruitment side – a technical director," Villas-Boas said. "Hopefully we can take those steps forward. It's not up to me to confirm anything.

"The most important thing is the relationship between the person that bridges the gap between manager and board, and that he is able to be focused on the technical side of things. [It should be] someone who has experience of dressing rooms, represents the club, and is able to link up with players and agents."

Villas-Boas made it clear that he was fully supportive of the appointment, and he suggested that he might be more comfortable purely as coach, who could concentrate on work on the training pitch.

"I think of a more European style of structure, of a head coach and then the functions of a manager will be handed up to a different person," Villas-Boas said. "It's something that works. Since the first day, I told the club that it's somebody who is extremely important."

Tottenham are notorious for leaving some of their transfer deals to the last moment, and the overlap between the start of the season and the closure of the summer window has, on occasion, been unsettling. "Ideally when you set up for the first game of the season ... to have put the team to bed would be the ideal situation," Villas-Boas said.

Tottenham will pursue "quality" additions regardless of whether they qualify for the Champions League and Villas-Boas had praise for the Barcelona striker David Villa, with whom he has been linked. "I tried to move him to Chelsea [last season]," he said. "He's a world-renowned striker," he said.