Any remaining patience towards Sir Jim Ratcliffe due to early mistakes, such as not just keeping Erik ten Hag but effectively making a first appointment by extending his contract, will be over if Ruben Amorim fails.
Even if it won’t be Sir Jim’s head on the chopping block – you don’t get rid of someone who paid more than a billion pounds for 27 percent of the club – questions should be asked of the managers he appoints. ; Dan Ashworth, Omar Berrada and Sir Dave Brailsford.
For various reasons, they have hitherto regarded me as a case of the blind leading the deaf.
Sir Jim, a remarkable businessman who should ultimately turn things around at Old Trafford, has put together his sports team to give him the right information to make good decisions. We’re about to find out more about their supposed expertise when the Amorim era begins on Sunday.
Sporting director Dan Ashworth was adept at finding players on a smaller budget at Brighton and Newcastle, but there is a different level of expectation when making top decisions at Man United.
Sir Jim thought paying a £20 million release clause was worth it to him. Like all expensive recruits, it is reasonable to expect Ashworth to live up to his reputation. He now finds himself in a market where every coveted player at Old Trafford is rising in price.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe will be looking for a positive impact from new head coach Ruben Amorim
But if that doesn’t happen, the petrochemical billionaire could take a closer look at the impact of his ‘new broom’ executives Sir Dave Brailsford (centre), Omar Berrada (centre right) and Dan Ashworth (right).
The Portuguese head coach will be in the dugout for the first time as Red Devils boss at Ipswich
Brailsford, he of marginal gains and head of sport at Ratcliffe’s company Ineos, was the supposed proponent of retaining the hapless Erik, and the purveyor of portable knowledge. I heard someone say that if you found Brailsford in bed with your wife, he would convince you it was your idea!
CEO Berrada was previously Chief Football Operations Officer at Manchester City, a job that required a different set of skills.
It’s not an automatic red flag: Manchester United’s talented CEO David Gill was initially finance director. But working for a club that is far from philanthropic is a major shift from a club owned by a Gulf state with a burning ambition to establish itself as a global power.
No one should be written off after one mistake, but Manchester United’s new broom hasn’t had a good summer. The decision to extend Ten Hag’s contract was ridiculous and the recruitment was also questionable.
Sir Jim and his team – even those on gardening leave – would likely have had an input into the expensive signings of Matthijs de Ligt, Manuel Ugarte and Joshua Zirkzee.
I assume that these players were necessarily bought for Manchester United, and not for Ten Hag’s version. If they turn out to be puppies, there must be some blood on the floor.
Surprisingly, Sir Jim wasn’t hugely impressive either in a Bloomberg interview I watched. The lack of detail about his wider plans for United – and his support for Ten Hag at the time – was unconvincing.
It may seem pedantic to mention his reference to the Premier League when the name changed to the Premier League in 2007, but it added to the sense of a lack of complex thinking.
Man United have split both Berrada and Ashworth from Premier League rivals Manchester City and Newcastle respectively
Ratcliffe was not hugely impressive when asked to discuss the club in interviews
Brailsford was the Ineos boss’s right-hand man for a long time, but fumbled the decision to keep Erik ten Hag last summer
The former manager was finally given his marching orders after a torrid start to the tenure
On the plus side, we know Sir Jim will focus the minds. The club’s expenditure of £180m in recent times has been far from frugal and he has moved quickly within the club to create a more dynamic atmosphere, introducing efficiencies where he felt people were were on the easy street.
The Glazers have commercial acumen, but on the pitch United have fallen off the cliff compared to their golden age under Sir Alex Ferguson as Premier League poster boys. That’s why Amorim is so crucial.
He produced a wonderful team in Sporting Lisbon. Ten Hag also did that at Ajax, although as a personality the young Portuguese coach seems better used to not being scrutinized. While Ten Hag metaphorically looked like a small man in a big suit, the first impression is that Amorim radiates self-confidence.
You can only bounce when you hit the bottom and I believe Ratcliffe’s tenure will arrest the decline at Old Trafford. I don’t think they’ll wait 26 years between championships.
But as an important football club, both in terms of performance and as a commercial engine, he does not want United to lose any more than they are now.
Sir Jim’s ambition was to get the best of his kind to support him. Are Ashworth, Berrada and Brailsford the best of the class, or the follies of a super-rich and successful man seduced by the burning ambition to own his boyhood club and grasping at proverbial straws?
With that in mind, bringing in the 39-year-old Amorim is a statement move that should work for everyone involved.
Managers must ignore the sycophancy on social media
Whatever the real meaning behind Jack Grealish and Marcus Rashford’s social media posts this week, I’d take it with a grain of salt if I were their managers.
Grealish thanked Lee Carsley for bringing ‘fun’ back to England, while Rashford greeted Ruben Amorim’s first day at Manchester United with a beaming smile and the message of ‘top session’.
Like many things in society, they can be interpreted to fit different stories.
Jack Grealish gave England interim boss Lee Carsley a loving but cryptic farewell on social media
Marcus Rashford (right) was also grateful for his first training session under Amorim
I once said that I care about players as much as they care about me, much to Lord Sugar’s amusement. In his experience, players didn’t care about owners, so that’s how he took it. I could have actually meant that I loved my players…
One angle from Messrs Grealish and Rashford is that they singled out Gareth Southgate – who left Grealish out of his Euros squad – and Erik ten Hag who punished Rashford for arriving late.
If I were a manager, including Amorim or New England boss Thomas Tuchel, I would pay very little attention to a player’s Instagram or Twitter output. The last people you ask if they are happy or not are players. They live in a culture where everyone is blamed for their own shortcomings. I would not have asked their opinion about my appointments.
Amorim may feel lifted by Rashford’s warm welcome, but if he ever leaves the striker out, I’m sure he’ll get the same treatment as Ten Hag.
I don’t think the modern footballer is generally good at accountability. A message, perhaps created by their personal media team, may seem like a clever way to prove their point to an ex who rejected them, but no one should be fooled. The next manager will have a similar experience if he tries to bring up his shortcomings.
So I was not offended on Southgate’s behalf when I saw Grealish praising Carsley and comparing his time in charge favorably with that of others. Maybe Jack was just a teacher’s pet and gave an apple as a gift to the manager who picked him. Perhaps Marcus is sycophantically trying to curry favor with Amorim.
Anyway, I didn’t care. Grealish and Rashford will be judged over the next 12 months by what they do on the football pitch, not the simplistic messages they deliver.