NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE
United still use scouts who arrived under former bosses Neville says club’s player recruitment is ‘all over place’
IT is tempting to locate the pivotal moment in Manchester United’s recent history as the evening when Uli Hoeness told Sir Alex Ferguson a white lie about his sausage factory.
The Bayern Munich president was in New York in December 2012 to persuade Pep Guardiola, then on sabbatical and living in the city, to become the next coach of the Bundesliga giants.
So Hoeness was alarmed to bump into Sir Alex at a restaurant that night and told the Scot he was on a sausage- related business t rip, which was partially true.
That same week Sir Alex, then the United manager, had also dined with Guardiola in New York, asking him to call if he had offers from any other teams. Within weeks, Bayern were announcing t hat Guardiola would be their new manager from the summer of 2013 and the moment had gone.
By the time Guardiola might have theoretically been available again, United were again behind the curve. He announced he would be leaving Bayern in December 2015, just as United’s doubts about Louis van Gaal had crystallised.
United wanted to pursue Guardiola but quickly found out he had signed for City, with Der Spiegel’s Football Leaks revelations last week claiming that he committed to City on October 10, 2015.
However, even if Guardiola had arrived at Old Trafford in 2013 or 2016, would that have reversed United’s five-year decline since the 2013 title win? It might have been an improvement in style but the substance of the club he would have encountered would have been some way short of the infrastructure he found at City in 2016.
Despite the controversy over City’s actions, as revealed by Football Leaks, no one doubts that they run an efficient football project. Chief executive Ferran Soriano and director of football Txiki Begiristain are universally respected.
Agents who dealt with both clubs this summer report that City’s strategy and presentations on why they wanted to sign a player and how it was envisaged he would fit into the team were far better than United’s. At Old Trafford there are several staff all with titles suggesting they will have a significant input into transfer strategy, all of whom have been appointed under different managers.
So Jim Lawlor, appointed by Sir Alex, is chief scout. Head of Global Scouting is Marcel Bout, appointed by Van Gaal. Head of Development is John Murtough, appointed by David Moyes. Clearly Jose Mourinho has a voice in signings, and all would need the ultimate approval of executive vice- chairman Ed Woodward. Add in the fact that United’s desire to dominate the social media world seems to be a diversionary obsession.
The pitch to sign Paul Pogba included analysis which showed how many more interactions he generated on social media when linked to United rather than Real Madrid. That may be the way of the modern football world, but it would have been anathema to the United of Sir Alex. There is no intrinsic problem with having a variety of voices contributing to an area as important as transfer acquisitions. Liverpool have a transfer committee which has worked very well. And at City, Guardiola, Soriano and Begiristain liaise.
Yet, crucially, those three share a vision, inspired by Barcelona, for whom they all worked previously, and Johan Cruyff, for whom two of them played. United have a multitude of voices with fundamentally different ideas of how the game should be played.
‘The recruitment plan has been all over the place,’ said Gary Neville last month. ‘And it has been driven by each manager at the time. And each manager has got a different philosophy and values, so you’ve got three or four different sets of players from three or four different managers.
‘If you have a central philosophy and value it means you always bring players in who fit this profile. Then the coaches always fit around that, and you’d probably be OK.’
United are looking to change. A sporting director who would be expected to set the stylistic and tactical pattern for the club will be appointed. Paul Mitchell, who intriguingly worked well with Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham and is now at RB Leipzig, is among the front runners. M our in ho, though, is believed to have resisted the change being made now as it would only add yet another voice to the chorus of transfer advice.
‘It would create confusion to do it now because the last thing you want to do is undermine Jose by bringing in a sporting director,’ said Neville. ‘Changing your structure midway through a season is always problematic. Usually, for teams who change their managers midway through a season there’s a level of desperation. They’re trying to stay up.’
It isn’t merely transfer strategy that appears uncoordinated. The lurch from Ferguson to Moyes (which seemed more logical at the time but turned out to be akin to sticking a car into reverse gear) and then from Van Gaal to Mouri nho ( who may have worked together at Barcelona from 19972000 but have since radically diverged) indicates the lack of a coherent football strategy.
That seems to have been Mourinho’s gripe when he was denied a centre half this summer, though he hardly helped his cause by signing Eric Bailly and Victor Lindelof for a combined £ 61million only to settle on the thought that Jerome Boateng or Harry Maguire might be the answer.
Mourinho is constantly stressing the reality of where United are now, as opposed to their past. So in the run-up to today’s game, he has dismissed the notion of the club being title contenders at present. ‘When you are outside the top four it doesn’t make sense to talk about the title,’ he said. ‘By the end of December if we are inside the top four and in contact with the first and second, let’s say, we have to say “Yes”. But at this moment we are trying and fighting very hard to get the points to give us the chance to get in the top four.’
He emphatically argues that this is still a reconstruction job.
‘I got a situation in my first season of players like Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick — phenomenal players, probably some of the most important in the past years at the club — going to the end [of their career]. And then getting a player like Ibra [Zlatan Ibrahimovic] to help us to have a certain power to fight for something very important for us, which was clearly to go back to the Champions League level. It was hard work with people like Luke Shaw and Anthony Martial, for example, because, for these talented players to come to the level that they are, is a process.
‘To transform talent in professional players, stability, performance, is a hard work process. So it is rebuilding, yes.’
You might argue with a net spend of £ 315m since his arrival you would expect to be further down the line. Yet without mentioning City by name, Mourinho returned to a familiar theme — corroborated by the Football Leaks evidence — that his rivals have the capacity to spend unlimited amounts.
‘If I need a full-back and if I buy four it is easier. So if I need a fullback because I am not happy with Shaw’s level, the easiest thing is to buy four. Some clubs can buy four. We didn’t buy a left-back for three years, we were wishing and working for Shaw to be that left-back, but during that process we played [Matteo] Darmian, we played Ashley Young, we played Marcus Rojo.
‘We didn’t buy four. There is a difference. To buy four you only need good scouting and money. To make players takes more time.’
Of course, this ignores that United outbid City for Alexis Sanchez last January and were cock- a- hoop when they did so (less so now).
Ironically, on Wednesday Mourinho engineered his best performance yet in the 2-1 win at Juventus, quite possibly United’s best since Sir Alex retired.
Despite that it seems clear that six years on from Hoeness’s undercover sausage-factory trip, United still haven’t mastered how to navigate the post-Ferguson era.
‘If the job was easy I would not be here,’ said Mourinho this week. ‘I know for me jobs are not easy. Real Madrid was not an easy one, too. We work, man.’