The Mail on Sunday

Spurs still suffering... but City cut gap at top

Premier League is back!

- By Rob Draper CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER

ONLY the passage of time will tell whether the decisive ‘No’ from Ed Woodward to Jose Mourinho back in July 2018 represente­d a shift in Manchester United’s trajectory. It may be building too much on one moment to suggest that the executive chairman’s negative response was some kind of watershed.

But something did change back then, when Mourinho was arguing strongly to sign a centre- half. Whether it was good or ill, history will have to judge.

Bayern Munich’s Jerome Boateng was Mourinho’s preference. Previously, United would have probably buckled to such an emphatic request from a manager. After all, they had done so often with Louis van Gaal.

Even the casual observer could have pointed to the 2017-18 season in which Boateng had started just 19 games and been substitute­d in four of those between 62 and 82 minutes. Yet the analysis clearly went deeper than that and indicated that, whether a defender should be signed or not, Boateng wasn’t United’s man.

It was the recruitmen­t department’s decision but it was left to Woodward to communicat­e it to Mourinho. One can only imagine how that went. It certainly seemed to be a turning point in their relationsh­ip. From the outside, it seemed to poison the atmosphere irredeemab­ly thereafter. Yet the feeling within the club was that it had to be done.

Right now it doesn’t look like United are heading anywhere but down. Take their most recent defeat against Newcastle. It felt like a new nadir of awfulness, and there have been a few of those in the past six years.

However you arrange the stats it looks grim: their worst start in 30 years; they have 17 points from 16 games since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was confirmed as permanent manager in March; in that period they are the fourth worst Premier League team. Today they take on Liverpool, a club with whom their history will be forever entwined and to whom they will always be compared.

Liverpool, who seemed no threat whatsoever when Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, are European champions, perhaps the best team in the world. Maybe even more painful, they have achieved that with American owners — like United’s, but appreciate­d — and with the smartest recruitmen­t and management possible. They have renewed both stadium and team. They have shown what can be achieved. Most United fans would conclude that the current executive regime of Woodward and his head of corporate developmen­t, Matt Judge, have had their time.

Yet there is a calmness at Old Trafford right now. It would be wrong to characteri­se that as complacenc­y as there is deep disappoint­ment at results. The club also realise that, because commercial income has held good despite the decline on the pitch, a perception has emerged that money matters more than medals. They would emphatical­ly say otherwise. They want the commercial income to drive football success.

Their confidence is more rooted in the fact that the executives genuinely believe they have changed course and reset the club. The ‘No’ to Boateng was an early indicator of that change. This summer’s transfer window, bringing in Daniel J a me s , A a r o n Wan-Bissaka and Harry Maguire, is a sign of a more joined-up strategy. The departures of Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Sanchez, the latter albeit on loan, a necessary break with the past, even if there is a short-term cost.

The genesis of all of this is, as with most things at United, bound up with Ferguson’s colossal influence. It is well-documented that the club were ill-prepared for his retirement. Some at Old Trafford speak of it being sprung on them, though, given that he was 71 at the time, it shouldn’t have come as huge surprise. That the board were still too in awe of his advice initially in appointing David Moyes as successor was perhaps forgiveabl­e: the combinatio­n of Ferguson’s genius and forcefulne­ss would have made it hard to resist, though, in hindsight, they should have done.

Yet it was what happened next which set United on the path to an expensive decline. At the heart of the club are three of the Glazer brothers, Avram, Joel and Bryan, with Woodward as their representa­tive in the UK. All they had known was Ferguson, so a strong manager was their model.

Yet all around them football was changing. Ian Graham, Liverpool’s director of research, who has a PhD in theoretica­l physics from Cambridge University, was rebuilding the club’s recruitmen­t with postgradua­tes from Massachuse­tts Institute of Technology; by contrast it was as though all the data United had was in Ferguson’s head and went out the door the moment he retired.

That wasn’t entirely true as United did have a rudimentar­y software analysis tool when Ferguson was manager. But it was clunky and old-fashioned, even if fitted the needs of the manager. After all, as staff fondly recall, Ferguson’s reach within world football meant that if he wanted to sign someone he could simply pick up the phone of that player’s current manager to get the full lowdown. Usually, the opposition were so in thrall t o Ferguson t hat t hey would tell the truth.

Yet Woodward (right) is said to have realised by 2 0 1 4 , h a l f wa y through Moyes’ first season, that sticking to the old model wasn’t going to work. He began to take soundings around the world, to analyse how they could best replicate what Ferguson had held in his head. Yet when Van Gaal was appointed the club hadn’t made sufficient headway into setting up the new structure. Marcel Bout came in alongside his compatriot and was wellregard­ed enough as a scout to survive Van Gaal’s departure and be installed as United’s head of global scouting. But the manager still remained the dominant figure in that time.

There is an acceptance at the club that mistakes have been made in recruitmen­t but especially in that era: Angel Di Maria at £ 59.7m, Morgan Schneiderl­in at £ 31m, Memphis Depay at £25m, Matteo Darmian at £13m, Bastian Schweinste­iger at £6.5m and Radamel Falcao, an expensive loan, would be among them. Woodward can hardly pass the blame entirely to the manager. It was his job to control him. Yet United, still inclined to the cult of managerial authority, deferred to Van Gaal’s wishes too much. They made too many exceptions to the model they were building.

For, from 2014, United have been attempting to overhaul recruitmen­t. It has been a long, slow build. Too long and too slow, you could argue. They might counter that theirs were unique circumstan­ces and they were trying to build a system to replace Sir Alex’s

brain and charisma, which was pretty much impossible. But by 2018 they had a team in place that allowed Woodward to be confident enough to say ‘No’ to Mourinho. Last summer, with Solksjaer on board and onside with the model, they felt it was fully operationa­l.

They are confident that after their painstakin­g rebuild, the structure is as sophistica­ted as anyone’s. Unheralded names such as Mick Court, a former Loughborou­gh University don and analyst at Watford and Crewe, is the chief technical scout, crunching through data. He has excelled in the new system. Mark Platt, who works with him, uses their own bespoke software to analyse the market. United, like most clubs also buy in packaged software such as Wyscout to add to their model. Yet, as Graham did at Liverpool, they now have designed their own package which they feel outperform­s the standard ones.

Recently club staff were presented with a presentati­on of how the recruitmen­t procedure works. The idea was to communicat­e exactly how far United have come, so that the staff at least were clear that it wasn’t Woodward picking out players to buy.

So, before signing Wan-Bissaka, United had data on 804 right-backs around the world. At the start of the process, Solskjaer told the recruitmen­t department what he was looking for. By drawing on the reports of 33 firstteam scouts, they produced a list of 50-70 names. With further scouting reports and using their software, they then produced a top 10. The club then applied bespoke video analysis to narrow it to three candidates.

This is the recruitmen­t department. In those final crucial meetings sit Jim Lawlor, who was Ferguson’s chief scout, Bout, Court, Solskjaer and Judge. Woodward isn’t present. It is said Judge doesn’t offer any input on the quality of the players. His only role is as the initial interface with the agents. So if a player is suggested, he say that he has met the agent and it’s clear the player doesn’t want to move to England; or that he has just signed a new long-term contract but has a buy-out clause which makes him a possible target.

There is a power of veto on either side to add checks and balance to the system and avoid the mistakes of the past. So, the recruitmen­t department has the power to veto the manager if he wants to buy a player, as they did with Mourinho. They can only do so if they can prove that their analysis meant the player didn’t make their top-three list. And the manager himself can veto a candidate put forward by the recruitmen­t department.

Despite the years of decline, United believe they now have a structure that will serve them well. And Solskjaer seems to be crucial within that. The club have been impressed with the impact he made. From the outside, it looked a rushed and romantic appointmen­t. Internally, he has done so much to change the mood music of the club, that no-one would be looking to cut him loose so soon into this new era, whatever happens against Liverpool.

Solskjaer, though, has to prove himself. The strategies that unpicked Spurs and Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last season seem a distant memory. He has to pit his wits against the best coaches in the world in Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp. Nothing thus far in his career indicates that he will have anything like the career they have had.

He is United’s man though. You would imagine the club will stick it out with him for the best part of this season and even beyond. Their intention would seem to be to let this new phase have a couple of seasons to play out. The club is confident their financial might means that with smart recruiting they can challenge Liverpool within a few transfer windows. That’s a bullish call. Many aren’t yet convinced United are on the right track and, even if they are, that it would take at least three years and probably a new coach to turn them around.

Yet they have made their choice and the trajectory is set. It is clearly a very different club to the one Woodward inherited in 2013. And it is probably better resourced for football in the modern era. The management is well aware that they won’t be deemed a success until they have won the Premier League. They question is just how long that will take. Right now, it seems some way off.

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 ??  ?? RED ALERT: It’s been a tough season so far for Paul Pogba and Harry Maguire
RED ALERT: It’s been a tough season so far for Paul Pogba and Harry Maguire

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