A 19-point gap but light years apart in terms of consistency recruitment policy and set-up. United should take a leaf out of the City playbook
NOT a single Manchester United player would get into Manchester City’s starting XI in today’s derby.
And, on current form, I’m not even sure there’s a single United player who’d get into City’s squad.
Jadon Sancho at his best? Maybe. Bruno Fernandes at his? He might make Pep Guardiola’s bench this afternoon.
But, if push came to shove, I honestly don’t think there’s a United man I’d have even among the substitutes if I were picking a combined team today. That’s a damning indictment of the red half of Manchester and perhaps explains why 19 points separate the two teams with 11 games to go.
In fact United can be backed at 15-8 merely to finish in the top four.
Arsenal, who started the season with three straight defeats, are, at 8-11, rated far more likely by bookies to clinch that final Champions League spot with City, Liverpool, and Chelsea.
That’s a measure of just how far the Red Devils have fallen off the pace.
But before United fans get too despondent, I don’t buy into the notion that it will be a decade or more before they can compete for the title again. The same thing was said about Liverpool at the time of Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish, and towards the end of Brendan Rodgers’ reign.
Better
Yet once Jurgen Klopp walked through the door it took just five years to win the title. And given that United’s starting point is arguably better for whoever takes charge in the summer than Liverpool’s was for
Klopp, it just goes to show that if they get things right off the pitch then it could take just two or three years to bridge the gap that has opened up.
United have the financial resources and clout to ensure that, wherever they are in the league – be it first, fifth, or seventh – they are a lure for players, just like Liverpool are.
So they just need to free themselves from the shackles of Ed Woodward’s galactico era once and for all and start copying the City playbook.
City and Pep Guardiola (right) have been absolutely ruthless in that
respect. They got their management set-up absolutely right and they have a proper organisation, which United clearly don’t.
So United need new CEO Richard Arnold to come in with a vision which says: ‘We’re going to do an internal audit, and review what we do well and what we don’t do well.’
United are always going to generate revenue so there’s no excuse for not providing star quality on the pitch.
That means hiring a head of recruitment who can go head to head with Liverpool or City.
A man with his ear to the ground and the reach to pick promising talent off the vine, rather than paying simply on reputation.
That’s something United haven’t done well recently.
They have worked to the notion that so and so is one of the world’s bestknown players, he’s with one of the world’s best agents, he’s valued at £80million or £90m, so let’s sign him.
And whether it has been Paul Pogba, Sancho, Alexis Sanchez or Angel Di Maria, it simply hasn’t worked because those players haven’t fitted in to how United wanted to play.
That will be the first thing for Arnold and interim boss Ralf Rangnick, when he moves upstairs in the summer.
They need to recruit the right people off the field and, on it, define a style which is played through all the age groups, all while buying players who fit the system for the first team.
It’s not rocket science, it’s common sense.
And if United can adopt a good dollop of it then they will find that 19-point gaps with more than 10 games to go will be a thing of the past sooner rather than later.
goals for Barcelona, Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta was still right to get rid of him. That’s because the very same things start to happen at the Nou Camp as well – and ultimately Barca will tire of his ways and biff him off, too.