Mourinho comes under fire from Neville ahead of a Manchester derby that must fill every United fan with dread

United’s player recruitment is all over the place, insists Neville Old Trafford side are still using scouts employed by ex-managers

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 Ferguson at a restaurant that night and told the Scot he was on a sausage-related business trip, which was partially true.

That same week, Sir Alex, then the Manchester 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 that 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 still 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 him but found out he had signed for City, with Der Spiegel’s Football Leaks revelations last week claiming Guardiola committed to City on October 10, 2015.

However, even if the former Barcelona boss had arrived at Old Trafford in 2013 or 2016, would that have reversed United’s five-year decline since their 2013 title win?

It may have been an improvement in style but the substance of the club he would have joined would have been 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 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 were appointed under different managers.

So Jim Lawlor, appointed by Ferguson, 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, Mourinho has a voice in signings and all would need the ultimate approval of executive chairman Ed Woodward.

Add in the fact that United’s desire to dominate the social media world seems to be a diversionary obsession. So 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 would have been anathema to Sir Alex.

There is no intrinsic problem with having voices contributing to an area as important as transfer acquisitions.

Liverpool have a transfer committee, which has worked very well for the club.

At City, Guardiola, Soriano and Begiristain liaise. Yet they all share a common vision, inspired by Barcelona, for whom they worked previously, and Johan Cruyff, for whom two of them played.

United’s have a multitude of voices appointed by a variety of managers with fundamentally different ideas.

‘The recruitment plan has been all over the place,’ said former United captain Gary Neville last month. ‘It has been driven by each manager at the time. And each manager has a different philosophy and values, so you have three or four different sets of players from three or four different sets of managers.’

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 worked well with Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs and is now at RB Leipzig, is among the frontrunners. Mourinho, though, is understood 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,’ added Neville. ‘Teams who change their managers midway through a season show a level of desperation — they are 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 Mourinho (who may have worked together at Barcelona from 1997 to 2000, but have since radically diverged) shows a lack of coherent strategy.

That was 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, then 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 derby, 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, we have to say “yes”.’

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 them the most important players in the past years at the club — reaching the end (of their careers).

‘Then getting a player like Ibra (Zlatan Ibrahimovic) to help us to have a certain power to fight for something very important for us, getting back to the Champions League level.

‘It was hard work with people like Luke Shaw and Anthony Martial, for example. For these talented players to come to the level they are at now, is a process, a rebuilding.’

You might argue with a net spend of £315m since his arrival, United should be further down the line.

Yet without mentioning City by name, Mourinho returned to a familiar theme — corroborated by this week’s Football Leaks evidence — that his rivals have the capacity to spend unlimited amounts.

‘If I need a full-back because I am not happy with Luke 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 for Shaw to be that leftback, but during that process we played (Matteo) Damian, Ashley Young, Marcus Rojo. We didn’t buy four. 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 (less so now).

Ironically, on Wednesday Mourinho engineered his best performance yet at United in the 2-1 win at Juventus.

However, despite that success, it is clear that six years on from Hoeness’s undercover sausagefactory trip, United still have not mastered how to navigate the post-Ferguson era.’