Dan Ashworth - Garden ready | Back to football with United | use thread in United forum

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Not bitter, but everyone goes on about the players who came to us whilst Ashworth was there.
Ashworth done a great job with us but identifying players was not his remit.
DA set up the academy to use an easier pathway for youngsters to get first team football. All year groups play exactly the way the first team does, he introduced player liason officers for new players, these are former players who mentor the new youngsters outside of football. Normally ones that speak the same Language. He set up the loan thing. What clubs to loan players to, taking into account how clubs play and how that club will fair that season.
For example Caicedo went to Beershot in Belgium on loan. a side that was goinv to struggle most weeks. Its the same as mental toughness. DA or a member of his team would be in contact with him every day and visit weekends. Mitoma and Udav were at USG helping them win the title because they were a good bet to finish high up the league with attacking football. Adringa was there to.
DA paved the way by indentifying other South American countries, for us to break into the South American league and handling dual ownership of Potential players.

We use Computer based algorithms For identify players. These algorithms Belong to star lizard, owned by Tony Bloom. Read up on them.
I think this means he's not just head of transfers, which is not what he'd be at United. DoF means a lot more then doing transfers, it means putting a structure in place that makes transfers possible (as you said, setting up the S-American connection + loan structures) and much, much more. If he comes to United, he won't be the one getting shiny new toys but the one who enables the rest of the footballing side to work well.

Like stated before, the head of transfers (or however you call that position) of Brighton is a possibility as an addition besides DA, actually signing players while looking at who's a good fit together with the scouting dep.
 
At Brighton they say his biggest influence on the club was how he created a good pathways «from the academy and loan development for young players». I think that is good because it is something one can clearly see that Brighton have done better than most.

I also think it is where Man Utd have (mostly) failed. The talents that are not ready for Man Utd at 19 too often appear to stagnate.
You're correct and his remit as a DoF is where he connects the dots with the rest of the football departments where there's a uniformed approach to doing things. So it's absolutely important that the DoF, the head of the academy and the first team head coach are working in tandem to create a smooth pathway for the youngsters to thrive. And ultimately, it's the owner Tony Bloom that had created the environment for Paul Barber (CEO), Dan Ashworth (DoF), Winstanley/Macaulay/jewell (recruitment), Potter (first team head coach) to thrive with a clear and defined way of implementing a strategy for a proactive attacking approach to playing the game.

I also think with Omar Berrarda arriving, it should give the football personnel the support that never existed previously in a era where the structural side of football clubs has grown from the scouting to the medical and data science departments etc.

So the arrival of Berrada can only help the football people at the club because the likes of Woodward and Arnold didn't have the type of experience in football which Omar berrada possesses. I think it's a sign of the times that even the CEO needs to have some experience relating to the development of the football strategy, so a DoF doesn't getting overly burdened with the decision making on the football side of the club.
 
As I understand it, Ashworth was responsible for first academy players, then first team recruitment at WBA. What he’s been doing at Brighton and Newcastle, I have very vague ideas about.

What I wonder is, when so many laud him, what are they lauding?
You're correct and it's not something that should be lauded because the process itself is very simple and doesn't require a genius to make it function. But unfortunately at certain clubs the process either takes time to come into fruition or is flawed to begin with due to the owners and CEO creating divisions within the football structure which doesn't allow for the full potential of the football structure to come to the fore and support the development of the football team at first team level. So when things are going wrong, the media will criticise and rile up fans who have very little knowledge on how things function on the structural side of football clubs. Take Liverpool for example, some of their fans started a petition to remove Edwards from his role as the Sporting director in 2017. And the media constantly ridiculed Edwards prior to Klopp's arrival.

I've consistently said that there's no such thing as a best in class DoF. I believe there's DoF's who have had little to no experience at the top level but have a clear idea on how they want to develop football teams. And those people are imo much better than DoFs like Paratici who at Spurs was doing a terrible job because he was signing players that didn't fit with the way Conte wanted to play. I called it out at the time and said to the Spurs faithful that the players signed were not a fit for the way Conte wanted to play and his sacking was not a surprise.

The reason I want a DoF is due to the stability such a figure provides a football club. And when you have stability, you will see a big group of people work together to create a winning formula imo. I think if you look at our team right now, alot of good things have happened that will aid us in the mid to long-term. Signing players like Hojlund and Mount are good for any technical coach who wants to initiate attacks from the back and defend from the front via the press. Getting rid of Ronaldo, breaking up the McFred midfield pairing and moving De Gea on has set the wheels in motion as far the direction of travel is concerned imo. Bringing Mainoo, Garnacho and possibly one player from the acdemy is another good sign of where we're headed.

The DoF role in England was mostly confined to youth level and the likes of Murtough and Ashworth were referred to as being football administrators. Because their job was to administer (direct) people to carry out jobs to develop the football side of the club. Terms like technical director, director of football etc are from the continent, which basically mean the same thing. I think with social media now being very prevalent in people's lives, there's going to be a lot of hype and expectations, but for me I'm not expecting everything to go smoothly and there will be times where you'll see fans criticising Ashworth or even INEOS.
 
Not bitter, but everyone goes on about the players who came to us whilst Ashworth was there.
Ashworth done a great job with us but identifying players was not his remit.
DA set up the academy to use an easier pathway for youngsters to get first team football. All year groups play exactly the way the first team does, he introduced player liason officers for new players, these are former players who mentor the new youngsters outside of football. Normally ones that speak the same Language. He set up the loan thing. What clubs to loan players to, taking into account how clubs play and how that club will fair that season.
For example Caicedo went to Beershot in Belgium on loan. a side that was goinv to struggle most weeks. Its the same as mental toughness. DA or a member of his team would be in contact with him every day and visit weekends. Mitoma and Udav were at USG helping them win the title because they were a good bet to finish high up the league with attacking football. Adringa was there to.
DA paved the way by indentifying other South American countries, for us to break into the South American league and handling dual ownership of Potential players.

We use Computer based algorithms For identify players. These algorithms Belong to star lizard, owned by Tony Bloom. Read up on them.

Whilst he was not there to identify talent, he is responsible for giving the green light to sign that talent and has a veto in the form of the traffic light system to be able to say no, suggest other options and discuss said talent with the head of recruitment and manager.

There is a video where he talks about this in detail on YouTube from when he was at Brighton.
 
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Not bitter, but everyone goes on about the players who came to us whilst Ashworth was there.
Ashworth done a great job with us but identifying players was not his remit.
DA set up the academy to use an easier pathway for youngsters to get first team football. All year groups play exactly the way the first team does, he introduced player liason officers for new players, these are former players who mentor the new youngsters outside of football. Normally ones that speak the same Language. He set up the loan thing. What clubs to loan players to, taking into account how clubs play and how that club will fair that season.

He would be worth his weight in gold for this alone. It was quite publicized by the likes of Memphis Depay how little support United offered to new signings, often they'd hand 20-22 year olds 80-120k a week and have very little support to make sure their transition into becoming household names was smooth and trouble free. I have a major feeling our inability to correctly support players off the field, has been a big reason as to why players with so much promise have joined United and gone to shit. As well as how many youngsters we've had break through but then drop off very quickly.

I don't remember where I read it, but apparently a few of our South American players a few years ago would link up with Man City South Americans to share in traditional foods/drinks/other goods that City regularly provided for their players, which would suggest we didn't do that for our own players. Its these little 1% moves a club makes to make their players comfortable off the pitch, which helps their form on it.
 
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You're correct and it's not something that should be lauded because the process itself is very simple and doesn't require a genius to make it function. But unfortunately at certain clubs the process either takes time to come into fruition or is flawed to begin with due to the owners and CEO creating divisions within the football structure which doesn't allow for the full potential of the football structure to come to the fore and support the development of the football team at first team level. So when things are going wrong, the media will criticise and rile up fans who have very little knowledge on how things function on the structural side of football clubs. Take Liverpool for example, some of their fans started a petition to remove Edwards from his role as the Sporting director in 2017. And the media constantly ridiculed Edwards prior to Klopp's arrival.

I've consistently said that there's no such thing as a best in class DoF. I believe there's DoF's who have had little to no experience at the top level but have a clear idea on how they want to develop football teams. And those people are imo much better than DoFs like Paratici who at Spurs was doing a terrible job because he was signing players that didn't fit with the way Conte wanted to play. I called it out at the time and said to the Spurs faithful that the players signed were not a fit for the way Conte wanted to play and his sacking was not a surprise.

The reason I want a DoF is due to the stability such a figure provides a football club. And when you have stability, you will see a big group of people work together to create a winning formula imo. I think if you look at our team right now, alot of good things have happened that will aid us in the mid to long-term. Signing players like Hojlund and Mount are good for any technical coach who wants to initiate attacks from the back and defend from the front via the press. Getting rid of Ronaldo, breaking up the McFred midfield pairing and moving De Gea on has set the wheels in motion as far the direction of travel is concerned imo. Bringing Mainoo, Garnacho and possibly one player from the acdemy is another good sign of where we're headed.

The DoF role in England was mostly confined to youth level and the likes of Murtough and Ashworth were referred to as being football administrators. Because their job was to administer (direct) people to carry out jobs to develop the football side of the club. Terms like technical director, director of football etc are from the continent, which basically mean the same thing. I think with social media now being very prevalent in people's lives, there's going to be a lot of hype and expectations, but for me I'm not expecting everything to go smoothly and there will be times where you'll see fans criticising Ashworth or even INEOS.

But didn't Ashworth set out clearly defined roles that put DOF and technical directors more in line with world football. He talks about this in one of the quick fire q&a sessions on YouTube, he mentions the problem with the role before he worked for the FA, and they interviewed people in those roles which led them to discover that there were around 20 job descriptions of the same roles, so in setting up training courses for the roles they developed clearly defined positions in line with everyone else.
 
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But didn't Ashworth set out clearly defined roles that put DOF and technical directors more in line with world football. He talks about this in one of the quick fire q&a sessions on YouTube, he mentions the problem with the role before he worked for the FA, and they interviewed people in those roles which led them to discover that there were around 20 job descriptions of the same roles, so in setting up training courses for the roles they developed clearly defined positions in line with everyone else.
What Ashworth did in his own words was that he observed how the German model functioned when it came to structuring a football club and also copied the French model as far as developing talent goes and implemented it with the England youth teams. And that French model paid dividends hence the England youth teams were very successful in winning world cups and European tournaments.

His job isn't of someone who will identify players to sign but rather identify people who will identify players for him to target with a set strategy in mind. So at every club there's designated people who work full-time when it comes to running the recruitment department, the medical department, the data science department, the video analytics department and even the coaching departments led by various coaches throughout the club. The DoF's role will be to connect all those departments and create a synergy amongst the football departments which should reflect on the pitch with a bit of time and patience. I think we're one good window away from having a very competitive team and possibly two windows away from mounting a challenge for the title.

The information below from the North East football correspondent Craig Hope is something that is lost among some of the journos who report on United. And this is something I've been saying on here for some years. The people who will be directly involved when it comes to talent I.D are those people who will be in charge of the recruitment departments at both youth level and the first team. Two different teams.


 


I like the fact that Jewell put himself out to learn more about the South American market,presume he's being considered for a potential Head of Recruitment. Would be interested to see who else is on the shortlist. Mind you if Ashworth got appointed then expect him to have a lot of influence on this.
 
What Ashworth did in his own words was that he observed how the German model functioned when it came to structuring a football club and also copied the French model as far as developing talent goes and implemented it with the England youth teams. And that French model paid dividends hence the England youth teams were very successful in winning world cups and European tournaments.

His job isn't of someone who will identify players to sign but rather identify people who will identify players for him to target with a set strategy in mind. So at every club there's designated people who work full-time when it comes to running the recruitment department, the medical department, the data science department, the video analytics department and even the coaching departments led by various coaches throughout the club. The DoF's role will be to connect all those departments and create a synergy amongst the football departments which should reflect on the pitch with a bit of time and patience. I think we're one good window away from having a very competitive team and possibly two windows away from mounting a challenge for the title.

The information below from the North East football correspondent Craig Hope is something that is lost among some of the journos who report on United. And this is something I've been saying on here for some years. The people who will be directly involved when it comes to talent I.D are those people who will be in charge of the recruitment departments at both youth level and the first team. Two different teams.




Whilst you have a handle on the kind of job Ashworth does, you are missing a crucial part of the puzzle.

He doesn't go out and scout players to sign (though he will go with the head of recruitment or manager if more opinion is needed) but when people on here or elsewhere are attributing significant signings during his tenure at other clubs, it is not completely false.

Transfers under Ashworth are done like in other clubs in a form of committee. The manager, DOF, and head of Recruitment will sit down to discuss club needs. The head of recruitment on being given his remit will set out to find players of that profile using the scouting network. Once those players have been settled on the three meet up again and discuss the targets. The manager and Ashworth have to give that signing the "green light" if they have doubts or want other options they have a veto/right to challenge the reasoning. When all are in agreement Ashworth will be active in negotiating and finalising the deal.

So whilst pro Newcastle journalist Craig Hope and yourself are correct in describing a large part of the role, attributing transfers to his tenure is not misleading of his role either.
 
What Murtough is good at is being an administrative fixer. I’m sure he can find a job elsewhere. Maybe there will be one for him in the new United hierarchy.

Giving him cone duties would bring him uncomfortably close to actual footballers. No thanks :nervous:

The guy is a chameleon. He seem to be good on the very issue we need him only to switch sight once things go wrong. We were told that he was the brains behind the women team. Then that tune changed once the manager left because no one bothered to provide the team with decent facilities. Then he was an expert in negotiating. In fact we fired judge as soon as he stepped in. Guess what, we still gave players silly salaries and long term contracts. Then we were told that he took united to modern times (data analysts, fitness people etc). Yet we still relied heavily on the manager's shortlist, we still had waves upon waves of injuries and no one ever bothered to make background checks on players before signing them.

Murtough's name getting close (or linked) to good makes me uncomfortable. Seriously the only thing he seem good in is survival
 
What Murtough is good at is being an administrative fixer. I’m sure he can find a job elsewhere. Maybe there will be one for him in the new United hierarchy.
Alright, office admin it is then.
 
Whilst you have a handle on the kind of job Ashworth does, you are missing a crucial part of the puzzle.

He doesn't go out and scout players to sign (though he will go with the head of recruitment or manager if more opinion is needed) but when people on here or elsewhere are attributing significant signings during his tenure at other clubs, it is not completely false.

Transfers under Ashworth are done like in other clubs in a form of committee. The manager, DOF, and head of Recruitment will sit down to discuss club needs. The head of recruitment on being given his remit will set out to find players of that profile using the scouting network. Once those players have been settled on the three meet up again and discuss the targets. The manager and Ashworth have to give that signing the "green light" if they have doubts or want other options they have a veto/right to challenge the reasoning. When all are in agreement Ashworth will be active in negotiating and finalising the deal.

So whilst pro Newcastle journalist Craig Hope and yourself are correct in describing a large part of the role, attributing transfers to his tenure is not misleading of his role either.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, and it's absolutely correct that a DoF should strategize with the head coach and the head of recruitment running the recruitment department and also have the head of data science involved . But what I'm saying to you is that a DoF shouldn't be involved in recruitment full time because it's not his remit to be only focused on the recruitment at the club when there's numerous other football departments that need attending and may also need developing. So the person or persons running the recruitment department will make the difference when it comes to player identification and then when the time comes to make a move on said players, the DoF and even the head coach will get involved.

Spurs with Paratici was a classic example of a DoF signing players without seemingly not knowing how Conte wanted to build play from the back and progress via his wingbacks. Conte's tactics were simple, especially against the bigger more proactive teams, where his tactics involved baiting the opponent's first line of the press, stretching the pitch horizontally with his wingbacks and pinning the opponent's CBs with his forwards vertically to potentially open up numerical superiorities either outwide or in the opponent's half spaces. But Paratici was such a numb-nut that the players he bought weren't really players who were good at progressing the play from the back. I called this at this time and it was no surprise Conte was sacked. I honestly believe I could've recruited better than Paratici.

So I agree with you that a DoF should work in tandem with the head coach and the recruitment heads, analysts etc. But it's not the DoF's role to pay all his attention to recruitment at the club when you have people running the recruitment department who should be doing that on a full-time basis.
 
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Not bitter, but everyone goes on about the players who came to us whilst Ashworth was there.
Ashworth done a great job with us but identifying players was not his remit.
DA set up the academy to use an easier pathway for youngsters to get first team football. All year groups play exactly the way the first team does, he introduced player liason officers for new players, these are former players who mentor the new youngsters outside of football. Normally ones that speak the same Language. He set up the loan thing. What clubs to loan players to, taking into account how clubs play and how that club will fair that season.
For example Caicedo went to Beershot in Belgium on loan. a side that was goinv to struggle most weeks. Its the same as mental toughness. DA or a member of his team would be in contact with him every day and visit weekends. Mitoma and Udav were at USG helping them win the title because they were a good bet to finish high up the league with attacking football. Adringa was there to.
DA paved the way by indentifying other South American countries, for us to break into the South American league and handling dual ownership of Potential players.

We use Computer based algorithms For identify players. These algorithms Belong to star lizard, owned by Tony Bloom. Read up on them.

I think that's fair, and I always find it illogical when people judge Directors of Football or Sporting Directors based on the players their clubs signed during their time there.

I read a comment on Twitter saying that Ashworth will make McTominay captain, because Newcastle wanted him previously. :lol:

However, there's apparently going to be another appointment, a new Head of Recruitment, so it doesn't look like we're bringing in Ashworth to identify players. We actually have really good scouts and like I said, another appointments could still be coming.

Also, the things you've listed sound really promising and I'm excited to see what things Ashworth can improve and introduce here, if the deal gets done.
 
I don't disagree with what you're saying, and it's absolutely correct that a DoF should strategize with the head coach and the head of recruitment running the recruitment department and also have the head of data science involved . But what I'm saying to you is that a DoF shouldn't be involved in recruitment full time because it's not his remit to be only focused on the recruitment at the club when there's numerous other football departments that need attending and may also need developing. So the person or persons running the recruitment department will make the difference when it comes to player identification and then when the time comes to make a move on said players, the DoF and even the head coach will get involved.

Spurs with Paratici was a classic example of a DoF signing players without seemingly not knowing how Conte wanted to build play from the back and progress via his wingbacks. Conte's tactics were simple, especially against the bigger more proactive teams, where his tactics involved baiting the opponent's first line of the press, stretching the pitch horizontally with his wingbacks and pinning the opponent's CBs with his forwards vertically to potentially open up numerical superiorities either outwide or in the opponent's half spaces. But Paratici was such a numb-nut that the players he bought weren't really players who were good at progressing the play from the back. I called this at this time and it was no surprise Conte was sacked. I honestly believe I could've recruited better than Paratici.

So I agree with you that a DoF should work in tandem with the head coach and the recruitment heads, analysts etc. But it's not the DoF's role to pay all his attention to recruitment at the club when you have people running the recruitment department who should be doing that on a full-time basis.

Paratici and conte had been working together for ages.
You're correct and it's not something that should be lauded because the process itself is very simple and doesn't require a genius to make it function. But unfortunately at certain clubs the process either takes time to come into fruition or is flawed to begin with due to the owners and CEO creating divisions within the football structure which doesn't allow for the full potential of the football structure to come to the fore and support the development of the football team at first team level. So when things are going wrong, the media will criticise and rile up fans who have very little knowledge on how things function on the structural side of football clubs. Take Liverpool for example, some of their fans started a petition to remove Edwards from his role as the Sporting director in 2017. And the media constantly ridiculed Edwards prior to Klopp's arrival.

I've consistently said that there's no such thing as a best in class DoF. I believe there's DoF's who have had little to no experience at the top level but have a clear idea on how they want to develop football teams. And those people are imo much better than DoFs like Paratici who at Spurs was doing a terrible job because he was signing players that didn't fit with the way Conte wanted to play. I called it out at the time and said to the Spurs faithful that the players signed were not a fit for the way Conte wanted to play and his sacking was not a surprise.

The reason I want a DoF is due to the stability such a figure provides a football club. And when you have stability, you will see a big group of people work together to create a winning formula imo. I think if you look at our team right now, alot of good things have happened that will aid us in the mid to long-term. Signing players like Hojlund and Mount are good for any technical coach who wants to initiate attacks from the back and defend from the front via the press. Getting rid of Ronaldo, breaking up the McFred midfield pairing and moving De Gea on has set the wheels in motion as far the direction of travel is concerned imo. Bringing Mainoo, Garnacho and possibly one player from the acdemy is another good sign of where we're headed.

The DoF role in England was mostly confined to youth level and the likes of Murtough and Ashworth were referred to as being football administrators. Because their job was to administer (direct) people to carry out jobs to develop the football side of the club. Terms like technical director, director of football etc are from the continent, which basically mean the same thing. I think with social media now being very prevalent in people's lives, there's going to be a lot of hype and expectations, but for me I'm not expecting everything to go smoothly and there will be times where you'll see fans criticising Ashworth or even INEOS.

Paratici and Conte had worked together for a relatively long time at Juventus. They are both 'disciples' of marotta and the three kept crossing paths (marotta, paratici and conte at juve, marotta and conte at inter, paratici and conte at inter). The guys are so tuned together that conte felt that paratici at Juventus was aiming at his targets to weaken him at inter
 
I think what would excite me most as a Utd fan was the work done at Newcastle. We have almost a direct comparison to Chelsea here. It would have been easy for Newcastle to come in like the owners did at City, look for over the top, unrealistic statement signings like City did with Robinho. Or come in like Chelsea did, come in, rip everything up, go about dick swinging signing tens of players.

Howver, Newcastle actually did things in a measured way, gettting a young highly rated coach; targeting players to get them away from relegation first and then to take the next step afterwards, but signings were thought out, measured, intelligent, and in a volume that’s not detrimental to the team but enhances it, almost the direct opposite of Chelsea.

Now Chelsea got Paul Winstanley from Brighton, Newcastle got Dan Ashworth from Brighton. I appreciate they were in different roles, and how much influence either has we can’t really determine, but you wouldn’t have said that both strategies would be so drastically different if both had major influence.

That’s why it’s important that the overall strategy at Utd is sensible, it’s not just about names, but I’d bet Utd developing much more sensibly than the likes of Chelsea.
 
Paratici and conte had been working together for ages.


Paratici and Conte had worked together for a relatively long time at Juventus. They are both 'disciples' of marotta and the three kept crossing paths (marotta, paratici and conte at juve, marotta and conte at inter, paratici and conte at inter). The guys are so tuned together that conte felt that paratici at Juventus was aiming at his targets to weaken him at inter
The signings Paratici made weren't conducive to the football Conte plays. You could get away with it in the Serie A but you will get exposed in the EPL.
 
What has any of this got to do with Newcastle? Surely if we want him and he wants us he can just resign and join us? He's not a football player he's just an employee of a business at the end of the day. Gardening leave fine, but that should be all.
 
@Adnan Do we have at the club head of recruitment? or something similar?

And if we do - Is he even good?

We always heard in various reports about the lack of communication and synchronization between the scouting, Data Science, and video analysts to the administrators of the club in terms of signing players.

So now we're hearing about bringing in Ashworth to make this process better. Is there a chance we'll stay with the current model that just didn't function properly with the old structure?

We don't have this role at the club right now. Laurie Whitwell posted an article that alluded to the fact that we defaulted to Ten Hag picks in his first window due to the fact that there was nobody to make the final decision above him. Originally when offered the job Ten Hag was supposedly promised players fitting his profile to be at the club before he walked through the doors.

Thought that Murtough just wanted to diminish the scouting department influence, back ETH in the transfer window, and give him the players he wanted, have 100% faith in him but it blew in his face(and ours)
 
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@Adnan Do we have at the club head of recruitment? or something similar?

And if we do - Is he even good?

We always heard in various reports about the lack of communication and synchronization between the scouting, Data Science, and video analysts to the administrators of the club in terms of signing players.

So now we're hearing about bringing in Ashworth to make this process better. Is there a chance we'll stay with the current model that just didn't function properly with the old structure?

We don't have this role at the club right now. Laurie Whitwell posted an article that alluded to the fact that we defaulted to Ten Hag picks in his first window due to the fact that there was nobody to make the final decision above him. Originally when offered the job Ten Hag was supposedly promised players fitting his profile to be at the club before he walked through the doors.
 
What has any of this got to do with Newcastle? Surely if we want him and he wants us he can just resign and join us? He's not a football player he's just an employee of a business at the end of the day. Gardening leave fine, but that should be all.

Apparently his garden leave contractually is 12 months. That's if he just ups and resigns. There is a level of compensation written into his contract to reduce/abolish that, but the compensation is apparently high.
 
Apparently his garden leave contractually is 12 months. That's if he just ups and resigns. There is a level of compensation written into his contract to reduce/abolish that, but the compensation is apparently high.
Gotta speculate to accumulate, amirite?
 
@Adnan Do we have at the club head of recruitment? or something similar?

And if we do - Is he even good?

We always heard in various reports about the lack of communication and synchronization between the scouting, Data Science, and video analysts to the administrators of the club in terms of signing players.

So now we're hearing about bringing in Ashworth to make this process better. Is there a chance we'll stay with the current model that just didn't function properly with the old structure?
That's a good question mate. All I know is that we currently have a Argentine national by the name of Jose Mayorga in a prominent position at first team recruitment level along with Simon Wells. And both the aforementioned names replaced the outgoing scouts Bout and Lawlor. I do think the plan was to bring in someone from the outside and we were said to be interested in the likes of Kieran Scott and Lee Dykes but it doesn't seem there was enough support from the owners to back the decision to bring either man to the club.

But I think Ashworth could well look to bring in Sam Jewell (Paul Jewell's son). He's not the most experienced at first team level but I'm always in favour of having a young up and coming recruitment head at the club to run recruitment.

At youth level we have David Harrison already at the club and he's someone Ashworth tried poaching when he arrived at Newcastle but we managed to keep him. So the recruitment structure at youth level is one which Ashworth will inherit and will be to his liking as the tweet beow alludes to from last year.

 
We don't have this role at the club right now. Laurie Whitwell posted an article that alluded to the fact that we defaulted to Ten Hag picks in his first window due to the fact that there was nobody to make the final decision above him. Originally when offered the job Ten Hag was supposedly promised players fitting his profile to be at the club before he walked through the doors.
The reason we defaulted to ten Hag picks in the first window was due to sacking both Lawlor and Bout. If you have your heads of recruitment in place then they will provide the profiles for the DoF to then support the head coach.

I also wouldn't pay much to attention to Laurie Whitwell when it comes to relaying information regarding the structure of a football club. He's good when it comes to relaying transfer news but isn't good when it comes to relaying news about how things function on the football side of the club and what remit each individual has within the structural side of the club.

Below is the latest news from him and his colleagues where he's reporting that we're looking to bring in a 'transfer specialist' which is basically what a head of recruitment does at most clubs. He also puts forward the name of Julian Ward who was Liverpool's loans manager and briefly their sporting director, and not someone who was specialising in recruitment. It's actually very poor reporting imo.

 
I personally find this video from Sam of United People's TV better

He talks about long term stability but keeps changing jobs every 2 years..

Cashworth indeed. ......this text is white......
 
The amount of disrespect that football fans give to those in behind the scenes roles - whom they know literally feck all about their job - is absolutely fecking disgusting

No, at least in the case of Murtough it is on the contrary absolutely justified. He's DoF. He's responsible for results. The results are visible to all. It doesn't matter if that is due directly to bad decisions he's made or bad work from some of the people working for him, because their delivery is his responsibility. If they can't deliver, he has to ensure someone else does, or that they are replaced with people who do.

If the results were more ambivalent, then you could maybe argue over whether he's part of the problem or part of the solution, but they aren't. There is no possible and reasonable way of looking at it in which the visible results can be squared with the DoF having done anything other than a poor job.
 
A lack of "joined-up thinking" has been a pretty popular criticism of United and seemingly a very valid one. That's what Ashworth would be in to fix by being a conduit between departments.

I've seen a few posts arguing that we wouldn't see the impact of that for a couple of years, but I think we'd see a pretty immediate affect in key decisions. Take last summer for example - at some point the guys in medical must have had concerns over the fact that every outfield player who came in did so with some kind of injury. Given that they already had first team players coming back from long term injuries to deal with, there's a strain on that department already.

That's the sort of thing you want your DoF to pick up on and relay to the recruitment side, who then may be guided towards more durable players. As it happened, our late loans of Amrabat and Reguilon ended up adding to our fitness issues straight away rather than actually providing cover as they were recruited to do.
 
Strange having competent and qualified people in charge, isn't it?

Don't speak too soon. We've no reason to doubt that the appointments are a step in the right direction the club is in shambles and has swallowed up many people before, sometimes due to Glazer obstruction which touch wood won't be an issue, but we'll see.
 
Don't speak too soon. We've no reason to doubt that the appointments are a step in the right direction the club is in shambles and has swallowed up many people before, sometimes due to Glazer obstruction which touch wood won't be an issue, but we'll see.
Even if these appointments do disappoint, it's still very weird to see us operate as a serious football club. I can't wait for a transfer window without drawn out, boring sagas next.
 
Incorrect, Mejbri was scouted by Mathieu Seckinger, who left for Marseille.
I’d also assume Garnacho was found by Guzman, who I'm pretty sure we nicked from Atletico when we were doing our whole academy scouting restructuring.
 
I too have football manager on my laptop
Honestly we’d probably have done better if we’d used Football Manager to do our scouting for us.
 
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