Unlike most business men SJR has has a genuine interest in sports. However you can't expect someone who owns a 59b company and who employ 26k people to know each role in football, what it entails and the individual skills of each and every employee of his. He's also a 72 year old man and without wanting to sound ageist he was probably obsessed about football at a time when roles such as sporting directors didn't even existed. I am half his age and with 1/100 of his responsibilities and even I struggled to understand modern terms such as half space and half line. In fact I had to look it up and learn.
As you said the guy is not a moron. In fact he immediately identified what the Glazers (classic morons) had failed to notice since coming here. This include
a- the business side can't operate without the football side. Success off the pitch can temporarily survive without success in the pitch but that can't be permanent.
b- football is not a good money maker. The profit margins are simply too slim. The true financial worth of football lie in the brand. Bring United back to its glory and the club's worth would dwarf any 20m dividend per year any owner would blood let from the club
c- the football side need the best in class to succeed.
For the rest he has people to fill the blanks for him.
So what went wrong?
According to various reports the first person to be chosen was Dan Ashworth whom as said is rumored to have been brought in by his close mate Brailsford. At first value there's nothing wrong with that. Dan is a brilliant SD and his CV speaks for itself. His development first as a youth academy director and then in admin is renowned in the country.
The second guy who was signed was Omar Berrada ie yet another best in class signing. I didn't mind Blanc. From a financial perspective he's the best in the market financial guy although his blind spot lie in football management. That was seen in action at Juventus when his inability to quickly identify certain football weaknesses in terms of SD and fitness costed him the CEO job. If you ask me my dream signing was Blanc's successor ie Beppe Marotta. The old fox first transformed Juventus into a Serie A title machine only to move to their arch nemesis Inter and do the same (to the expense of Juventus). However after some research about Berrada I soon noticed that the guy is a young version of him. Similar to Beppe, Omar is brilliant on both sides of the spectrum (football and financials) and has that SAF's trick of almost being in every room at every time and keeping up with everything that is going on.
Omar was part of the Barcelona's exodus that played a huge part in transforming City from a classless small club who had never won anything to a classless small club who won alot. The daily mail counted 15 people between directors, coaches, manager (Pep), assistant managers, doctors and players. That suggest a close knit group with very similar values and goals who do not have time to make sure that others adapt to them. True to that line of thought, the first thing Berrada did was to bring in Wilcox an ex City man. Later on he signed Sam Erith as performance director ie another ex City man. When ETH got sacked Ashworth struggled having never sacked a manager before. Berrada on the other hand took the bull by the horns, he identified Amorim as a target, he sold the project to SJR and then went to seal the deal himself. That was at a time when the ex Barcelona crowd at City were closing in on....surprise....surprise.....Sporting Lisbon's sporting director. What a coincidence. As said before we've got a doer who loves to dabble into admin and who get things done the way SJR likes ie well and in record time. Yet admin is Ashworth's territory right?
Now let's focus on Wilcox. Jason was once the crown jewel of City's academy having orchestrated the rise to prominence to the likes of Palmer, Lewis and Foden. He then moved to Southampton for the top job there (DOF) only to accept a demotion as technical director with us. How many people do you know who love a demotion? Exactly. So we've got two people (Ashworth and Wilcox) with a very similar background. Ashworth is Wilcox's boss but Ashworth's boss hired and trust Wilcox and he likes to work with people he knows aka Wilcox. Can you see the problem here?
So admin is out as Berrada can do that, the academy is being lead brilliantly by the likes of Wilcox, Fletcher (whose ability to handle the transitioning of youths into the first team was so good that he survived the INEOS onslaught) and Cox while sport science + performance is being handled by Erith. What can Ashworth do? Can he handle the data analyst department? Well he's got no direct experience in the role. Can he recruit players? Its not his line of expertise and he can't possibly compete with Vivell on that. The German had done the whole shabang starting as video analyst with hoffenheim youths and going up the ranks first as scout/match analyst, then as head of scouting at Salzburg (Haaland!) then technical director at Leipzig and Chelsea to finally end up with United. Which makes Ashworth the redundant dude stuck in the middle between the CEO and his protegees
.We paid millions and we waited for a person whose skillset wasn't what we needed. We then threw him around people who didn't knew him, trusted him and who had similar skillsets to him which made the guy redundant. In few words this was a recruitment feck up
An interesting take on the situation. I can’t help but wonder if there is something more to take away from this than teething issues and a hire gone wrong although those must certainly be part of the equation too. The way I see it, there are some potential cultural problems on display as well that may or may not be relevant for the long term.
I don’t know Juventus or their recent history, but if your reading on Berrada is accurate it seems we have at least a very capable operator at the top of the chain at United now. From what I can gather based on the more reputable sources, he is indeed someone who has an excellent grasp on both the financial and operations side of football being involved in commercial and transfer dealings and obviously having been an insider of two very successful club setups, City in particular. Albeit while having the slightest of slight edges on their rivals due to skirting a couple of rules here and there from time to time #115.
This is clearly a massive change from the likes of Woodward or Arnold in terms of their personal qualifications for running a football club the size of United. However, even if INEOS coming in has shifted our goals from preserving asset value and eeking out dividends to instead attaining actual sporting success, I’m not sure the operational mode and institutional nature is shifting much at least in the short term. I think the Ashworth debacle is an interesting case study based on my own reading of (and speculating on) what has happened.
I think your description of Ratcliffe is true in terms of him being genuinely interested and passionate about sports and given his level of investment in United, his affinity for business (at least from successfully building and running his own company), it is natural for him to take somewhat of a hands-on approach to the United project. But I’m starting to get a bit of a mad king vibe from him which is potentially concerning with regard to the long-term development of the club and its culture in my opinion. He seems ill-tempered, authoritarian, and prone to quickly alter decisions based on instinct. None of which is likely to sustain an ambitious, trust-based working environment based on strategic alignment and organizational identity. Which I believe is the cornerstone of what has fueled success at many notable Premier League projects such as your Brightons, Brentfords and especially Liverpool and City. Building durable, rational institutions anchored in clear club wide identity.
Initially in the takeover phase Ratcliffe was talking about creating a culture of excellence, filling the top positions in the club with people of the highest order of credentials and letting them run the club. Because they know football, which he doesn’t. The previous United managers had all failed, because the environment they operated in was not right. From now on, at United they would be walking to the right solutions, not running to the wrong ones. His own words.
What has he done since?
From what I can gather, he often interferes instead of deferring to the professionals he purported to empower. He is in a rush to get results, here and now, and he is fickle. He gives interviews that tend to complicate issues further e.g. provoking Newcastle during the Ashworth saga and the UWS interview regarding ticket prices come to mind. He demands a huge clear out of club personnel and gets angry when he is met with resistance or hesitation to these initiatives. Allegedly, barely anyone can speak truth to him aside from Brailsford and I suspect even this is limited in scope since he also wants to retain his place in the INEOS hierarchy. Ratcliffe holds ultimate power, does not appear careful about wielding it, and everyone knows it. I think this risks creating a very different environment to the one you see at the above-mentioned clubs.
So, you either appease and adapt to a more unpredictable environment or you’re sent packing.
My impression of Ashworth is close to the exact opposite of Ratcliffe. I think his departure was less about him being wrong for the job of rebuilding the club structure but being wrong for the type of environment that someone like Ratcliffe generates just by being who he is. Everything I can find on Ashworth describes him as generally being highly diplomatic and cooperative, process oriented and particularly focused on creating links throughout an organization with himself at the center of the wheel keeping things aligned. And incidentally also, as someone who displays very questionable instincts to shield his colleagues and organization notably in the Eniola Aluko case. Not to mention choosing to work at Newcastle given what their new project represents in the sport. So, he is no saint, but more on the agreeable end of the spectrum than the combative.
I can barely imagine a person more likely to clash with someone like Ratcliffe on a personal and operational level. The flip side to a more agreeable and cooperative mindset could be a lack of forcefulness, which I could see grating with someone more cutthroat like Ratcliffe. If Ashworth is primarily concerned about establishing alignment and common ground throughout the club with a view for the long term, basically hashing out a set structure in a cooperative manner that is supposed to drive everything else – and here is an erratic, over-involved owner who does not enjoy counterargument and thinks himself fit to judge and shift course on virtually anything. It was always going to go wrong. I could absolutely see someone like Ashworth having a problem with the kind of sudden, strategic pivot the Amorim hire does potentially represent for the club depending on how you analyze that decision.
Overall, it’s a poor fit and to my mind speaks to the continued upheaval and lack of direction at the club that it was possible for INEOS to blow through both millions of pounds and almost a years worth of time and hype to hire someone like Ashworth and bin him in such a theatrical fashion on the eve of a loss. Just the optics of it all. Honestly.
So, it seems to me that we have moved from glacial and ad hoc decision making with the aim of generating dividends to support the lifestyle of a fractious group of nepo babies to…more ad hoc decision making at the hands of a somewhat authoritarian, elderly businessman prone to intuitive decisions, who is in a rush for trophies and inspires a mix of fear and appeasement wherever he treads. I like the trophies part, the other stuff not as much. The fallout from this whole saga also smacks of the poor, transparent attempts at spin and narrative control that I have come to expect from United. I hoped they would move on from this petty nonsense, but it doesn’t feel like it.
Ashworth, the weak, dithering man of yesterday. He who abhors data but loves all things Southgate and can’t stomach firing anyone least of all his best mate Erik. Why he goes on holiday all the time he does, while everyone else is hard at work! I see this stuff repeated everywhere by fans and SoMe ITK’s, so no wonder they keep doing it. To be fair, it’s difficult to know how much is actually coming from the club and how much is just the economies of clickbait journalism, but I see smoke and reason fire.
I wonder where this both leaves and leads us as a club. Can we stabilize around Berrada now and the inner circle he is building? Can he and his crew keep Ratcliffe happy, or how soon could they be on the chopping block if he suddenly loses faith in them? Is it possible to achieve lasting success with this kind of culture at the top in the modern game, and how much of it will trickle down through the ranks? Into the dressing room perhaps? I suppose Chelsea under Abramovich (and even in their current guise to some extent) suggests that success can follow from a more authoritarian environment if you can find the right people to whisper in the king’s ear and keep him happy. It might not be as merry a tale as some of us would like, though I’m sure many won’t care as long as we’re winning.
By all accounts, Berrada is capable, experienced and charismatic and he seems to be building something amid the chaos. And I personally think Ruben Amorim is an exciting hire. Though I wonder what role Berrada played in Ashworths removal. Are we talking Game of Thrones like intrigue? With Berrada bringing in his own lieutenants, notably Wilcox to perhaps shine during Ashworth’s “lockout” period and making him surplus to requirements? While simultaneously seeking to undermine him with INEOS and push out an unwanted rival in order to consolidate his own power further?
Or is he just someone trying to build a core team and make the most of his own opportunity, while navigating the treacherous waters of INEOS to the best of his ability? Probably a more likely version of events but less suited for television.
At any rate, if United can’t be the good guys, I hope to celebrate a few trophies along the way at least. And honestly, perhaps some level of erratic authoritarianism isn’t so far removed from the United DNA. After all, Ferguson was in many ways the quintessential dictator, loved and feared in equal measure. Warm smiles or a boot in your face depending on how the mood strikes, but you do end up with a winner’s medal more often than not.
