Not defending him but lets not forget sales. First time in decade that we were good in selling players. Willy 10 mil euros, Mason 30 mil plus huge future percentage, McT 30, AWB 20 mil. We sold players for 100 mil this summer.
Dan "The Gardener" Ashworth Has Left | Venit, vidit, non vicit
- Thread starter Berbaclass
- Start date
Kids tickets upto £77 to pay off Danny boy.
Absolutely. I mean i don't want to call our summer transfer as resounding success but it was pretty good compared to previous standard.
I gave 0 chance of us landing Berrada or us signing Yoro but here we are.
All I can say is that Berrada is part of the Barcelona contingent that moved en masse to City. The Daily mail counted 15 people between senior staff, doctors, fitness people, manager, coaches and players and that excluding Berrada. What does Berrada do the moment he gets the job? We hired Wilcox ie a former Manchester City guy + we go for Sporting Lisbon manager at a time when City were targeting him and Sporting Lisbon's sporting director. This guys do love to work with a small circle of like minded people who share their own vision
Source: Robbie Savage.
A tactical tactic change with tactics.
We made 5 signings this summer, and 4 of them are Ok (Ugarte, Maz, de Ligt, Yoro).
This is getting sillier by the minute.
So Ashworth apparently can't work on squad building with a coach playing a 3-4-3, yet also he was this huge proponent of hiring Southgate, who played a 3-4-3/3-5-2 in the majority of his England tenure?
It's amazing how all these journalists who knew absolutely feck all yesterday, now know the exact reasons for his firing today.
Give it time, aside from The Athletic, this is all guess work by the usual culprits.
Give it time, aside from The Athletic, this is all guess work by the usual culprits.
I've been right most of the time on the specific things I've 'whinged about' unfortunately.
Didn't whinge about Ashworth though, only argued with those that were adamant we should pay £20m for him
wait what he did? Pretty sure both major tournaments he didn't play this system. not that I watch England elsewhere because international football is zzzz
How hypocritical.
If any club signs a lifetime proponent of 4231, no one, literally no one, asks if they're flexible enough to play a 343, but lo and behold, if someone is a proponent of 343, apparently they have to prove they're not wedded to it.
Complete hypocritical bullshit.
What in the feck is going on
I agree re Brailsford.
It will be interesting to see if any more info comes out but, thinking cyclically about how Ineos viewed Ashworth, he always describes his strengths/role as building and implementing the organisational structure. Maybe they’ve just rinsed him for all his knowledge over the last 5 months and feel they get how it all works and now are happy to let Omar run it.
Includes an interview with Ornstein at 5:00
Rather we work with the people we have for now than appointing new people. Berrada and Wilcox have worked together so there should be some working relationship there. I feel we were having too many cooks. Berrada, Wilcox and Vivell should be the base and the future appointment for any role should be made accordingly
If we've sacked him because we want to go all in on Amorim's 3421 structure and Ashworth didn't agree with it then fair enough, but we'd better fecking give Amorim the backing he needs in that case.
We didn't know he wanted Southgate (and still don't). It was noticeable that while there were a lot of links with Southgate, they all came from bad sources that just wanted clicks. The more trustworthy and higher tier the source was, the more they said there was nothing in the Southgate rumours.
I think he is taking the fall for keeping ETH and thereby denying Amorim a clean start with a preseason and signing of his own. Another thing is he could have been too vocal about his misgivings on the Amorim appointment and it was felt that he would never be a positive influence given how strongly he felt.
Sometimes an inability to move on from a lost argument can be detrimental to survival in a high profile job.
This. It would have been better to uproot a functioning unit from a club like we did with Amorim and his coaches. Creating a completely new team from diverse backgrounds is bound to have some serious growing pains as cliques and power struggles are likely to emerge.
Ultimately I think Wilcox is Berrada's guy and him coming from a football operations background himself (they say he worked closely with Tixti) the ideological and personality clash might have been too big to ignore. Basically Wilcox will do, for Berrada, what was expected from Ashworth who, by his own admission, wasnt technically a recruitment or squad builder.
I think the issue is Berrada and Ashworth had different visions. I was never comfortable with Berrada bringing his own guy into Ashworth's department, it's never a great look if your boss has ears in your own department. It's never great for a conducive working environment to be sandwiched between to allies.
It's clear that Berrada and Wilcox want to go one direction and Ashworth never got a chance to imprint his own vision.
I don't think the Amorim system is that unique that it would require a complete revamp of a competent squad. There really is nothing special about signing or grooming a couple technical no. 10s, a couple wingbacks and increasing your depth at CB. Liverpool, Chelsea or Arsenal could play this system comfortably and win. We just have too many average, dumb and lazy players to make anything work.
Remember that the guy who signed and extended contracts for the majority of this shit for his system lost his job because they couldn't implement it either, as did a club legend who relied so much on Rashford and Bruno.
The CEO of the club was the driving force behind his appointment. I have no doubts Amorim will be fully backed.
You don't know it's going to be a mistake until it happens though....
Well done you, your medal is the post
Yes Vivell should just be made full director of football, merge the sporting director and head of recruitment roles into one. Our approach needs to be as tight and streamlined as possible.
IF he was in charge for signings then, imo he did well. Maz and De Ligt are good signing, Yoro is labelled as generational talent and Ugarte is doing well so far.
Time will tell for Zirkzee. Also, selling players was best in ages.
But, keeping Erik (and wanting Southgate) is something which deserved sacking.
This is a multi year rebuild to fix a squad built for massive money that is midtable standard and fix a load of other issues in the club. Sacking someone who was meant to oversee that after 5 months, when he only officially came into the role part way through the summer window, is ridiculous unless there's something more that we don't know about.
So Ratcliffe sacked Ashworth because he wasn't willing to reach the firing quota in the football department. Guess we know the truth after all.
I think the summer signing strategy was the issue, not the personnel per say.
He went to gung ho on the defence neglecting midfield and striking department. Knowing the budget etc Yoro and Maz were enough, Zirkzee isn't a proper no 9 which we needed. And then more money could have gone to a no9, wide attacker and a midfielder who could've control the midfield and tempo for games.
It was a rubbish summer in the balance of it, hence why it's contributed to a bad season (along with other factors)
He went to gung ho on the defence neglecting midfield and striking department. Knowing the budget etc Yoro and Maz were enough, Zirkzee isn't a proper no 9 which we needed. And then more money could have gone to a no9, wide attacker and a midfielder who could've control the midfield and tempo for games.
It was a rubbish summer in the balance of it, hence why it's contributed to a bad season (along with other factors)
It's a nonsense story to feed into the formation crap.
Ashworth wanted the England set up to be 3-4-3/3-5-2. Modern football analysts rate the formation as a good counter to Gegen pressing and tiki taka.
If anything the formation would not be the issue.
Shoulda hired Monty feckin’ Don
Wheeler is one of United's most reliable sources in recent years. Not really sure what to make of this to be honest. At least we didn't end up with Gareth.
Also sounds like he wanted to keep Erik. Maybe getting rid was wise despite the optics.
If allowing ETH to stay after the FA Cup is the reason then it looks to be justified. Although I doubt its the only reason.
What a crazy period for the club. The whole idea of a football director is that he outlives multiple managers but here we're sacking one 5 months after hiring him, and after chasing for almost 6 months prior to that.
We paid 2 million quid in the end for him to come. The tribunal worked in our favour.
Sounds like there were more than a few reasons.
Exactly. I'm off the opinion getting rid was the correct move if we're putting all our chips in Amorim.
Spent more time on gardening leave than in the role we were desperate to employ him for.
Agreed. I would be shocked if the real reason was one of who gets to make transfer decisions and also probably a personality clash between Ashworth and another key figure, where Berrada or someone else at the top.
yawnWell done you, your medal is the post