Oh didn't you hear, It was the management's fault for not snatching candy from his overgrown bald kid, despite this overgrown bald kid asking for a definite say in his right to eat candy as a prerequisite for joining us.
It's a new one, but it's fascinating.
If total control of transfers (a responsibility he's never had before) was a prerequisite for him to accept the job then the club should have sent him packing and moved onto the next shortlisted candidate.
However, given our track record, we probably didn't have another candidate lined up.
Additionally, for someone who apparently wanted total control of transfers (a responsibility he's never had before) as a condition of being our manager, he's seemed awfully willing to accept that control being taken away by INEOS.
This whole thing stems from one interview answer that can just as easily be interpreted as him wanting at least some say as he doesn't want random players thrust onto him out of nowhere (which is the far more reasonable and likely meaning behind his comments).
See, I dont believe this to be true, because we have a precedent for giving managers a list. Starting from Moyes to LVG to Jose to Ole's list of 500 rightbacks. Those targets were never reported, or the manager wasn't interested. There's no way our 160 scouts only came back with one name for the RW, and its the name they walked away from. They just weren't reported, and nobody leaked anything to throw the manager under the bus.
Its just like your name. It's like we hired a bald genius, but has the tendencies of a junkie, and we have to keep him wrapped up in cotton.
The list of 500 right-backs and us having 160 scouts just shows how ineffective our recruitment is.
160 scouts is an insanely high number, and you have to question what, exactly, they're feeding back to the club, and how this data is organised and analysed (hint: it won't be efficiently).
500 players for one position is just an incredibly stupid number. That's basically going on that year's football manager, selecting "DR" as position in the player search options, sorting the results by overall ability, and copying the top 500 as your "shortlist".
Even if our 160 scouts have somehow managed to thoroughly scout 500 right-backs, when £50 million odd on Aaron Wan-Bissaka emerges as the best option, it's clear that there are major flaws in whatever methods they're using to analyse the data and rank the targets.
And to keep it on Antony, and if we accept that our 160 scouts did provide a proper shortlist of right-wingers, a properly run club doesn't just bin all of that work and spunk £80 million on a player that didn't make the cut just because the manager likes him. It's still not on Ten Hag that the club is run like a circus.
Moyes shouldn't have been allowed to bin off whatever targets we had lined up to instead chase Fellaini and Baines all summer, van Gaal shouldn't have been allowed to just sack off most of the team to make room for shite like Darmian and Schneiderlin, same shit for Mourinho, same shit for Solskjaer, and same shit for Ten Hag.
There is literally no point in the club having these scouts and analysts if we're not actually going to make use of them because any given manager can just chuck their work in the shredder and direct the club to spend silly amounts on one of their former players.