The issue with any new manager is that what is required to turn this club around, isn’t one man, it’s systemic root and branch reform. A holistic approach to how the club is run. Now, what we aren’t aware of in any meaningful detail is how much of that work has already happened behind the scenes over the last few months/year. Maybe the manager is the last remaining piece, along with executing an already devised new recruitment strategy.
What I will tell you is that I am very well connected professionally with someone who is a long time friend and colleague of a senior member of the current coaching set up and the word from inside the club is that it is a “complete shitshow”. There are far too many people trying to make decisions and no clear unified direction, voice or strategy. I’ve also been told that Rangnick was marginalised within the first few weeks of taking the job, and the powers that be within the club - executive board, DoF, TD, are not only dissenting amongst themselves but also doing it their own way without listening to external, qualified input. Often competing against one another.
From everything I’ve heard, it makes it sound like the next manager will just be cannon fodder. The club repeatedly promotes from within, to key strategic positions, to avoid having new ideas and voices challenging their hegemonic culture.
However low your expectations are, lower them further.
I wasn’t going to post this because I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, and I can’t be dealing with being labelled an ITK wannabe. I know a lot of stuff from within the club, I’m just not going to get into the habit of sharing it on an Internet forum, because my friendships and business relationships are more important than anonymous internet infamy.
Suffice to say that this is general enough, and I am pissed off enough, to share this particular tidbit. I can almost as close enough as guarantee that we will never see a meaningful change, pattern, strategy, or success, until the owners change. That’s been said by many on here for a long time. Speculating from what they’ve seen from the outside. From what I can tell you from what I know from the inside, is that all those people are correct. That the Glazer power structure, strategy, decision making, is about as unimaginative, uninformed, disorganised, and disconnected from the fans, club, and orthodox expectations of a big club, as you can possibly imagine. Even the Glazers themselves disagree on the direction, timing of the exit strategy, and valuation of the club.
It is my opinion, and now we are back to uninformed speculation, that the best outcome for us is a Hicks/Gillette type financial meltdown that forces the sale of the club. Either way, we are going to be in the wilderness for a while.
