The equivalent of the 'Casemiro' role, the 'cement that holds the stones together', or going to a lot of meetings in several departments and offering a bit to each, from what we've been told, as well as attending training (and shuttling between U23s and 1st team to see who should be transitioned or loaned out, although Ten Hag has been running the latter in recent times). Finally, being part of the 'recruitment pitch' team meeting with potential signings to sell the club project as well as ascertaining their commitment.
Manchester United name John Murtough as Football Director and Darren Fletcher as Technical Director
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
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Half right.
He suggests players who have the right mentality (as well as ability) to make the step up from youth to first team.
He also vets for lack of a better term players for the first team who have the mentality and mindset to play for Man Utd and has his input that way.
He is not the one scouting players, he may suggest people he ljkes the look of but he is far from the one who makes the decision on who we should/should not sign
Very poor mans Roy Keane
Not suggesting he has final say on that, but reports suggest that he doesn't just help with sales pitch but actually evaluates both from the outside (suggesting who might be approached, with this feeding into decision-making process' alongside chief scouting and managerial input ) and when sounding players out informally and during formal pre-contract discussions. That's what I've casually pieced together at least: as people have said, the club has been a bit opaque about his actual role (maybe you know more through reading releases or being ITK in some way - I haven't gone forensically through it!) , at least when it comes to what ordinary fans know, so a lot of it is the more 'serious' sports specialist press publishing accounts 'from the inside'.
Fletcher oversees academy transitions into the senior team, which includes first team training. And helps EtH decide which players he needs to take a closer look at from the youth. Hence Fletcher is regularly seen at youth games. He's technically directing the youth to seniors transition and has walked the walk on the same journey at the club. Why anybody would be concerned about Fletcher directing youth transitions into the senior team is beyond me.
And until we see a new owner at the club, the people at the club are working with one hand tied behind their back with several departments under funded in comparison to the teams we want to compete with. And i'm still seeing fans complain about the Antony fee, when the reality is that Antony couldn't be signed earlier due to the budget that was allocated and that only changed in the last few weeks of the window, when the pressure got to Joel Glazer, which in-turn strengthened Ajax' hand in negotiations because they didn't want to sell so late in the window with the football season underway. Our Womens team did fantastically well last season and competed for the title and only missed out by a few points in the end. But in comparison to our rivals we're under funded and have lost two key players in the last week due to their contract expiring.
This is from the Financial Times and gives some insight on why things take longer than usual at our club when it comes to making budgetary decisions.
And someone posted a chart from The Athletic earlier, where it mentioned about Steve Brown being the head of scouting operations. And The Athletic is a good source of information when it comes to providing insight on football news in general but they aren't a good source at breaking down the football structure at the club hence they keep mentioning Steve Brown who doesn't scout himself but leads a team of 6 who coordinate the scouting process where their job is to make sure the scouts are looked after and they get from location to location wherever that may be in the world.
Our problem has never been that we couldn't sign players quick enough but rather we signed the wrong players for the wrong managers because the managers in question had ideas that were flawed to begin with in comparison to what was developing at the likes of Liverpool and City. Guardiola in his second season was given 300m to spend on top of the 200m plus he got in his first season.
It's not difficult create a well functioning football structure imo as long as everyone works together towards a set goal and is backed by the ownership via the CEO.
See you next summer when you have to come back and educate people again @Adnan
Listen to Darren Fletcher and we sign Nathan Collins instead of Martinez.
Why hire the best people for the job when you can just bring in ex players who have no experience of running a club at the top level
Nathan Collins was a suggestion made to Ole when Fletcher was still at Stoke ! Nothing to do with last summer.
And for what it is worth. Nathan Collins was good at Burnley and is coming on nicely at Wolves as well to say he is only just 22 years old.
Me I'm just glad that after almost a decade with the club and 3 years as DOF his tenure can finally start this summer.
I appreciate that you've obviously dug into this and every time i've seen post invariably have informed things to say, but clearly, in certain respects, it has been a lot of speed in decision-making (as well as speed in bringing players in to join pre-season training full-stop) that has affected recruitment.
There have been other issues like hubris (turning down Haaland because he wanted a release clause, if widespread reports are to be believed), not identifying or agreeing upon suitable technical profiles, managers turning down players who previous managers have lined up (and who turn out to be successful) , but, whether it's the Times or the Athletic, we've had reports about United not being able to get back to agents or clubs because the Glazers are unreachable or taking too long to release funds. The club have a reputation as a nightmare to deal with, partly because those handling transfers are having to make excuses for why they can't update an offer or confirm revised terms or whatever else.
Either the ownership were/are invested or they're not: we've seen a clear lack of attention to the direction of the club, whether in infrastructure or managerial results spiralling out of control, or sequences of bad windows, or not bringing in a DOF to meet peer standards once Moyes had proved the SAF template couldnt be copied This indicates a lack of 'time' investment or capacity/willingness to understand challenges (as well as the effects of the time-difference). On the other hand, they've (Joel and Avram at least) also been reluctant just to allow the CEO to manage the budget autonomously, again if the picture we are to reconstruct from reports is at all correct. In certain cases, like Martial, reports from numerous sources have indicated that (Joel, I think) actively blocked his sale.
Also, it shouldn't be primarily about good or 'flawed' managers with regards to who's brought in; are managers determining transfer policy at Madrid, or Bayern for instance. Or even, scaled-down, at Brighton. They may have various degrees of input, but these days managers are more and more Head Coaches, in name or not, signed to implement a certain kind of club playing philosophy as efficiently as they can and, at best, with their own spin.
Being hard to deal with and not answering calls if I remember correctly was down to Judge simply not answering his phone, I swear I read that somewhere & it was before Murtough was even in charge!
Yeah, but why was Judge not answering his phone (and again I'm not blaming Murtough primarily- the point is precisely that the ownership are to blame for prevailing tendencies). Either he's being told not to answer, or he was stretched and let in a position where he couldn't multitask sufficiently (because he was told to concentrate on commercial contracts), or he's not answering because he's stalling for time autonomously because the ownership haven't got back to him (or the CEO at least).... or some combination of all of them. Despite, of course, the reputational damage this provides, both at the time and also in terms of reports about his behavior towards clubs/agents being known and not addressed by club management.
I'll just focus on two things you've mentioned here about Moyes trying to follow the Fergie template and other clubs where there's a DoF & Head Coach dynamic.
David Moyes didn't attempt to follow the Fergie template but instead tried to modernise the football structure after he discovered the scouting department was under manned and technologically almost non existent when it was reported about Moyes wanting detailed analysis on transfer targets and was told that everything was either in Jim Lawlor's (Chief Scout) head or was written down on paper by Derek Langley who was the head of recruitment at the time and was said to be someone not very savvy with modern day tech. And it was from there that Moyes told Woodward that the club had fallen way behind structurally and needed a revamp. Woodward then asked Moyes to recommend someone for the job and he recommend John Murtough who was the head of elite development at the premier league at the time and had a history of modernising football clubs. Moyes also brought in scouts to beef up the club's recruitment structure but lost his job and some of those scouts ended up at Man City.
And regarding the head coach/DoF combination. I'm fully behind that model and have previously spoken at length about the benefits of having that model and how that model works structurally. But that model only works effectively if everyone on the football side of the club works in tandem with each other. Even at Real Madrid, Florentino Perez removed the Sporting director (Valdano) to appease Jose Mourinho. And clubs like City, Liverpool, Barcelona, Bayern and even Brighton in the last 2 to 3 years have utilised the ideas of their managers/head coaches to set the direction at their clubs. Bayern via LVG who created the foundations for a modernised version of positional play which Henckes, Guardiola and Flick developed further with great success. Liverpool, City and Brighton are following the same template set by their head coaches which directs their football departments. Brighton under Chris Hughton and Brighton under Potter and De Zerbi are two different teams but with the same football structure. So the football structure is only as effective as the head coach that has been chosen to execute the plan on the pitch. Arsenal is the same with their head coach who is implementing positional play, which makes it easier for the recruitment/football structure to function.
And regarding United we're also operating with a head coach/DoF model now imo. It was only Mourinho and Solskjaer who had personal scouts and hence muddied the lines of communication. And like I've said previously, a DoF can only effectively support his head coach if he himself has the support structure in place. That support structure was not in place in the last summer window and having heads of recruitment in place to support you, will make things easier as far as signing players are concerned and supporting the head coach. You either sign players on the say so of the people in charge of the recruitment department or you sign players on the say so of the head coach because the heads of recruitment have been fired. Which was the case with both Lawlor and Bout getting sacked at the end of the 2021/22 season. That isn't the case right now with the recruitment heads now in place and the new head of transfer negotiations (Matt Hargreaves) only joining this week due to his contract with Adidas. And he's said to be someone with a lot of experience when it comes to negotiations due to his work with professional footballers.
If you have a owner who is ambition and wants the team to succeed, then you will succeed at whatever level said team aspires to be at. And Brighton is a good example of a team that punches way above their weight due to their owner, Tony Bloom. It has to come from the very top, because you can't replicate what Brighton is doing without the person at the very top empowering the people at all levels of the club.
Liverpool's football structure without the direction of with and without the durection of Jurgen Klopp, are two different stories. The narrative changed from how Edwards and Co deemed Sadio Mane to be not good enough to how Edwards and Co persuaded Klopp to sign Salah. And the difference was that unlike Rodgers, Klopp came in and worked with Liverpool's existing football structure when most people were ridiculing them. Rodgers like Mourinho and Solskjaer had his own scouts.
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Not an expert but what has changed since Ed Woodward has left? Contract extension for Bruno before eth came in. Licha getting a payrise after one season. Offering ddg new deal because cheaper than a new signing (conserving value) marquee signing from Madrid over the managers head (supposed)
I see no difference in how things are being run above the manager
I see no difference in how things are being run above the manager
So nothing then..
Thanks - that's a typically extensive response! I didn''t mean Moyes was looking to have structures run exactly as SAF did (in terms of scouts), more that he would look to oversee everything - acting as de facto DOF as well as Head Coach (if anything, more hands on, given the amount of training ground delegation SAF apparently did in latter stages and the uses he made of Ass. Mans). For someone known for building up databases of available players at Everton, he clearly didn't do a very good job of managing upward in terms of identifying then pushing Woodward for suitable CMs once it became clear Fabregas wasn't available, or long-term Defensive and forward options, so I'm not going to eulogize him, even if he made a point of saying we needed to update.
I think all things you mention can be true/credible, and are indeed plausible (including the negative effect of Mourinho/Ole re. pursuing good targets and in developing the recruitment structure as opposed to largely sidelining it to go to Woodward directly) and we can still acknowledge that structures, even beyond whether there's a DOF or not, play a hugely determining part that at times goes beyond the manager profile. So whilst Klopp might have made good use of an underused or appreciated Liverpool structure, even with money ostensibly available, ours was so under-developed around that time (when Woodward approached him) he might have struggled to transcend it and make top-4 early on, until (if everything you say is true about Murtough's capabilities and the work he's nevertheless been able to do behind the scenes) establishing a working relationship with JM.
Even then, the issues around not completing transfers quickly are largely out of the hands of the manager , once they actually support acquiring a target, which again comes down to this question of responsiveness (to initial requests and then to alterations in deals) from the top of the organization, scaling down to CEO to set day to day agenda and targets as well as implementing reform and then the ability of the negotiator to do their job Again, I don't think we disagree about ownership setting the agenda, (i.e Bloom or Brentford), so I think it's fair to blame the ownership proportionately in this case, based on the stories. I think thats true even if , in some alternative reality, Guardiola took over, and might have, through sheer rep and personality, been able to wrangle them into acting more quickly at certain junctures when players became available, as well as establishing a more suitable player profile . In actuality, of course, I suspect a PG would have resigned fairly quickly, but who knows...maybe, like Klopp, he would have used what was there to its utmost potential in terms of speeding up the reform process alongside Murtough, and eked a league win by year 3, as well as quietly persuading ME to bid for united sooner....
Unqualified jobs for the boys bollocks. Semi decent player for us that should be it.
Middle management, for better or worse.
If eth values his help then that's all that matters. Just hope he's not got a controlling influence as we need best in class not just former players that have got their badges etc
Yeah, I take the points elsewhere by people who are deep-diving into how the club is run, that things have been restructured and made more organized ( as much as you can with the Glazers still having to sign off on large decisions), but I think the wave of contracts indicates we're still not efficient/ruthless enough. There are signs from the leaks and briefs that this is changing a bit too in terms of awarding younger players contracts, and with De Gea getting reduced terms/no 1st choice guarantee, but Bruno really didn't need a new contract, Licha is fantastic, but there wasn't really a need to do this right now either
Incoming 5-page essay.
I think it's somewhere between majority (justified) cynicism and the five page defenses of how JMs done a good job under the circumstances and the club is better organized than it was back in Mourinho era. I think any sporting director/footballing exec/managers ceiling is automatically lower when they're ultimately overseen by the nest of cnuts that make up our ownership and key directors, although I'd still like to see our head honchos 're-interview' for their jobs immediately upon any new ownership.
While I would hope we're more efficient when we get a new owner and that's usually associated with a different management, I'd be curious to see Murtough do his thing for one year.
If he fails after that, I'd hope the discussion is over because no wall of text can cover up the shambles of the transfer windows the past years.
You make some good points.
Regarding Moyes, he tried to modernise the structure by playing the manager/DoF role but the team's on the pitch performance saw him fired after about 9 months. And when he got fired, everything fell on the shoulders of Ed Woodward who now had to make big decisions on the football side of the club due to the manager/DoF losing his job. We had Fergie for such a long time that he was directing everything on the football side of the club and now Woodward was put into that position and it seemed like there was no contingency plan for the manager losing his job. So managers were being hired on the basis of their CV/resume and not on the basis of their ideas to implement a progressive approach to playing the game. That's probably not a bad idea if the club has a structure on the football side that can support the manager. But unfortunately we didn't and when LVG was fired, we didn't have a contingency plan in place and Woodward again went the CV/resume route and brought in Mourinho after he was sacked by Chelsea.
And regarding the club not being responsive or decisive when it came to transfers is down to Woodward, Judge and Joel Glazer as the tweets below indicate.
And then on top of that, they also made a real mess of contracts.
Then just before leaving the club, Woodward decided to offer Rangnick the consultancy role, which caused in even more confusion. He probably thought he was helping but ended up costing the club even more before he left. And that was his last decision as far as we know at the club.
And after Woodward and Co left behind a mess. We've now got John Murtough to come into the setup and try and clean up the mess that has been created. Murtough was the head of development at the club where he oversaw the development of the youth teams, youth recruitment and the development of the data analytics strategy at the club which he has led as the article below from the guys at TGG mentions from 2020.
https://trainingground.guru/articles/murtough-leading-development-of-man-utd-data-science-strategy
Wasn't Murtough "credited" with the hiring of Rangnick? Pretty sure it was described as a masterstroke and how impressed Murtough was with Rangnick during the interview?
Funny that, as soon as Rangnick became a failure, his appointment got blamed on Woody.
Funny that, as soon as Rangnick became a failure, his appointment got blamed on Woody.
I think you might be getting close there.
I’m not defending Murtough but rather how people undervalue the task here.
I’ll take my own experience to draw parallel. I joined a young company a year ago as a Director. For the first 6-7 months, I’ve been busy cleaning up the mess left by my predecessors and the people in place.
It’s only once I’ve cleaned up everything that I was able to start putting a new structure and new processes in place.
Even then, you have to the buy-in from the C-Suite (in United’s case it’s the Glazers), and that can be incredibly difficult because most are happy with the « business as usual ».
You can do everything you want but if the people at the helm keep doing the same thing, your scope of action and results is highly limited.
From everything I was able to read on both Arnold and Murtough, they seem to be doing what I explained, ie cleaning up and implementing a new way of working. The jury’s still out as far as I’m concerned.
As for Fletcher, I won’t even comment because it’s just the CAF wanting a head to roll without knowing for the slightest what his role is…
Plenty of other teams (such as Bayern, Ajax, Juve, etc) successfully bring in ex-players to fill roles throughout their organisation, including much more important roles than the one that Fletcher has for us. At the end of the day the important thing is that whoever is filling that position is good at it, and if anything being one of our own recentish ex-players seems to be an advantage for that role. Whether he actually is good at it or not is something that nobody on this forum can accurately answer.
The same posters basically trying to do a clean up job for all of Murtough's faults. It's almost gaslighting people into believing he's doing a spectacular job.
Hiring Rangnick and offering him the two year consultancy which ended up getting terminated.
Arnold and Murtough going to Barcelona to give the impression they were closing in on Frenkie de Jong. Ended up being a waste of airmiles as they player had no intention of coming here. Embarrassing really.
Signing Antony for £85m is as bad as it gets. This is right up the Woodward playbook of overpaying but even he never sanctioned a deal this bad.
Needing a striker desperately and out of all the players in Europe we brought in Weghorst. Its almost unanimous that he's the worst player to get regular minutes for us and he came here under Murtough.
DDG has been offered a new deal despite it being the perfect chance for him to be let go. Continuing the Woody trend of renewing undeserved contracts. It's almost as if the club knows it was a mistake because its taking so long to make a decision on whether he stays or goes.
This summer is another where we need to make a lot of sales. It's early in the day so too early to judge but we'll see if he's able to beat Woody in this department because he was horrendous at shifting players.
I'm not saying Murtough has been an all out failure, but there's very little evidence to show he's doing more than just ok in his role. Yes he's restructured the departments and added new staff but that in itself doesn't mean he's done a good job. In any case if the SJ takes over I can imagine he and Arnold will be in the hot seat as they'll want the best people for that job.
Bruno had been here two and a half years and was underpaid based on his performances on the field. While we shouldn't be handing out contracts like candy and we've certainly made stupid decisions in the past, he deserved a new one. Apparently he's now on £240k a week which seems about right (indeed based on what we pay others he's still probably underpaid).
As for Martinez, I'd say the improved contract was something that was likely agreed upon when he first signed. Sign for a relatively low amount (on the same as VDB, Fred and Lindelof) and if he did well he could earn an fairly quick pay increase. If that wasn't part of the original negotiations then I do agree it was a bit early (probably should have waited until mid-next season to make sure he returned from injury fine), but overall it should be fine.
Giving players unnecessary contracts is bad business, but not paying players what they deserve is bad for morale and ultimately bad for the team as they start looking at what they can get elsewhere. I'd say both Bruno and Martinez fit in that latter category.
Pogba and De Gea getting offered new contracts are the ones I'd be more worried about. But we don't know what De Gea is actually being offered and what the plan is there.
Have we re-signed Pogba without my noticing?! Midfield reinforcements situation has clearly reached a crisis point.
Bruno was contracted until 2025 in his first contract, and had spells of patchy form after his initial burst. We should have given him another year on current terms to work with new manager - ETH - before awarding him contract (albeit one which in current market conditions I guess you could make a case for him justifying retroactively; ETH certainly backs him in any event)
I think people are understandably wary about flurry of contracts locking players in for years and making them difficult to upgrade on, particularly after Woodward's previous 'genius' strategy (which I have to think was connected with accounting rules and rates on the debt/borrowing facility more than thinking it was actually a good idea in sporting terms to lock in permacrocked, erratic defenders for another 4-5 years). De Gea contract offer is on much lower basic terms - this has been widely briefed - but I still think we should just let him move, lock in a deal right now for new 1st choice, buy them, sell Henderson for FFP/cash flow, and use Heaton (Kovar is on loan for another year I think) as 2nd choice. How often does the 2nd choice keeper play anyway? Heaton''s fine as a League Cup starter. ..
I think a few people in this thread are frustrated at the wrong person because they are looking at the “director” bit of his job title and misunderstanding what he does
Murtough did hire Rangnick as the interim which was widely reported but it was Woodward who gave Rangnick the consultancy role which was also widely reported.
Dont think it was even the worst call, although in retrospect looks bad when it came to results. The intell coming out re. his squad assessments and player recommendations was mixed-to-good, looking back at it; the worst one involved seeing Scotty as a potential mainstay and even captain, but the Bundesliga reps would have helped us, and he was right about lack of physical attributes (and certain technical abilities) within parts of the squad. He might have been Ok as part of a Consultancy team in a more stable set-up.
Why are people complaining about Martinez with a new contract when he hasn't been given one yet?
We should’ve just given him £300k/w from the beginning like we used to and then hoped that he turned out being worth that amount of money. That would’ve made everyone happy it seems.
Yet another masterstroke today to give Rashford De Gea wages. Things have really changed at United, you can just see the clear strategy.
Murtough for Life. I just need the 5-star thesis now.
Murtough for Life. I just need the 5-star thesis now.
Yea mentioned a few times recently that I can't see a change since the Woodward era.
So you'd prefer to see him leave? He could earn more on the market tbh
I get why we gave him what we supposedly did but it's a shambles. One good recent season, one shocking and a few meady ones before that.
If he wasn't the face of the club, he wouldn't be getting £250k, let alone £350k/week. He's absolutely played us.
Has he? We've played ourselves, we're giving Sancho about 350k a week and he's a shambles compared to Rashford, so why should he be paid any less? It's our fault quite frankly for paying overinflated wages for so long, it was bound to bite us in the ass sooner or later.
I remember the days when posters talked about whether the 09 and 11 finals could have been won with him in the team.
We do that a lot. Even Murtough was already at the club. This "United" DNA thing is complete bs. Get the people who are the best at their job to do their job for you. It's not hard but we insist on putting bankers, accountants and ex players with no managerial experience to run the club and are surprised when they fail.