People really digging out this bloke and getting angry at him, questioning what he does remind me of people in Youtube comment sections.
The John Murtough Era
- Thread starter Trex
- Start date
- Status
Have you heard not of zoom or mobile phones? You aren't involved in negotiations every minute of the day. Lawyers and accountants/financial guys will be mainly involved.
These C suite guys have to wine n dine sponsors to pay for our expenses.
Embarrassing
You definitely sound like one of those self-important C suite execs who spout a lot of bollocks and expect people to just take it as gospel.
If you don't understand the entire workings of the org structure then it may appear to be bollocks.
In normal circumstances, you would be right, if you have a stable squad and style of play, but in the current context, when Ten Hag has to so drastically alter the way the team plays, trains and its attitude, with an already shorter preseason, (both this year and next because of the world cup) as well as games been more crammed together than ever further limiting the time on the training ground.
The impact of getting deals done late is going to be massive. Especially when you're talking about players like De Jong, Eriksen and the Ronaldo saga. Think how different the style of play would need to be if we have McFred in midfield and Ronaldo up front compared De Jong in midfield and more mobile forward. And its not just about how the new players fit in, it's getting the players we have to adapt to them and function as a unit.
So even if on the last day of the window it looks the window has been incredible due to late signings/outgoings, there is going to be no time to work with those players in pre-season then they will be playing 2 games a week with limited training time, then they are like going to go away for 6 weeks to a world cup.
So this summer isn't just about who comes and who goes, it's also when they come and when they go because that is going to have a massive bearing on this season, which will intern have a huge effect on how Ten Hag is perceived.
You realise that FdJ is almost a prerequisite for ETH's system of playing. And ETH only go to United less than a month ago? There are clear workaround plans incl opportunistic ones like Malacia -- unless ETH is completely unimpressed by our two LBs.
The main problem here is FdJ and his delays. But if you follow the FDJ thread you will understand a lot of it is out of our control. Then you throw in the cnutish move by Ronaldo, we will need to find $$ and save as much as we can from the FdJ deal for getting another attacker/replacement for Ronaldo and Mason.
So I agree its not optimal that Frenkie may not make it to the Asia Tour. But won't be surprising considering the circumstances. Hopefully, the transfer team has initiated some internal discussions and subtly reached out to our Plans B and C by now.
Note. For the last time, this transfer window cannot be compared to the rival clubs for obvious reasons. Even Conte has a head start on us.
You judge these management folks after a few years and not the first few months when you have a body of work as evidence.
The meltdown on here might be of epic proportions if we get off to a slow start.
If we managed to ship off Ronaldo, I think we'll get off to a good start.
If we managed to ship off Ronaldo, I think we'll get off to a good start.
We heard the technology argument when Woodward used to go on tour. But transfer activity completely stopped whenever he went.
Eriksen - no official announcement by Monday and then I win.
It's simple to get, yet you still failed.Honestly do you even know what you are talking about here?
What you mean hands on??
You are literally talking about procedures and transfer activity you have zero clue or knowledge of how they are done, but he must be there to be hands on.
I'm sure if that was the case he wouldn't be going anywhere, but I suspect there is more to the job than sitting in his office being hands on for perspective deals so he can ping a few buttons or whatever it is he needs to be doing
Doing a job when you can focus all of your time to it will be more productive than doing a job when you're on a tour on the other side of the world, in hotel rooms meeting and greeting sponsors and doing all the promotional shit that he doesn't need to do.
You realise that Murtough isn't a miracle worker, don't you?
Thanks to Woodward and his idiotic overpaying of salaries for mundane players, it's going to be a hell of a job to find someone willing to take those players off our hands.
I swear you, and others of the same opinion, just expect things to go easily like on FM. Unfortunately, real life isn't like that.
Serious question though; what do you imagine Murtough actual does day to day that can’t be done in Thailand or on tour?
And by 23:59 Monday? That’s the cut off?
Yes i do realise that, and i realise that the FDJ situation looks a million miles away from being completed, so how this team is going to play and set up next season is a massive question and looks likely it probably will be for quite a few weeks yet.
Of course it's hard when you have a new manager coming in, but Ten Hag was appointed in April, its now July. Additionally, one of the reasons you have a director of football is two ensure squad continuity if a manager doesn't work out, so Murtough in theory should have been working on targets longer than that. Plus everyone is aware we needed midfield reinforcements going back over a year.
Add to that everyone with half a brain would know how important it is to get players in early this summer with the shortened pre-season. So sorry, yes it's hard for them and yet it's a different situation to other top clubs this summer. But it's their job, if they want to be in that role, it's their job to deal with a really hard situation and make it work. Not getting the transfers done early make the situation harder.
As for judging our management team after a few years, Well Murtough and Arnold have been at the club years, yes they have more power now and can't blame them for the last decade of mess. But they have been at the club for that time, saying all that mess, the billion-plus of terrible squad building is 100% not there fault is more then a bit turning a blind eye and hoping for the best. Murtough was at least in charge last summer which left us incredibly imbalanced, he has also been in charge while the clear culture problem in the squad has been increasing.
So yes while its early days, and they may turn it around its not a positive start.
I know that for some glass is half full/empty and shit like that but don't tell me that you really think that this summer (regarding transfers) he is doing good job.
So far he isn't helping our new coach in preparation for new season. I also don't have fear that ETH will get 2 or 3 new players but everything what John did this summer is too late and too slow.
I’ll decide how he’s done when the window shuts not right now
I am assuming they have a Plan B and C by now as alternatives to FdJ and working on them now.
No one would have known the complexity and the shithousery of Barca to lean on Frenkie the way they are doing it now both as a person and also financially.
He is the DOF. Sponsors who spend millions on United will always want to talk to the top people including the DOF and hear from him his plans going forward so that they will either feel comforted why that or will want to spend more.
There is also the time difference -- Thailand is 7 hours ahead and 9hrs (in Melbourne) ahead of the UK. The higher up you are in an organisation the more multi-functionary or multi-tasking you need to do.
He could be working with the sponsors in the morning local time when all of Europe is asleep.
Then in his afternoon in Thailand or OZ, he can be alert or on call so if anything pops up when Spain and UK come online, he can be in the zoom calls if required. You have very long days on these multi-time zone workings base on my own experience. Literally will be 16-18 hrs days for the Arnolds/Murtough of the world on these tours.
Australia will be the most tiring for him as the sponsors and potential sponsors will want to be wine & dined and the Aussies are know to want to have a drink or two. And all this with zero down days to recover from the jet-lag that they will encounter.
Assuming, maybe they do maybe they don’t. Hopefully they do, but the club doesn’t have the best track record i signing the right targets over the past decade and so far our strategy this summer seems to have been whose Dutch Ten Hag knowes. Doesn’t say a lot for out scouting. But fingers crossed they are better than what they seem and there track record.
Also it’s there job to find out the complexity of those deals. The fact we are talking about such a key piece who there is doubts whether he wants to sign for us and we have no idea how to handle the financial side of it and the this wasn’t looked into and moved on from weeks ago isn’t a positive sign.
The onus of any Plans B, C is on ETH since he would know the people who are most suited to his style of play. Murtough is putting his faith in ETH in knowing what and who he wants.
I think the scouting network needs to be given a new player profile on the sort of players that would suit this new United or at least look into the database for the sort that ETH is looking for.
Meet with potential buyers/sellers for start. A lot of pieces mention he flew to Barcelona, Rome or whatever it may be for talks. If he's flying to Australia and Thailand then he can hardly jump on a 2 hour flight. People are laughing at my suggestion but I guarantee the transfer activity will pause for a couple of weeks if he flies off today.
23:59 Sunday.
Again you aren't saying what he's meant to be doing that will add to the productivity by just sitting in his old Trafford office or being at the club London offices.
As someone said nothing changes, lawyers and financial people who be doing the donkey work on these deals, it's not football manager where Murtough at the screen tweaking parameters on the screen 24/7...............as I said if that was the case, and the job was literally like that then I'd imagine he not he going anywhere, but as it stands yous are just hammering him for the sake of hammering him based on nothing really except barca not ok'ing the transfer, and Ajax wanting more money.
Plus Bangkok/Perth and Melbourne are 7 and 9 hours ahead of the UK.
Dem are long days for Murtough.
Hold on who he meant to be meeting here? The selling club's direct? And he needs to be meeting buyers direct as well?
No the onus is on Murtough it’s his job to over see the squad building not just be going to the manager and go who do you like? Of course, the manger has to have input but it’s a joint process.
It’s Murtough job to go okay I looked into FDJ I know you want him, but the deal is a mess and we need to move on (that should have happened weeks ago)
Then as a well informed director of football he should know the kind of football Ten Hag likes to play and the player profile he like as Murtough should of throughly researched this before hiring him, and the player profile and style of play should be in line with Murtough’s vision for the club.
Therefore scouting network should have been given this kind of profile months ago. So when Murtough identifies the FDJ deal was too messy and would at bare minimum have a significant impact on our preparation for the season,
Murtough should be able to go look I know you wanted FDJ but we need to move on, I’ve had our scouting network working on this for months here are the targets I’m going to peruse they fit the profile you need (again this should probably have happened weeks ago).
Am I being harsh of Murtough? absolutely! But he has been given the job to be director of football at a club at one of the biggest clubs in the world whose squad building has been utterly appalling for a decade. What I’m describing is how good Murtough needs to be if we are to turn it around.
Last edited:
Agree with all of this.
A Director of Football's job isn't just to act as the head coach's bag carrier.
This guy is a bigger joke than Woodward
Based on what?
Joke club. Banter FC
Say more daft things. No, really.
Well so far we have been very chaotic as we don't seem to have lined up any midfield player apart from FDJ who has turned down United
News to me.
He can only turn around and tell ten Hag to turn away from certain targets if he has the input from the head of scouting. And we don't have anyone in that position currently because we only recently sacked the head scouts. The DoF at City, turns to his head of recruitment who provides the collated/compiled lists of transfer targets to him. And the head of recruitment at City is ex United youth player Gary Worthington.
So what a lot of people fail to understand is the recruitment structure at football clubs, and are unable to see beyond the surface. And if you attempt to look beyond the surface, you'll notice that there's a chain of command below the DoF at recruitment level, which starts from the head of scouting, head of regional scouting and trickles down to the lead scouts. Man Utd don't have a head of scouting, so the chain is broken currently and can only be fixed by the start of the new season, which would also be the start of the new scouting season at first team level. So if by the start of the season we have someone like Lee Dykes in the role of head of recruitment, then I fully expect Murtough to provide ten Hag with a list of targets by the end of the season.
Also Murtough hasn't travelled with the squad on tour and neither has Richard Arnold, but he may join up at a later date.
We have other scouts, I think there are 16 officially directly appointed. They are still working. We haven't gone into a summer with no way of being able to identifying target, other than the ones Ten Hag has clearly suggested. If that's the situation we are in wow we are an even worse ran club than I thought we were.
However, I suspect situation is much like any department, if the head of the department leaves (fired quits..,) the department still functions you have temporary heads/ stand ins, the people further up the chain have a more active interest in the department. There scouts are still able to compile reports make suggestions, it would have still been possible for Murtough to inform the scouring network of the player profile in line with Murtough’s vision for the club and by proxy Ten Hag's. Then I'm Assuming Murtough temporary heads are able capable or assessing and cross referencing the scouting reports. Again if that isn't possible then wow we are really in trouble.
Time difference is a very important point that I think is being overlooked by many.
We have key decision makers in Thailand, England, and Florida (if you believe the reports that Joel/Avram ultimately sign off on every deal). How are things meant to get done efficiently if at least one party is asleep at any given moment?
We do have other scouts but the head of recruitment is the person who compiles the lists and has the experience/authority to filter and ratify those lists, whilst being in-charge of the recruitment department. So with Bout and Lawlor now no longer in their roles overseeing the recruitment, our scouting isn't as thorough and detailed because the work they had done for the current window has been put to one side, which makes sense because otherwise why not keep them on. So you can't on one hand sack the scouting heads and then on the other hand carry on using their work. It doesn't make sense. And temporary and stand in heads can only utilise the work that's already been done by the sacked head scouts. And it's reported that the likes of Jose Mayorga and the head of recruitment operations (Steve Brown) have stepped in for now. But neither Mayorga and Steve Brown have been scouting in Europe or in Brown's case he hasn't been involved in identifying talent but is someone who sorts the ticketing/travel and logistics for the scouts around the world.
The department is still functioning, and our head of European scouting (Henny de Regt) is still at the club. So all transfer targets who fall within the European continent, fall under de Regt's jurisdiction. And it just happens to be that he's also Dutch and ex Ajax, having worked at the Dutch club for 18 years in various different roles where he was credited with discovering the likes of Wesley Sneijder, Christian Eriksen and Mathijs de Ligt.
So your argument is we got rid of our head scouts, and that left the club in position were no one was qualified to assess the scouting reports or provide scouting for the majority of the scouts? Wow that bleak!
My argument is simple, don't use the collated information of the scouts that have been fired and utilise the knowledge of the head coach to identify players for high intensity positional play in the current window. And then by the start of the season, have someone in place in a head of scouting role to prepare for subsequent windows with high intensity positional play in a vertical axis being a large part of the guiding principle. And we'll also have Dominic Jordan, our first data scientist and his team also backing the performance analysts and scouts in the new season.
So what your saying is the Murtough over a year into the job going into what is one of the most important summers we have were it’s possible we may spend a 100 million quid, is utterly reliant on Ten Hags knowledge base for targets? And if they don’t pan out the scouting network we have is so bad it can’t be trusted? Again Is that is really bleak.
- Status