This is one of the issues I find quite odd. Murtough was appointed as football director 10 March 2021, over 16 months ago. Solskjaer was sacked 21 Nov 2021. Richard Arnold began his job 1 February 2022. The departure of two of the most senior people on the scouting/recruitment side was reported 20 April 2022. ETH was announced the following day, 21 April 2022. Rangnick's consultancy was formally announced as having been 'cancelled' 30 May 2022, but he had been telling anyone who would listen, both within the club and out, what needed to change for months. Tom Keane was brought on as a consultant 24 June 2022.
I dunno. Many of these things were done under the guise of modernising the recruitment side of things, independent of whoever the manager is at the time yet here we are again, yet another summer where we are allowing a manager to choose the targets/making him responsible for it, without the support of anything like a fit for purpose recruitment arm of the club. If that side of things was reasonably separate from the appointment of ETH/whoever the manager is and acts independently, then it does beg the question, why didn't they start earlier and why aren't they further along? Obviously it could be argued that the current scouting system was only dismantled towards the end of last season, but Gary Neville suggested, for whatever it's worth, that Jim Lawlor wasn't particularly integral anyway.
It seems a bit of a high wire act to me to "sack off" the recruitment side of things, ahead of one of the most important windows we'll have in years and basically allow the manager to pick players he'd managed or had extensive experience managing against in the same league. Particularly when he didn't even have that level of responsibility for that aspect of the job at Ajax. Is it any wonder that we've bought his former centre half, tried to sign his former striker and right winger, are trying to sign a midfielder he managed a few a years back and signed a midfielder he had training with Ajax last year and a left back who came from the league he'd been managing in. History is written by the victor and all that, but if quite a few of those players doesn't work out, it'll be seen as a rudderless shitshow, out of step with how other top clubs operate.