United dignitaries watch on at Wembley
United dignitaries watch on at Wembley
Transfers dominate pub talk and it was in a pub where Richard Arnold, the former Manchester United chief executive, talked to disgruntled supporters about transfers.
Arnold admitted United had "spent a billion pounds on players... What’s happened is we have f*****g burned through cash, through £1billion" on duds. That was in 2022. Arnold then signed off on nearly half-a-billion to fund a few more duds.
Little wonder Arnold jumped before he was pushed by Ineos. Sir Jim Ratcliffe dismissively dubbed Arnold a "rugby man, he didn't understand football" in his chats with The Times and The Telegraph the other week. The same accusation was often levelled at Ed Woodward, whose enthusiasm for rugby occasionally irked Jose Mourinho.
And yet Ratcliffe has a cycling team principal overseeing performance at the most scrutinised football club on the planet.
It was only last year that Sir Dave Brailsford admitted to the former England cricket captain Nasser Hussain, "I'm no expert in football, I never will be." That would certainly legislate for United's current joint-worst position since they were relegated in 1974.
Amid more redundancies at United that will break the 400 mark within a year, it seems dubious to retain a football board member responsible for implementing sleep and meal windows, a hydration plan, advocating exposure to natural light and recommending compression garments.
"Every measure has been taken to give the players the best platform to adjust quickly to maximise performance through the tour," a staff member cheerfully said in July. The tour ended with a 3-0 defeat to Liverpool.
That could easily be dismissed. Twelve Premier League defeats before March and a -3 goal difference cannot be.
Ratcliffe used the word 'cock-up' four times in the last of his "PR exercises" with The Sunday Times. He admitted United had cocked up with the decisions to retain Erik ten Hag and the hiring of Dan Ashworth that had cost the club £14.5million in compensation.
The knighted Brailsford has not fallen on his sword
It was reputedly Brailsford who interrupted Ten Hag's holiday in Ibiza in June to inform him that the marriage of inconvenience would be prolonged. During Ratcliffe's recent PR offensive, he confirmed much of what had been written, that the power vacuum at United had given Ten Hag a stay of execution.
"Omar (Berrada), Jason (Wilcox), myself, Dave, we hadn't been together very long. It was just a matter of weeks," Ratcliffe sighed to Gary Neville. Brailsford had been attending United matches since Boxing Day. Wilcox first pulled on a United suit on April 21. It was months.
Brailsford will have recommended Ashworth. He was a guest speaker at Newcastle's pre-season camp in Lisbon in 2022. The Newcastle website refers to Brailsford as "a long-time friend and associate of the Magpies' sporting director, Dan Ashworth".
Ashworth has gone but Brailsford is still at United
"I've known Sir Dave for a number of years," Ashworth said at the time, "working across various different sports and he is without doubt the best in world sport at creating high-performance culture and turning that into winning.
"There were some brilliant messages for us all and it was great to get him in at this point of pre-season."
Ashworth and Brailsford watched United train from the bleachers at UCLA. They increased their daily steps in the San Diego sunshine by doing laps of the Snapdragon Stadium pitch before United's pre-season friendly with Real Betis in July.
In our one briefing with Ashworth, he sported a similar smart ring to the one Gareth Southgate, another of Brailsford's acolytes, wore as England manager.
Brailsford and Ashworth at Old Trafford in August
Brailsford was billed as a "genius" by Ashworth when I spoke to him in the Old Trafford boardroom on September 1. Ashworth enthused about the "rich conversations" that they had during the ten-day pre-season tour of the United States.
Ratcliffe blamed chemistry behind Ashworth's defenestration. Ashworth, who had a track record of making British managerial appointments, endorsed Southgate to replace Ten Hag. A separate source said he remained an advocate of Eddie Howe.
Forget Southgate's laudable tenure as England coach. He has embraced the world of LinkedIn and did The Richard Dimbleby Lecture last week as it is "a step away from football" when he is only known through football. Brailsford cocked up.
Southgate was never the right one for United
The former Red Issue editor, JP O'Neill, published a John Magnier and JP McManus-style 99 questions for Ratcliffe last week and Brailsford cropped up in a few. The last reads, "Is Brailsford a liar or incompetent?"
In Ratcliffe's interviews with three broadsheet newspapers two weeks ago, there was not a single mention of Brailsford in any copy. Matt Lawton, who conducted the Monday interview on behalf of The Times, remarked two years ago that, "I’d also question the wisdom of [Ineos] involving Dave Brailsford."
In 2016, Lawton, then of the Daily Mail, wrote: "Sportsmail can reveal that Sir Dave Brailsford offered this newspaper an incentive in a desperate bid to stop the publication of a story about a mystery package delivered to Sir Bradley Wiggins."
Lawton's former colleague at The Times, Matt Dickinson, has been ubiquitous at United matches home and away this season. The former chief sports writer is chronicling United's intended resurgence under Ineos for a future book.
Dickinson (sat in front of Bryan Robson) converses with the former Kent and England cricketer Ed Smith during United-Arsenal
Brailsford has been Ineos's sporting director since December 2021. Without Brailsford at the coalface, Ineos-owned Nice are currently fourth in Ligue 1.
“The best season that Nice has had is this one where we’ve not been allowed to get involved because of multi-club ownership rules,” Ratcliffe chuckled to The Sunday Times. “They’ve been so much better without our interference! Maybe there’s a lesson there as well, you know."
United fans must wish they could dismiss that as pub talk.