Top level recruitment, no more ‘dumb money’ and a world-class stadium – How Man Utd are trying to catch up with City off the field

Top level recruitment, no more ‘dumb money’ and a world-class stadium – How Man Utd are trying to catch up with City off the field

The Red Devils have lagged behind their local rivals in almost every aspect but Sir Jim Ratcliffe has a plan to make up the ground

 

It was during the final few weeks of David Moyes’ nightmare season in charge of Manchester United when he declared that his side needed to “aspire” to be on the same level as Manchester City. Moyes had a habit of misjudging the public mood while he was manager and this was yet another misstep, pouring salt into United fans’ wounds just after a crushing 3-0 defeat at home to City in March 2014.

 

It was the first season of the post Sir Alex Ferguson era and, while there were obvious concerns about City’s rise, fuelled by the Abu Dhabi takeover six years earlier, United still very much felt like they were the premier team in Manchester and the country. At the time they had 20 league titles to City’s three. They did not need to aspire to be like City, they just needed to be like the team they were 12 months previously under Ferguson, when they had romped to the title with four games to spare.

 

But with the benefit of hindsight, Moyes looks like he was on to something, and perhaps should not have been ridiculed as he was speaking the truth. Back then City were only outclassing United on the pitch, but they are now streets ahead of their local rivals as a football team and as an institution.

 

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As a dishevelled and depleted United prepare to visit City on Sunday, there can be no question that they continue to aspire to be more like their neighbours. But now that Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his INEOS team have taken control of United’s football operation, there is genuine belief that they can overhaul their rivals in the next few years by taking the right steps off the pitch…

 

Leaders in trophies and finance

Almost a decade on from Moyes’ blunt declaration, the title count reads United 20, City 9. The Cityzens have also won their first Champions League and are the favourites to win Europe’s holy grail again this season. United, meanwhile, were booted out of the group stage and face an uphill battle to get into next year’s competition.

 

City are also way ahead of United in financial terms, finishing above them in the Deloitte Money League, which ranks European clubs according to revenues. And last week new minority shareholder Ratcliffe channeled Moyes when he told a room of journalists at INEOS’ headquarters that the Red Devils could learn a lot of things from their hated rivals.

 

“If you look at a club like Manchester City, you see they’ve got a very sensible structure,” he said. “They’ve got a really driven competitive environment but there’s a bit of warmth to it. There are two clubs not very far from us who have been successful and have got some of those things right, and United don’t.”

 

Ratcliffe mentioned City eight times during an hour-long conversation with the assembled media and at one point was picked up on it. “Well, they are one of the best teams on the planet,” was his response.

 

“We have a lot to learn from our noisy neighbour and the other neighbour [Liverpool]. They are the enemy at the end of the day. There is nothing I would like better than to knock both of them off their perch.”

 

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Head-hunting Berrada

In looking across town in search of inspiration to make United a force to be reckoned with, Ratcliffe is doing exactly what City did when they were taken over by the Abu Dhabi United group in 2008, spearheaded by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. According to The Independent, Brian Marwood, the managing director of City Football Group, used to deliberately drive past Old Trafford on his way to work to remind himself “what excellence looked like”.

 

Chelsea also looked to United when they were taken over by Roman Abramovich in 2003, instantly poaching the Red Devils’ chief executive Peter Kenyon. Ratcliffe did not take long to make a similar move and, less than a month after agreeing to purchase his 27.7 percent stake in the club, he convinced Omar Berrada to leave City and become United’s new CEO.

 

Berrada first joined City in 2011 as head of international business development and climbed his way up the ladder all the way to becoming chief football operations officer for CFG. He was responsible for contracts for new players and his first major deal was signing Aymeric Laporte in 2018. Berrada has since been credited with helping City sign Erling Haaland and Jack Grealish.

 

 

The ‘dumb money’ no more

Berrada also ensured that City, with a few exceptions, became renowned for doing expert business in the transfer market, rarely overpaying for players. In his own words, he helped the club “take the emotion out of decisions”.

 

His level-headedness must have appealed to Ratcliffe, who has long criticised United’s transfers, even before he declared his interest in buying a stake in the club. He called United’s recruitment “shockingly poor” in a 2019 interview with The Times and said the £50m ($63m) signing of Fred in 2018 illustrated that the club were “the dumb money” before adding: “[Ineos] never wants to be the dumb money in town, never, never.”

 

And after INEOS officially completed their deal, he told the BBC that making expensive marquee signings would not be on the agenda. “We need to walk to the right solutions not run to the wrong solutions,” he said. “Spending money lavishly in the summer is not the solution, much more complicated than that.”

 

Ed Woodward Man Utd

Woodward and specialising in failure

And key to getting the right players for the right price is hiring a top sporting director, something United have never had. For so many years, Ferguson was effectively the sporting director, choosing the players he wanted himself – and often doing the negotiating himself, too.

 

The Scot never wanted anyone to tell him who to sign and would never have countenanced United hiring a sporting director. And when Ferguson eventually retired in 2013, many at the club thought that, as the previous model had worked so well, there was little point breaking something that didn’t need fixing.

 

Chief executive Ed Woodward, from a background in accounting and banking, took on lots of responsibility for transfer dealings and frequently looked out of his depth. Woodward became such a derided figure that in 2019 a group of fans pitched in to pay for a plane to fly over Turf Moor during United’s match with Burnley bearing the message: ‘Ed Woodward – Specialist in Failure’

 

The first summer after Ferguson’s departure underlined the need for proper expertise in the transfer market as United signed just one player for new manager Moyes, buying his old Everton midfielder Marouane Fellaini on transfer deadline day for £4m ($5m) more than if they had signed him a month earlier. Their bungling attempt to sign Ander Herrera from Athletic Club on the same day was also an embarrassing indictment of their transfer dealings.

 

And yet, it was not until 2021 that United finally appointed a sporting director. Despite a thorough recruitment drive that took the best part of two years, they made an internal appointment, promoting John Murtough, who had never held a similar position before.

 

Ratcliffe and INEOS’ director of sport Sir Dave Brailsford had prioritised poaching a top director of football even before getting the deal for the club over the line and, like they did with Berrada, acted swiftly to hire the highly respected Dan Ashworth from Newcastle. Ashworth cut his teeth as director of football with West Bromwich Albion and impressed so much that he got hired by England, playing a big role in the rise of the men’s and women’s teams in recent years.

 

He also had great success with Brighton & Hove Albion, who are the among the brightest clubs when it comes to player recruitment. Newcastle head-hunted Ashworth from Brighton shortly after the takeover by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in 2021, and he took responsibility for the team’s sporting strategy and recruitment at all age levels. Newcastle have had generous backing but they have also made sensible moves in the transfer market, helping them qualify for the Champions League last year only 18 months after the takeover.

 

Ratcliffe has hailed Ashworth as “a 10/10 sporting director — one of the best around” but he may not be able to begin his role until 2026 as Newcastle have placed him on gardening leave, asking for £20m ($25m) in compensation from United. The fact that United are prepared to wait so long to get their man, and that he has such a high price tag – larger than many Premier League players – shows how highly Ratcliffe and Brailsford value the role of recruitment, which their predecessors seemed unfussed about.

 

“Recruitment in the modern game is critical,” Ratcliffe explained last week. “Manchester United have clearly spent a lot of money but they haven’t done as well as some other clubs. So when I was talking about being best in class in all aspects of football, recruitment is clearly top of the list.”

 

Ratcliffe is also keen to revamp Old Trafford or even build a brand new stadium on the same site. City have made huge strides with their infrastructure since their 2008 takeover, above all building one of the finest training centres in world football, the £200m ($253m) City Football Academy. The club have paid that particular expense off by developing and selling youngsters in addition to promoting stars like Phil Foden, Rico Lewis and Oscar Bobb to the first team.

 

The club regenerated the deprived area of eastern Manchester with the facility, which houses every section of the club and is conveniently located across the road from the Etihad Stadium. City inherited the stadium, which was used for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and are set to expand it for a second time increasing capacity to around 60,000.

 

“Manchester United needs a stadium befitting one of the biggest clubs in the world and, at the moment, it’s not there. Old Trafford maybe was 20 years ago but it’s certainly not today,” Ratcliffe said. “There’s a strong case for using a stadium to regenerate that area, like with the Olympics, as Sebastian Coe did with that part of east London quite successfully. City have done it and they’ve done quite a good job.”

 

Ratcliffe, controversially, wants the British government to help pay for a new stadium for United which has been described as a ‘Wembley of the North’. That would prove unpopular with the wider British public, most of whom do not support United. And the club, now owned by two sets of billionaires in the Glazers and Ratcliffe, who was recently the richest man in Britain, can easily afford to fund it themselves.

 

But he is right that the club needs a new stadium as the Glazers have neglected Old Trafford, allowing it to fall into a state of disrepair. Meanwhile, their rivals in England and Europe have built world-leading stadia and propelled their commercial revenue in the process. If United do not keep up with their contemporaries on a commercial level, they will continue to fall behind them on the pitch.

 

 

More Mainoos & more Garnachos

Another way to catch up with City is through the academy. United have led the way in terms of youth development for much of their history, with the first great post-war team constructed by Sir Matt Busby being built on homegrown youngsters, nicknamed the Busby Babes. United have had at least one academy player in every matchday squad since 1937 and the likes of Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo are flying the flag for the academy in Erik ten Hag’s current squad.

 

But City have used their financial muscle to build their own formidable academy, often rivalling United for young talents. United are also seeking to emulate their rivals’ success at youth level by attempting to hire Jason Wilcox, Southampton’s current sporting director, who was City’s academy director between 2017 and 2023, a spell during which Foden, Bobb and Lewis emerged.

 

As with infrastructure, United will have to wait years to see the results of their new recruits. Ratcliffe has suggested it could take three years before the club wins another Premier League title, but given the current gap between the two Manchester teams, that might be an optimistic estimate.

 

But the good news is that, unlike in recent years, there is a sense that United are finally going back in the right direction, building for the future rather than living off the past. The glory days will not return in a flash, but at least they are back on the horizon, with a roadmap to take them there rather than a sense of entitlement.