Also influential is the head of recruitment, Steve Brown, and director of data science, Dominic Jordan. In the background are a number of others – including the player negotiations manager Sam Barnett, who chiefly handles the deals for younger players and is also involved in the “transaction team” handling contracts and agents’ fees. Now he too is understood to have been drawn into the recruitment web, acting as another collator of information and discussing players who may arrive or depart. Before that O’Boyle, a sports scientist, had worked as a fitness coach at Liverpool. In recent months the club have appointed a deputy director of football, Andy O’Boyle, who arrived from the Premier League where he was head of elite performance. Ten Hag’s agent Kees Vos has a powerful client list too, and his agency has a vast array of clients, including Martinez PSV Eindhoven’s Cody Gakpo and Chelsea’s Hakim Ziyech. Their new manager Ten Hag favoured a deal for his former Ajax player Lisandro Martinez. Murtough and Fletcher are understood to have championed a move for Pau Torres, the Villarreal and Spain centre-back, this summer. There is Darren Fletcher, the former United midfielder, who is new to the job of technical director and last season often sat among the coaching staff alongside Ralf Rangnick. He previously worked primarily in academy recruitment. John Murtough is also the public face of the club’s recruitment, a de facto sporting director but also a man who has to listen to many different views. A solicitor, Tom Keane previously worked as part of the New Era agency, co-owned by the former United great Rio Ferdinand, a trenchant critic of the club in recent years. In has come Tom Keane, the brother of England international Michael, at Everton, and Will, of Wigan Athletic - both of them former United academy boys. In their place the recruitment department has changed again.
Also departed is Matt Judge, the club’s chief negotiator who would finalise the details in deals once his boss had mapped out the big numbers. Arnold was keener to delegate football business but appears still to have significant involvement. In the end the conversation fizzled out and Nunez went to Anfield.Īrnold has replaced Ed Woodward, the all-action former CEO who wanted to be involved in every deal and every communication with the Glazers, the owners in Florida. They included Richard Arnold, the new chief executive and others close to Ten Hag. Yet was this signing – a vast investment in an established world star - really where United’s recruitment staff expected to be 13 days from the transfer window closing?Įarlier this year when United were enquiring about the Uruguayan striker Darwin Nunez, who eventually became Liverpool’s marquee summer signing, the player’s representatives were surprised by the range of different people who called from United. The Casemiro deal fell out of the sky for a grateful Real. Last week in Madrid all the pressure was on Marco Asensio, in the last year of his contract, to leave for a fee or sign a new deal. Real’s finances dictate that they have to sell a player every summer. It must have felt like Christmas at Real Madrid who have already invested heavily in Casemiro’s successors, Aurélien Tchouaméni, 22, and Eduardo Camavinga, 19. One of the greatest defensive midfielders in the game but with a price to match. They alighted on paying up to €70 million (£60m) for Real Madrid’s Brazilian who turned 30 in February. From De Jong to Rabiot to Casemiro, the club switched horses.
The team was a shambles and the supporters enraged, with a potentially terrible evening looming at Old Trafford the following Monday against Liverpool.
The new manager Erik ten Hag questioned his players’ “hunger” and then cancelled their day off for a punishment running session.Īs ever in United’s recent history, the club needed to do something and this week more than any other. United were bottom of the Premier League for the first time in 30 years. The performance in the 4-0 defeat to Brentford was being described as the worst in the club’s history since relegation in 1974. The club had been stuck in a futile summer-long chase for Frenkie de Jong had a fee agreed with Juventus for Adrien Rabiot but no agreement on personal terms and the walls were closing in. The recruitment hierarchy at Manchester United is a vast organisation, often confusing to outsiders, and by Sunday morning none at the club were in any doubt that they had to sign some new players - and the sooner, the better. In the poker game of transfer deals outsiders are struggling to ascertain who at Old Trafford has the authority to push a proposal through The inside story of how Manchester United's transfer window descended into chaos
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