Spying firms, analysis software and a foundation of ânoodle dealsâ â inside Manchester Unitedâs recruitment
By Daniel Taylor 5h ago
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Mike Ashley, the owner of Newcastle United, had his hand outstretched and a grin on his face. Manchester United were in town and Ed Woodward, the clubâs executive vice-chairman, had just appeared in the boardroom of St Jamesâ Park. Ashley went over to greet him and his opening line was probably an accurate reflection of the state of the two clubs.
âThe most unpopular man in football meets the second most unpopular man in football,â he said.
At least Woodward could see the funny side. Ashley then introduced him to one of his associates, who turned out to be a Manchester United supporter and wanted to know why the club kept announcing âall these noodle dealsâ rather than player signings. Woodwardâs explanation was that the two could go hand-in-hand and, without the ânoodle dealsâ, it would be a lot harder to make the signings. Which sounded fair enough â and a line, almost certainly, he has had to trot out many times in his encounters with supporters.
The criticism has been near-unremitting lately, so perhaps it is just as well that Woodward, according to the people closest to him, understands that someone in his position cannot be too thin-skinned and has to expect scrutiny. Red News, Unitedâs longest-running fanzine, lampooned him as Mr Bean (or Mr Bean Counter, to be accurate) on its front cover on the first weekend of the season. Inside, there was page after page devoted to his alleged failures, including a cartoon â Avram Glazer and his Puppet â in which Unitedâs highest-ranked executive was superimposed as a ventriloquistâs dummy on the ownerâs knee. Woodwardâs speech bubble read: âItâs amazing you pay me ÂŁ4m a year, Mr Glazer.â
A pattern has been established.
When the results are poor and the crowd restless, as they have been far too often during the post-Alex Ferguson years, the fans turn on Woodward or the owners, the Glazer family, as their default setting. When the team is doing well, which hasnât happened nearly enough, the people at the top of the club still tend to be viewed through hard, suspicious eyes. It is never long before #woodwardout is trending on Twitter or Gary Neville, increasingly his tormentor-in-chief, is cranking up the pressure in his television role, having stated recently that it was time for somebody else to take control of Unitedâs recruitment.
All of which should probably be expected at a club of Manchester Unitedâs size if you take into account the number of transfer windows that can be described, at best, as challenging during the years of decline, and the general suspicion that the team is actually regressing, rather than closing the gap.
We are talking, after all, about a team that has finished, on average, 21.5 points behind the champions over the last six seasons. United have spent almost ÂŁ900 million in that time and succeeded only in making themselves an irrelevance in the title race. The rest of English football is rubbernecking in their direction and, as long as that is the case, the people in charge at Old Trafford can hardly be surprised if there are questions about their level of expertise to put it right.
The only real mitigation is that there is an acceptance inside the clubâs boardroom in London (United being run these days from Mayfair as well as Manchester) that their player recruitment has not been good enough. They arenât fools and, if nothing else, they do recognise the team needs at least half a dozen new players to re-establish themselves as realistic title challengers. They are also acutely aware their own performance has to improve, starting in January when they hope to make four signings, the priority being a striker. They know, in short, that they have to do better.
That might sound like a case of stating the bleeding obvious and, to go back to the earlier point, it isnât going to soothe the mood of their supporters at a time when the 20-time champions are two points above the relegation places and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, a man once known as the baby-faced assassin, appears to have aged a year for every month he has been their manager.
Yet it is not entirely fair to say United have been guilty of complacency, along with all their more obvious shortcomings, when it comes to the business of finding the right players and putting together the resources to fix â or at least have a go at fixing â what has gone wrong.
That process can involve up to nine months of background work on certain players and, in terms of sheer numbers, sources have told The Athletic that Unitedâs scouts and analysts watched approximately 13,800 games (academy fixtures included) in the last year of records. Thatâs an average of 38 per day, with scouts in more than 30 countries putting together 36,000 reports for the clubâs database.
Perhaps the most eye-catching detail â never reported until now â is that United have also begun to involve what have been described as âspying firmsâ to carry out background checks on potential signings.
Itâs a remarkable story: the famous Manchester United employing secret operatives to investigate the players they are trying to sign. Though it becomes easier to understand, perhaps, when you hear what happened with Marcos Rojo in 2014. Rojo cost ÂŁ16 million from Sporting Lisbon, signing a five-year contract, yet United had absolutely no idea the player was being investigated by police for an alleged bottle attack on one of his neighbours, as well as a second man, in Argentina.
Rojo was facing the possibility of a criminal trial and, if convicted, time in prison, but United knew nothing about it until a member of staff typed his name into Google. After he had signed. To their relief, Rojo settled out of court and the case was dropped.
Due diligence is key now. The more astute clubs want as much background information as possible and, in Unitedâs case, that is particularly important bearing in mind the staggering amounts of money they have squandered on Angel Di Maria, Radamel Falcao and Alexis Sanchez, among others.
After so many years of relying on old-fashioned techniques, one of the bigger challenges was moving away from a culture in which Ferguson ruled the roost, with the managerâs brother, Martin, operating as the clubâs chief European scout and, Fergie being Fergie, the benefits that come from having the best contacts book in football.
Another 45 scouts have been added to the staff in the six years since Fergusonâs retirement and the club also place far greater emphasis now on the kind of computer data that can provide more detail than the human eye. That heavily influenced their thinking, for example, when Jerome Boateng was under consideration.
Boateng would have cost ÂŁ13.1 million from Bayern Munich and, on the face of it, that was an attractive deal for a defender who had won seven Bundesliga titles, accumulated 70-odd Germany caps and been part of their 2014 World Cup win.
Harry Maguire, in contrast, ended up costing United more than six times that amount. Yet United had bought players on the cheap from Bayern before â Owen Hargreaves and Bastian Schweinsteiger â and regretted it.
They suspected there might be a catch and their in-depth analysis, using bespoke software, showed them what Bayern presumably hoped would go unnoticed: that Boateng tended to fade after 70 minutes of games, not running as far, or as fast, not making as many challenges or interceptions and becoming increasingly vulnerable to quick attackers.
United already knew Boateng had recurring injury issues and decided they already had enough centre-halves who fell into that particular category. All of which seems considerably more sensible than the decision to sign Schweinsteiger on Louis van Gaalâs watch in 2015, when there was the same underlying suspicion then, too, that Bayern would never let such a player leave unless they thought he was finished at the highest level.
Schweinsteiger signed for ÂŁ14.4 million and had two largely forgettable years at Old Trafford. He made eight 90-minute appearances in the Premier League and, troubled by a variety of injuries, had a habit of flying back to Germany for treatment during the week, reappearing at weekends to watch games and then jetting off again. One senior player said he felt like Schweinsteiger was âtaking the piss, absolutely taking the piss⌠we hardly ever saw him.â
Van Gaal had arrived at a time when United were still trying to modernise their recruitment structure. Schweinsteiger, as such, was signed purely on the managerâs say-so. Privately, United say there is no way they would make the same mistake again.
It certainly hasnât been easy to understand a lot of Unitedâs decision-making in the transfer market although, to give them their due, they do appear to have moved away from the days when they might have been accused of signing players as vanity projects.
Neymar is a prime example, having made it clear over the summer he was willing to sever his ties with Paris Saint-Germain.
There was a time, after all, when the Brazilian was considered the kind of player who might have been an ideal wearer of Unitedâs colours: a genuine, category-A superstar in an era when Woodwardâs long-held belief was that, at any one time, the club should have at least one Ballon dâOr contender in their squad.
At Old Trafford, however, they tell a joke that offers an insight into the clubâs thinking. âIf you have one Brazilian, you have one Brazilian,â it goes. âIf you have two Brazilians, you have two Brazilians. And if you have three, you have a samba party.â
In Neymarâs case, United think it would be him pouring the caipirinhas.
His father, Neymar Sr, who doubles as his agent, is regarded within Old Trafford as âmoney-obsessedâ and Unitedâs information is that Neymar is even more fixated on winning the Ballon dâOr than Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo are. That itself is not a bad thing, of course. Except there is one obvious problem: Neymar does not dedicate himself in the way of Messi or Ronaldo, both five-time winners of the award. Nor does the Brazilian seem to grasp what needs to change to make his dream a reality. For the decision-makers at United, it wasnât a particularly difficult choice.
Joao Felixâs availability from Benfica was discussed many times, as would be expected of a player who ended up moving to Atletico Madrid this summer for ÂŁ113 million. United had concerns about whether the 19-year-old had the physicality to cope with the Premier League and the possibility that he would not sustain his early promise. âMichael Ricketts was a world-beater for one season,â to quote one well-placed source. âThe secret is to find someone like Mohamed Salah, who plays brilliantly one season, then the following year, and the year after that.â
Plus, United still hoped at the time that Sanchez might come good.
Instead, Sanchez never came close to justifying that mind-boggling salary of ÂŁ391,000 a week before bonuses. He is now on loan at Inter Milan, injured again, and the tragicomedy is that United are still paying him ÂŁ175,000 a week. Not that it is easy to detect any genuine embarrassment inside Old Trafford. Unitedâs argument is that the footballer they signed from Arsenal in early 2018 could reasonably have been described a year earlier as the Premier Leagueâs outstanding player.
âNobody called us idiots at the time,â is one line. Sanchez was apparently âunbelievableâ in training.
Behind the scenes at United, they like to talk about Solskjaer nurturing a âhumble and arrogantâ environment. Off the pitch, he tells his players to be humble â wear a suit on the team bus, fasten your top button, sign autographs, smile for the fans. On the pitch, that is where Solskjaer wants his players to be arrogant, to understand the importance of wearing that red shirt and to back themselves, to want the ball, in any tight spot.
Unfortunately for Solskjaer, it is not particularly easy to be convinced when this is Unitedâs worst start to a season since 1989 and a time of Madchester, the Hacienda, Michael Knightonâs keepie-ups and a J-stander by the name of Pete Molyneux holding up a king-size bedsheet on which he had written in black paint: â3 Years of excuses and weâre still crap â ta-ra Fergie.â Which might sound ridiculous now but, at the time, attracted cheers and follow-up chants for Bryan Robson to take over.
Is Solskjaer in danger of losing his job? United say that is absolutely not the case. All the same, it is probably better to keep an open mind when, going back to last season, they have taken 17 points from their last 17 games (Jose Mourinho was sacked after winning 26 points over the same number of fixtures). There is also the possibility of another ordeal to come when Liverpool, the club United always measure themselves against, visit on Sunday, enjoying the view from the top of the league.
Even more perplexing is Unitedâs continuing inability to appoint a technical director, 14 months after the club first let it be known this was among their priorities.
One of the reasons for the delay, according to information passed to The Athletic , is that Solskjaer and his assistant, Mike Phelan, tend to perform parts of this role anyway, bearing in mind it involves creating a pathway between the academy and first team, planning ahead with a three-year cycle and looking after the continuity of the club.
That, however, can feel like a bit of a cop-out when, letâs face it, Solskjaer and Phelan have enough on their plates already.
Indeed, one source at Old Trafford questions whether the original leak, from August 2018, might have been a deliberate piece of misinformation to deflect the headlines after the final transfer window of the Mourinho era ended unsatisfactorily.
All that can really be said for certain is United still insist their intention is to appoint someone and, whenever that might be, they hope that person will not be seen as some kind of âwhite knightâ who is under immediate pressure to bring in three or four elite players. In reality, Unitedâs senior executives will argue that, no matter what anyone else might say, they have finally got the right system in place â and it wonât change dramatically, no matter who is appointed.
That system takes the form of a transfer committee involving various executives, money-men and senior officials rather than leaving it to the manager, the old-fashioned way, and risking any more Schweinsteiger-style mistakes.
The clubâs thinking is that Solskjaer â or any modern-day manager â is too busy to fly to, say, Argentina or Brazil to watch a player. But there is still an emphasis on Solskjaer âbook-endingâ everything, namely being involved at the beginning and end of the process. Nobody will be bought without his approval and too much is made sometimes of this theory that United value a playerâs marketability almost as much as his ability with a ball at his feet.
Each player at Old Trafford is obliged, under the terms of his contract, to do six hours a week of promotional work for the club and their sponsors. In reality, Unitedâs records show that the players do, on average, 48 minutes a week.
Aaron Wan-Bissakaâs ÂŁ45 million transfer from Crystal Palace is a typical case.
That process began with Solskjaer informing the club they needed a new right-back and going into specific details about the qualities he wanted, namely somebody who had sound defensive attributes, high energy and an ability to attack with pace as well as having the speed to guard against counter-attacks.
To begin with, Unitedâs analysts brought up 50 players from their database. That number was subsequently whittled down to a longlist comprising 15 options, and the clubâs senior scouts were then dispatched to carry out detailed analysis on each player, putting together information packs and updating Solskjaer via regular feedback sessions. Eventually, the club had a shortlist of three. That was the time Matt Judge, the head of corporate development, started the negotiations with the relevant clubs (Unitedâs logic being that it is better to have back-up options in case the first-choice player is unobtainable).
Judge, like Woodward, has a background in investment banking. He stands over 6ft tall and has the physique of a man who knows what it is like to be locked in a rugby scrum. You will struggle to find a photograph of him though. He has a remarkably low profile, especially when it is he, not Woodward, who acts as Unitedâs chief negotiator to get these kind of deals over the line.
He and Woodward accept they will usually have to pay what they call a âManchester United premiumâ â Maguire, at ÂŁ80 million, being the case in point. That can make the negotiations extremely complicated at a time when it has never been harder, even for experienced football administrators, to know what is realistic as a player valuation, and what is not.
They tell the story at Old Trafford of the clubâs pursuit of Michael Carrick from Tottenham Hotspur in 2006 and opening those negotiations with a ÂŁ12 million offer. Spurs wanted ÂŁ20 million and it took several months of haggling before a compromise was reached at ÂŁ14 million, potentially rising to ÂŁ18.6 million.
Compare that, however, with the discussions between Chelsea and Real Madrid for Eden Hazard over the summer. Chelseaâs valuation was ÂŁ134 million, according to Unitedâs information, and Real Madrid started with a ÂŁ53.5 million offer. Hazard eventually left for an initial ÂŁ88 million. âWith Carrick, the difference was ÂŁ8 million,â one source at Old Trafford says. âNowadays, it might be 90 million euros. Thatâs enough to build a new stand or a Championship club. Two Championship clubs, in fact.â
Ultimately, though, the only detail that really matters for a club with Unitedâs ambitions is the one telling us Solskjaerâs team are currently 12th in the league, with nine points from eight games.
There was a time when United had an advert for MUTV in the match-day programme for a meeting with Liverpool showing a skip filled with empty tins of silver polish outside the stadium. That can feel a long time ago. Mourinho, never one for self-awareness, has apparently been putting it around that Solskjaer might be out of his comfort zone and, as if all this is not galling enough, Unitedâs supporters are having to acquaint themselves with a time when it is Manchester City and, increasingly, Liverpool having all the fun.
The indignities are stacking up and there is plenty of work to be done if Woodward is to expect a different welcome the next time he and Ashley cross paths.