Hey mate, I've seen your post about the club structure, and I got a question.
Do you think that the youth recruitment discuss the types of players they want to recruit with the first team manager? Because the goal is ultimately provide players for the first team. Then surely it make sense to buy players that also fit the first team manager style of play
We've always recruited players at youth level for a proactive/attacking brand of football imo. And that is a continuation of the proactive/attacking mindsets of Busby and Fergie, who gave the club a strong identity when it came to the implementation of a attacking approach to playing the game. And when Fergie retired, we lost the key figure who brought everything together and aligned/streamlined the approach throughout the football side of the club.
So we realised that we had to modernise the club post Fergie, and hence developed the structure on the football side of the club via John Murtough, where departments like recruitment went from one full time scout to around 60 full time scouts. But the board still allowed the first team managers to operate independently from the newly formed football structure, which is a huge blunder. Sadly for us we never hired one manager post Fergie who saw himself as a head coach and not a manager. Van Gaal even wrote in his book about wanting to be the 'all powerful manager' in England who controlled everything on the football side of the club. So since Fergie retired, the football side of the club has not been aligned towards a common goal and we needed a sporting director.
John Murtough was asked the question about playing the 'United way' (attacking football) and his response (below) does point to him wanting to create a identity from the first team down. He's definitely selected the correct head coach as far as identity/play style goes to do that imo. And the Glazers need to back John Murtough, because if they back John Murtough, they'll by default back the head coach.
On playing football the Manchester United way:
John Murtough: “Another element is style of play, an identity to what Manchester United is."
“We talk to players and we talk to our coaching staff about playing fast, fluid attacking football, so when we link across all the age groups, there's a thread that runs through the football club.”
https://www.manutd.com/en/amp/news/detail/john-murtough-praises-united-fans-impact