The John Murtough Era

[The Impossible Team]

Murtough's records so far as DOF:

Cons:
1) Sacked Ole too late
2) Appointed a gegenpressing coach for the laziest squad in PL which only capable of playing counter attacking football
3) It was obvious that the players can't play gegenpressing after 1 month but no reinforcement allowed. Threw our season away in Nov.
4) Appointed a coach who is more well know to be DOF/Consultant to assist to rebuild the club. But he was also sacked from the consultant roles 6 months in
5) Transfers dealing in and out seems no improvement at all (early days still?)

Pros:
1) Appointed ETH (much better coach than Ole/Rangnick/LVG/Moyes/Jose)
2) Revamp the scouting department (This department was a joke, can't even name a good striker in Jan and Rangnick can named 3, the scouts were rightly sacked)
3) Established new football structure in the club (The club trying to get the right people for the football side of things fitness, medical, data analysis, nutrition, Deputy DOF, TD and etc)
4) Addressing our toxic dressing room issues and leaks to curb players'' power

The jury is still out but at least he is doing something which Ed doesn't give a feck at all for the last 10 years. Hope we can see real results on the field soon and overall improvement on football side of things at the club.

This dude has not proven anything yet in the transfer market, has zero experience with recruitment/teambuilding and has been tasked with the rebuilding job at United, and the decisions made so far(Bruno extension, Henderson loan, dithering in the transfer market), look extremely objectionable.

Yet he seems to enjoy a lot of blind faith from fans, which I'm not really sure what's that based on. Gotta hand it to his PR team.

He's the lot lesser of two evils, Woodward being the devil in disguise. Even though Arnold is Dick-Ed's successor, I don't think he will get anywhere near as involved with footballing decisions, fingers crossed.
So to us mufchkins, he's Dorothy and Ed is the wicked witch of the west.

Don't know what kind of transfer list ETH has given the club apart from De Jong, but we can only hope this is part of a new and improved transfer strategy of deals being worked on quietly and professionally instead of Ed's, making it rain in front of a stripper in a club full of loads of other punters (who can only dream of throwing that kind of cash around ), approach.
Or maybe they have deals lined up but Ten Hag will give it a few training sessions with the squad before bringing in replacements. As he has said everyone will be given a chance.

I can understand people calling him a Glazer stooge having been here since 2013 through all the shit and has got to such an elevated position with no real prior experience.
Let's see....

 

[Thisistheone]

Also authorised the doubling of Brunos wage! Different faces, same shit.

Sadly it might well be. Not jumping on his back yet but he needs to prove things have actually changed. We’ve been let down badly the last 10 years. Faith from the fans is understandably low. Buying and selling.

Selling Henderson for £20m - a player with England cap, While City are selling some youth keeper for £15m. We need to be much better than this.

 

[RonaldoVII]

Sadly it might well be. Not jumping on his back yet but he needs to prove things have actually changed. We’ve been let down badly the last 10 years. Faith from the fans is understandably low. Buying and selling.

Selling Henderson for £20m - a player with England cap, While City are selling some youth keeper for £15m. We need to be much better than this.

Which clubs are queuing up to buy Henderson? We could say he's not for sale under £40m but what would that do?

Also apparently there's no buy option on the loan so it's not even accurate.

 

[Thisistheone]

Which clubs are queuing up to buy Henderson? We could say he's not for sale under £40m but what would that do?

Also apparently there's no buy option on the loan so it's not even accurate.

Thought there was a buy option? Either way, another loan while covering wages. Why dont Liverpool or City seem to have this issue. Why can’t we sell a good young keeper like Henderson for a decent fee when city are getting good money for an unknown and Liverpool have Proven they can sell well.

You can say wages are an issue but that’s our own fault. We could have sold Lingard last summer but didn
t and lost him on a free. There’s so many bad examples of how we buy and sell.

 

[Cassidy]

Thought there was a buy option? Either way, another loan while covering wages. Why dont Liverpool or City seem to have this issue. Why can’t we sell a good young keeper like Henderson for a decent fee when city are getting good money for an unknown and Liverpool have Proven they can sell well.

You can say wages are an issue but that’s our own fault. We could have sold Lingard last summer but didn
t and lost him on a free. There’s so many bad examples of how we buy and sell.

Pretty much this

 

[RonaldoVII]

Thought there was a buy option? Either way, another loan while covering wages. Why dont Liverpool or City seem to have this issue. Why can’t we sell a good young keeper like Henderson for a decent fee when city are getting good money for an unknown and Liverpool have Proven they can sell well.

You can say wages are an issue but that’s our own fault. We could have sold Lingard last summer but didn
t and lost him on a free. There’s so many bad examples of how we buy and sell.

You can't blame Murtough for that. We all know Woodward gave contracts out to protect assets but that means it's harder to shift them if they don't turn out good.

 

[Nytram Shakes]

For me Murtough has to show he was appointed for reasons more than just he was good at playing the political game inside Man United.
I still think that job 100% needed to go to an external candidate who could come in and put in practices of recruitment, philosophy, squad building and continuity that has actually shown it can work. While Murtough is learning on the job and has been at the club throughout the cluster F*** that has been the last decade or mainly pissing away insane amounts of cash on terrible decisions. If there was ever a club that desperately needed external help to rework the structure at the club it’s ours.

So far we have seen very little from Murtough that has shown he is it to the job, last summers buissness left us unbalanced, the Rangnick appointment turned out to be a disaster, and yes he’s hired Ten Hag the fan favourite for the job, but let’s not forget LVG was the overwhelming fan favourite to get the job when he was hired, Mourinho was overwhelming fan favourite to get the job when he was hired, Ole was the overwhelming fan favourite when he given the job on a permanent bases. Hiring the most popular manager for the job doesn’t make it right.

The only glimmer of hope has been that he let a lot of players go on a free and didn’t offer them massive contracts to stop the leaving for free. In the past that would have likely happened so that is a tiny ray of hope.

 

[Thisistheone]

You can't blame Murtough for that. We all know Woodward gave contracts out to protect assets but that means it's harder to shift them if they don't turn out good.

Fair enough re Lingard, But Henderson is a young english keeper with a cap. You could imagine Liverpool selling him for a big fee.

So is it a case of giving Murtough a few years until the wages are being dealt with properly and then we will be able to sell smartly?

In terms of buying, do things appear to have improved in that area? Early days of course.

 

[Skills]

He's the lot lesser of two evils, Woodward being the devil in disguise. Even though Arnold is Dick-Ed's successor, I don't think he will get anywhere near as involved with footballing decisions, fingers crossed.
So to us mufchkins, he's Dorothy and Ed is the wicked witch of the west.

Don't know what kind of transfer list ETH has given the club apart from De Jong, but we can only hope this is part of a new and improved transfer strategy of deals being worked on quietly and professionally instead of Ed's, making it rain in front of a stripper in a club full of loads of other punters (who can only dream of throwing that kind of cash around ), approach.
Or maybe they have deals lined up but Ten Hag will give it a few training sessions with the squad before bringing in replacements. As he has said everyone will be given a chance.

I can understand people calling him a Glazer stooge having been here since 2013 through all the shit and has got to such an elevated position with no real prior experience.
Let's see....

Hopefully none

 

[Revaulx]

Murtough's records so far as DOF:

Cons:
1) Sacked Ole too late
2) Appointed a gegenpressing coach for the laziest squad in PL which only capable of playing counter attacking football
3) It was obvious that the players can't play gegenpressing after 1 month but no reinforcement allowed. Threw our season away in Nov.
4) Appointed a coach who is more well know to be DOF/Consultant to assist to rebuild the club. But he was also sacked from the consultant roles 6 months in
5) Transfers dealing in and out seems no improvement at all (early days still?)

Pros:
1) Appointed ETH (much better coach than Ole/Rangnick/LVG/Moyes/Jose)
2) Revamp the scouting department (This department was a joke, can't even name a good striker in Jan and Rangnick can named 3, the scouts were rightly sacked)
3) Established new football structure in the club (The club trying to get the right people for the football side of things fitness, medical, data analysis, nutrition, Deputy DOF, TD and etc)
4) Addressing our toxic dressing room issues and leaks to curb players'' power

The jury is still out but at least he is doing something which Ed doesn't give a feck at all for the last 10 years. Hope we can see real results on the field soon and overall improvement on football side of things at the club.

An excellent summary! Don't forget that he still had the ball and chain that was Ed Woodward round his ankle for 1).

For me, the thing to look forward to is that if he turns out to be a dud, there's a greater chance that Arnold will take the hit and replace him than Woodward ever would.

 

[Adnan]

Murtough's records so far as DOF:

Cons:
1) Sacked Ole too late
2) Appointed a gegenpressing coach for the laziest squad in PL which only capable of playing counter attacking football
3) It was obvious that the players can't play gegenpressing after 1 month but no reinforcement allowed. Threw our season away in Nov.
4) Appointed a coach who is more well know to be DOF/Consultant to assist to rebuild the club. But he was also sacked from the consultant roles 6 months in
5) Transfers dealing in and out seems no improvement at all (early days still?)

Pros:
1) Appointed ETH (much better coach than Ole/Rangnick/LVG/Moyes/Jose)
2) Revamp the scouting department (This department was a joke, can't even name a good striker in Jan and Rangnick can named 3, the scouts were rightly sacked)
3) Established new football structure in the club (The club trying to get the right people for the football side of things fitness, medical, data analysis, nutrition, Deputy DOF, TD and etc)
4) Addressing our toxic dressing room issues and leaks to curb players'' power

The jury is still out but at least he is doing something which Ed doesn't give a feck at all for the last 10 years. Hope we can see real results on the field soon and overall improvement on football side of things at the club.

I haven't got the time to address all of this but will say that point #2 on the second paragraph about him revamping the scouting department is misleading. John Murtough was the head of development beneath the first team before he was made the head of football operations throughout the club. And the scouting revamp that he was involved in, didn't involve Marcel Bout and Jim Lawlor who were at the club due to LVG and Fergie.

Murtough's scouting team which was working under him whilst he was head of development, was a team led by David Harrison who is the head of youth recruitment at the club and reported directly to John Murtough. David Harrison was poached by John Murtough from Man City. So all he's doing at first team level now is what he did at youth recruitment level several years ago, where he supplemented the existing team with his own people.

 

[Giggsy13]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

You can definitely see that it’s working so far

 

[Tom Van Persie]

Murtough's records so far as DOF:

Cons:
1) Sacked Ole too late
2) Appointed a gegenpressing coach for the laziest squad in PL which only capable of playing counter attacking football
3) It was obvious that the players can't play gegenpressing after 1 month but no reinforcement allowed. Threw our season away in Nov.
4) Appointed a coach who is more well know to be DOF/Consultant to assist to rebuild the club. But he was also sacked from the consultant roles 6 months in
5) Transfers dealing in and out seems no improvement at all (early days still?)

Pros:
1) Appointed ETH (much better coach than Ole/Rangnick/LVG/Moyes/Jose)
2) Revamp the scouting department (This department was a joke, can't even name a good striker in Jan and Rangnick can named 3, the scouts were rightly sacked)
3) Established new football structure in the club (The club trying to get the right people for the football side of things fitness, medical, data analysis, nutrition, Deputy DOF, TD and etc)
4) Addressing our toxic dressing room issues and leaks to curb players'' power

The jury is still out but at least he is doing something which Ed doesn't give a feck at all for the last 10 years. Hope we can see real results on the field soon and overall improvement on football side of things at the club.

That wasn't his decision to make. It's said that Murtough only gained control once the transition from Woodward to Arnold happened. Rangnick was his appointment though as the club put him and Fletcher in charge with finding an interim and they conducted all the interviews.

 

[Tom Van Persie]

Yes, talking to Nunez: as in "hello, mate, how are you? Are you enjoying your holiday?" Meanwhile Liverpool got the deal done in almost no time... same old, same old from the club

We assessed Nunez and didn't think he was worth what Benfica were asking for. United under Woodward would've probably have paid up just so we could brag that we beat Liverpool to a signing like we did when we beat City to Fred and Sanchez.

 

[Keefy18]

We assessed Nunez and didn't think he was worth what Benfica were asking for. United under Woodward would've probably have paid up just so we could brag that we beat Liverpool to a signing like we did when we beat City to Fred and Sanchez.

Well lets just hope that Nunez turns into Sanchez hey!

 

[Andycoleno9]

Ragnick debacle went a lot under the radar regarding him. We had great plans with Ragnick and then in 6 months that changed.
I give him ETH though. That was smart decision

 

[VP89]

I dont understand the approach to the summer already
If we can all agree he's trying to get De Jong first, why? Why cant he park the appetite for De Jong to one side, until Barcelona are ready to come to the table, and work on his CB/fullback/forward targets? Right now our summer strategy is effectively dictated by when Barcelona's board meet up for a chinwag. That doesn't sound like an efficient use of the window to me

 

[Cassidy]

I dont understand the approach to the summer already
If we can all agree he's trying to get De Jong first, why? Why cant he park the appetite for De Jong to one side, until Barcelona are ready to come to the table, and work on his CB/fullback/forward targets? Right now our summer strategy is effectively dictated by when Barcelona's board meet up for a chinwag. That doesn't sound like an efficient use of the window to me

I would hope that we have been, lets see

 

[Cassidy]

We assessed Nunez and didn't think he was worth what Benfica were asking for. United under Woodward would've probably have paid up just so we could brag that we beat Liverpool to a signing like we did when we beat City to Fred and Sanchez.

United under Woodward wouldn't just have paid up. We didnt do that for Maguire till a year later and at the end of the window. Sancho the same etc.
Getting pipped to a deal by a rival though that is Woodward-esque. Chasing a player who doesn’t really want to come to United… etc etc

 

[VP89]

I would hope that we have been, lets see

I don't think we have, otherwise we would have seen movement.
For example Ducker is a Tier 1 journalist who reported Pau Torres and Timber are on our main shortlist of targets. Assuming its Timber or Pau Torres, there should be an idea of which one we are pursuing let alone getting into talks/advanced talks with the clubs. We still have no clue - 3 weeks ago Timber looked likely, now Timber looks like he's definitely staying.

If we consider alternative positions - fullbacks, we don't have any traction anywhere here. Perhaps its not a priority. But then moving on to our forwards/wingers, we had Nunez/Richarlson/Antony on this supposed list. Nunez is gone, fine that's a lot of money. Richarlson is already in 50m talks with Spurs and we have nothing outside of an outside interest in Antony at this stage.

 

[UnitedSofa]

Yes, talking to Nunez: as in "hello, mate, how are you? Are you enjoying your holiday?" Meanwhile Liverpool got the deal done in almost no time... same old, same old from the club

Almost no time. Yeah. Ok.

No one knows how long Liverpool were in the running for.

 

[Cassidy]

I don't think we have, otherwise we would have seen movement.
For example Ducker is a Tier 1 journalist who reported Pau Torres and Timber are on our main shortlist of targets. Assuming its Timber or Pau Torres, there should be an idea of which one we are pursuing let alone getting into talks/advanced talks with the clubs. We still have no clue - 3 weeks ago Timber looked likely, now Timber looks like he's definitely staying.

If we consider alternative positions - fullbacks, we don't have any traction anywhere here. Perhaps its not a priority. But then moving on to our forwards/wingers, we had Nunez/Richarlson/Antony on this supposed list. Nunez is gone, fine that's a lot of money. Richarlson is already in 50m talks with Spurs and we have nothing outside of an outside interest in Antony at this stage.

Pretty sure its been well reported we have spoken to Ajax about Timber. Lets see what happens maybe the club is busy doing work and not briefing the press

 

[VP89]

Pretty sure its been well reported we have spoken to Ajax about Timber. Lets see what happens maybe the club is busy doing work and not briefing the press

That's sort of my point. It's not exactly going smoothly - Tier 1 Ajax sources have said he's got big chances to stay now.

 

[Cassidy]

That's sort of my point. It's not exactly going smoothly - Tier 1 Ajax sources have said he's got big chances to stay now.

Right but the point is the club is talking to other clubs and doing other things aside from FDJ whilst also at the same time not briefing so called UK tier 1s about it.

So lets hope progress is being made that we don’t know about yet. Yesterday Arsenal out of nowhere agreed a deal for Fabio Viera

 

[largelyworried]

I dont understand the approach to the summer already
If we can all agree he's trying to get De Jong first, why? Why cant he park the appetite for De Jong to one side, until Barcelona are ready to come to the table, and work on his CB/fullback/forward targets? Right now our summer strategy is effectively dictated by when Barcelona's board meet up for a chinwag. That doesn't sound like an efficient use of the window to me

Quite simply because until we know if De Jong is coming we don't know what positions we need to buy for and how much available budget we have.

 

[UnitedSofa]

Quite simply because until we know if De Jong is coming we don't know what positions we need to buy for and how much available budget we have.

Absolute tosh & you know it

 

[Cassidy]

Quite simply because until we know if De Jong is coming we don't know what positions we need to buy for and how much available budget we have.

That is absolute rubbish

 

[VP89]

Right but the point is the club is talking to other clubs and doing other things aside from FDJ whilst also at the same time not briefing so called UK tier 1s about it.

So lets hope progress is being made that we don’t know about yet. Yesterday Arsenal out of nowhere agreed a deal for Fabio Viera

The concern is that we are playing an optimism game of "maybe we just aren't briefing but are making progress". That doesn't really correlate as much with what we see in the window and I'd argue its already getting too late to tie down 4 proper players.

Quite simply because until we know if De Jong is coming we don't know what positions we need to buy for and how much available budget we have.

More than likely we have an established maximum appetite for De Jong. I don't understand why we can't move on our other targets whilst keeping that aside.

 

[mu4c_20le]

That is absolute rubbish

You don't think our summer plans would change drastically if De Jong doesn't come?

 

[Cassidy]

The concern is that we are playing an optimism game of "maybe we just aren't briefing but are making progress". That doesn't really correlate as much with what we see in the window and I'd argue its already getting too late to tie down 4 proper players.

1. United have actually briefed about focusing on deals and not media this window

2.The window opened last week its most certainly not too late to tie down 4 proper players especially if the ground work has already been done

 

[Cassidy]

You don't think our summer plans would change drastically if De Jong doesn't come?

I dont think we don’t already have a plan for that and alternatives lined up since we have been briefing exactly that. So drastically actually no, since Im pretty sure the club knew at the start that De Jong would be a long shot of a transfer

 

[LawCharltonBest]

Going to be another day of nothing happening then

 

[VP89]

1. United have actually briefed about focusing on deals and not media this window

2.The window opened last week its most certainly not too late to tie down 4 proper players especially if the ground work has already been done

This sort of goes into the debate of whether one should think "its only opened last week, its not too late to have a good summer" or "we are losing time in a shortened window, where all rival teams have made considerably better progress".

I am all for a lack of briefing, but United cannot control the Tier 1 briefs of selling clubs. From this we know Timber has big chances to stay, after a lot of talk. We know Nunez was a player who we couldn't get the jump on and didn't value so highly. So thats 2 out of our brief shortlist ruled out.

If we were "working" behind the scenes on a Pau Torres or an Antony or similar 2nd choices then progress would have been made. Pre season is in 10 days and we have more surgery required on our squad than most of our peers.

Maybe progress is being made, but that's wishful thinking at this stage.

 

[Andycoleno9]

Going to be another day of nothing happening then

And then comes weekend....
So monday it is. With same old tweets how De jong is ETH's big wish and how we are thinking to launch offer for Antony

 

[Cassidy]

This sort of goes into the debate of whether one should think "its only opened last week, its not too late to have a good summer" or "we are losing time in a shortened window, where all rival teams have made considerably better progress".

I am all for a lack of briefing, but United cannot control the Tier 1 briefs of selling clubs. From this we know Timber has big chances to stay, after a lot of talk. We know Nunez was a player who we couldn't get the jump on and didn't value so highly. So thats 2 out of our brief shortlist ruled out.

If we were "working" behind the scenes on a Pau Torres or an Antony or similar 2nd choices then progress would have been made. Pre season is in 10 days and we have more surgery required on our squad than most of our peers.

Maybe progress is being made, but that's wishful thinking at this stage.

You can only objectively compare once everyone has announced their work. Announcements are not the be all and end all. Doing the work is

 

[LawCharltonBest]

And then comes weekend....
So monday it is. With same old tweets how De jong is ETH's big wish and how we are thinking to launch offer for Antony

With all the other top clubs making quick, seemless signings at reasonable prices of course

Won’t surprise me too much if Liverpool, City or Chelsea get linked to De Jong this summer and then sign him for about £50m within 24 hours of the first link. Feels like one of those summers

 

[Someone]

I'm yet to see any positive impact from Murtough. Recruitment hasn't improved one bit since he joined the club. The Ralf short term reign failed terribly, and the only positive thing was hiring ETH, which is something Woodward would've done anyway. All the names we're linked with seem to be connected to ETH, which more of the same, and we're still terribly slow in the market.

 

[Vapor trail]

I'm yet to see any positive impact from Murtough. Recruitment hasn't improved one bit since he joined the club. The Ralf short term reign failed terribly, and the only positive thing was hiring ETH, which is something Woodward would've done anyway. All the names we're linked with seem to be connected to ETH, which more of the same, and we're still terribly slow in the market.

He's already showing signs of being expendable. It's not like there haven't been opportunities Paul Mitchell was free not to long ago, Ragnick ideally should have actually been given the role of a DOF before he was even considered a manager. Dan Ashworths work with Brighton is also a notable mention.

The biggest issue with Murtough is he has absolutely no credibility to fall back on, he has no experience to the degree of being the right individual to move United forward. The way I see it is the glazers have just moved the goal posts with the replacing of Woodward and fans have lapped it up. All the way through the hierarchy there are non-football individuals making footballing decisions.

Andy O’Boyle can be thrown into the same mix he's the deputy director of football. Club should have gone for a tried and tested like Edwin.

 

[elnorte]

I'm yet to see any positive impact from Murtough. Recruitment hasn't improved one bit since he joined the club. The Ralf short term reign failed terribly, and the only positive thing was hiring ETH, which is something Woodward would've done anyway. All the names we're linked with seem to be connected to ETH, which more of the same, and we're still terribly slow in the market.

Something people a year from now will realise isn't even a positive.

 

[Adam-Utd]

Something people a year from now will realise isn't even a positive.

I think you need to find a new hobby my man. You seem angry or upset with everything around United.