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Dan Ashworth - Newcastle DoF currently tending to his garden
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
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If he’s got any sense he won’t go anywhere near the absolute circus that is Todd Boehly’s Chelsea.
Depends how much they offer him. If he has any sense he'll hear out both offers, our project definitely sounds the more enticing one.
Hopefully Ashworth is on the blower to Jewell the now convincing him to link up with him again at Utd.
I read that Chelsea actually already signed Brighton’s head of recruitment 18 months ago which is who this Jewell replaced which is quite funny, Chelsea may as well put an offer in for Brighton at this point
Chelsea really are a funny funny mess.
Aye, it’s quite funny. Just stinks of an owner coming in that’s got no clue what’s he’s doing and has seen a club operating very well and thinks it’s as simple as plucking their manager and a few men behind the scenes and then everything will turn to gold.I read that Chelsea actually already signed Brighton’s head of recruitment 18 months ago which is who this Jewell replaced which is quite funny, Chelsea may as well put an offer in for Brighton at this point
Love to see what Ashworth's laptop says about the likes of Antony, Mount and top-pick-from-800-RBs AWB.
Interesting article in DT, says we approached him in 2022 when he left Brighton for Newcastle, but he would have been reporting to Murtough so he declined. Murtough another appointment by that clown Woodward who has overseen in a couple of the worst transfer windows in the club's history. The sort of corporate brown noser that seems to fill the corridors of OT these days despite being utterly useless. I hope he is shown the door pronto.
Murtough. What an absolute joker. All this actually makes me even more angry that the incompetence was allowed to carry on for so long.
It's kind of crazy just how much damage Woodward did to the club unchecked, I shudder to think that if not for the Super League fiasco it's not unrealistic that he'd still be our CEO.
I am not a Spurs expert, far from it, but I'll find that to be odd. Conte and Paratici have history. They had previously worked together at Juventus, they share the same mentor in Marotta and the trio was the brains behind the immense success Juventus shared throughout those years. The three had such a good relationship that they often dragged one another to their new job. Marotta took Paratici at Juventus, he took Conte to Inter and then Paratici found Conte (or brought Conte) to Spurs. They are often on the same page as well. Conte had accused Paratici of signing Dejan Kulusevski at Juventus solely to weaken Inter. He claimed that he tried to do the same with Lukaku. Then Paratici brought Kulusevski to Spurs and suddenly Conte came out arguing that the guy wasn't the signing he wanted because 'he wasn't ready'. There again that's typical Conte ie it's always someone else fault. His famous 'you can't eat in a 100 euros restaurant with just 10 euros" spat with Juventus is still considered as one of the biggest football memes in football.
Here are the links
https://www.corrieredellosport.it/n...a_preso_kulusevski_per_danneggiarmi_e_lukaku_
"Dejan didn't surprise me at all. I had asked for him while at Inter and he was at Juventus. I also spoke with Paratici to try and sign him but he cut me off the deal. He signed him not to reinforce Juventus but only to damage me"
https://www.editorialedomani.it/fatti/conte-paratici-tottenham-blt1fy49
Bentacur and Kulusevski considered not yet ready by Conte.
Spurs problems is down to size ie they aren't big enough to seriously compete with the EPL giants. I am a big fan of clubs who punch above their weight due superb management (Parma 1990s, Atalanta, Brighton etc) but ultimately we all know that unless some serious money is pumped into those clubs we'll never see these clubs at par with Juventus, Manchester United, Bayern, Real etc.
That's surely a reflection of Woodward and the Glazers' spending priorities?
Who claimed that? I don't recall it being said in the UK press. Lots of people, myself included, were sceptical about his ability to manage first team recruitment as it was something he had no experience of. It was clear early on that he was failing to learn on the job.
True, and Murtough has to take a good deal of responsibility for that. Likewise bringing in Ralf; he should never have championed his appointment without knowing that he wasn't going to be allowed to get involved in recruitment.
[/QUOTE]Murtough's name getting close (or linked) to good makes me uncomfortable. Seriously the only thing he seem good in is survival
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Maybe. I won't lose any sleep if he's asked to leave. He has of course been handsomely rewarded.
Sensible man. Would you want to report to Murtough when you are far more qualified about if a player is the right one.
He is a Woodward/Glazer man which is why he got the job, there was never going to be any significant change with him as DOF.
Would tell you a lot about him if it’s true he still wants to stay despite being demoted and having to report into someone who was being approached to work for him 18 months ago.
He had to do 12 months gardening leave when he left us. Newcastle enfef up paying us compo to get him early
I imagine that's exactly what we'll have to do too.
Pity you didn't include a sell on clause.
That’s the biggest mystery to me, and by speculation, looks like the biggest mistake made at United past Mourinho: It seems we have been taking the right steps to change the structure, but at a frighteningly slow pace. When Solskjær came in, a process was started at getting the club DNA back. This has been much ridiculed, at least by unknowledgeable people, but several top coaches and high up football people lauded it and even mimicked it both then and later. Some people write like promoting from within was some sort of family firm amateurish business, but it’s done with success lots of places. But still the issue presided that Solskjær was allowed to operate as a vintage manager/paraDoF, and he clearly didn’t trust the people responsible for recruitment under Van Gaal and Mourinho - and understandably so.
A real change in that situation would mean to have the CEO directly, or indirectly through his selected DoF select people in the different roles based on his likings, and everybody would have to work inside of that structure or go. Woodgate seems to habe trusted Solskjær with half of making a cultural reboot for him, and kept half the structure for himself keeping control of recruitment, and then making exceptions here and there in transfer dealings. That makes a split that at least Woody was incompetent to handle.
Getting Murtaugh in a new role seems a step in the right direction. I don’t mind if a new set up of Arnold - Murtaugh - Head of Recruitment - Ten Hag makes a few feckups in their first couple of transfer windows. It often takes time to settle even a good structure. What I can’t get my head around, is if there where reasons why recruitment didn’t work properly, and Bout/Lawlors positions where up for debate - why wasn’t that settled much earlier and quicker. Ideally under Solskjær, at least under Rangnick, but at the very very least have a HoR in place for starting up Ten Hag. Every top manager will have ideas for players they trust, and scepticism to strangers claiming to know better. Going into a new managerial epoch without that part of the machinery already in place seems to me incomprehensible.
First of all we need to fully understand what a sporting director does. The sporting director's job is not to negotiate transfers or find new players. An effective sporting director's job is to anticipate an issues, do more with less, persuade the higher ups to invest when we need to and find the right people for the right job. Its pretty much what SAF focused most in his last years and were Murtough had failed on all counts. Prior to Murtough the club was leaking like a sieve, we kept experiencing waves upon waves of injury, we kept relying on the manager's short list, we kept giving silly contracts and paying stupid fees for players and we kept hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Fast forward to present time and we're pretty much the same.
Regarding the women's team it was the typical Murtough short sightedness in action. They first trained at Leigh Sports Village were injuries piled like crazy there. Thus they moved to Carrington. Yet at Carrington they had to fit in the men's schedule which was one of the reasons Stoney decided against running the team from there when she took charge in 2018. That lead to her resignation. But that's just one of the many amateur takes United became synonymous for. I can name many similar situations like that. For example how we spent 80m on Antony when just few weeks before he was available for half the price, the shambolic way he handled the Bellingham deal which saw the boy joining Dortmund and SAF feeling disrespected. How we dubbed Ole in giving his thumbs up on the Diallo deal with the Norwegian thinking that the money were coming from the academy coffers when in reality were part of the first team kitty. But worse of all is the Ralf Rangnick mess. First we kept Ole despite everyone knew that his time was up (simply because there was no succession plan), then we went for Rangnick ie a semi retired manager whose philosophy was completely different to that of Ole which meant that the squad was built against his strengths. To make matter worse Rangnick wasn't allowed to sign any players and he was severely restricted in terms of the amount of coaches he could bring. Then once the season was over we backtracked on our promise to keep him as a consultant. That made United look silly and it also meant that the only guy who actually understood football from a sporting director level left the building thus taking with him months of valuable lessons learnt.
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Blanc, berrada and ashworth all within our scope is one hell of a jump up.
Nice piece on him by Henry Winter… gives a bit of a broader explanation of what type of person he is.
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United is not a place were people learn their job especially sporting directors who is a very senior role. What Ineos are doing is precisely what I've been advocating for the past 10 years. They are getting the best in class.
Isn’t that what every Head of Recruitment does? Report to a DoF who is far less qualified about if a player is the right one?
Christ, they've already labelled him a PE teacher. Dead man walking.
I'm talking about Spurs and their recruitment under Paratici with Conte as the head coach. And for a coach like Conte who wants to build play from the back and bait the opponent's first line of the press with his wingbacks stretching the pitch horizontally and his forwards pinning the opposition CBs vertically, it potentially opened up spaces to exploit centrally in the half spaces or it opened spaces outwide. But because there was a lack of progressive players at the back for Spurs where breaking the lines was requirement for Conte's strategy, he failed and that was down to poor requirement. You can get away with that in Serie A with a Inter or Juventus, but in the EPL, the likes of Brighton and even Brentford will test your ability to play out from the back by applying a well coordinated high press. And if your GK, CBs and midfielders don't have the ability breaklines and evade the press at a good level, then you will struggle.
So signing the likes of Kulusevski wasn't the issue, but rather signing players at CB and in midfield that didn't have the progressive passing ability to play out of a press a big problem which eventually cost Conte his job.
Excellent post. You're asking the right questions mate.
Bout and Lawlor should've been removed a long time earlier but the structure at first team level was created by Woodward and until he left it was difficult to make changes. But when Woodward did leave both Lawlor and Bout were sacked by Murtough but the timing wasn't good because the transfer window of 2022 was upon us and that now was going to be a problem because the United fans wanted shiny new signings. It's why I feel the appointment of Omar Berrarda as the CEO is a significant one, because if you have a person like him in charge of the club then he potentially provides a better foundation for the football personnel to make changes at the club. But unfortunately we didn't have that luxury due to how incompetent the Glazers owners are.
Don’t get me started on the parasites. Suffice it to say that I agree that what’s happening now looks very good, and not only because the names sound better than before, or because it’s completely new thinking at the club. No, the most hope inspiring fact is that by it happening fast and now and looking sensible, it proves the assumption that the parasites are now at the back of the decision making processes for real, and the new brooms are not going to dabble in the same way at least.
It might have been linked already, but are there a couple of links to articles (potentially from The Athletic?) or articles that provide some perspective on the guy and his career to date?
Waiting for some thick Geordie prick to demand Mainoo or Garnacho as compensation for Ashworth!
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Translation of the first tweet: He has Football Manager installed on his laptop.
This is it. Its not rocket science. City did it in spades, Newcastle did it and now finally under INEOS we are. You hire the best people you can and trust professionals to do the job. Until now we have been a joke of a club. The Glazers appointed an absolute moron in Woodward to run the club, and he appointed a series of idiots. Most have gone but not all, Murtough still stinks the place out, again Glazers interevened to stop him going to Miami which is why he was appointed director of football despite being woefully underqualified. Remember plenty on here defending his appointment.
From The Athletic article by Ornstein:
I think even if it works at some clubs, it was clear United needed external appointments as all of our internal ones weren't getting us to the level we needed. We pretty much had no choice but to go external. Even if it doesn't work out, I think this is the right direction.
Appointing from within at United was always going to be a disaster, the club has been a complete shit show for years and the solution was very unlikely to be promoting people who had been part of repeated failures. Whenever one failure leaves the void is just filled by another one, the end results are the same.
I said at the time I wasn’t sold on the whole United DNA idea but what I really couldn’t understand was that people were expecting it to yield results when it was being entrusted to the incompetent Woodward, his fixer Murtough and a manager who peaked at Molde.
What INEOS are doing now is simple and what you’d expect any club or business to do rather than just repeat the same cycle like United have done for years.
if we can land Ashworth to sort out the football side of things and he can bring in Jewell to revamp the scouting department then we'll finally feel like a proper football club again and not a commercial football club
Awesome, cheers mate
If I understand this correctly, he can leave Newcastle now and have to wait a year before starting his job. We pay nothing to Newcastle. Or, he can start right away but we have to pay off Newcastle.