I read from knowledgeable Ajax posters here in this forum stating exactly that ETH is not good in signing players. Most of the good players was identified by Overmars or the structure in Ajax. ETH signings at Ajax was average at best.
Of course there is no black and white on who is ultimately in charge of style of play and signing players, DOF or manager. It could be both working closely. But the fact is proven that ETH signings here in Man Utd is again average at best.
As for Murtough, he shouldn't give someone like ETH so much power to decide on players when he has no proven track records.
Well it reads less black and white when you detract ‘many’ from posters and replace ‘terrible’ with ‘average’ to be sure.
Of course you and I can only speculate to which degree a signing is forwarded by Ten Hag, by Murtaugh, by head of recruitment or by ohers in the recruitment set up. Normally at least four people will have to think an aquisition to make sense for it to go through, but in this day and age, I agree that the idea should not normally com from the manager/head coach, because he/she’s not supposed to have time to have andetailed overview of what players exist that are available and fit the bill. So we are in agreement that if much of the signings at United since TH arrived were his own suggestions, that is a sign of a faulty system. One or two makes sense at the beginning of a manager reign, because it is commonly seen as an advantage in terms of setting the playing style, training regime etc quicker if you can bring some who knows it by heart.
Lisandro Martinez and Antony fit that bill, and I thin most people will agree Martinez was a very shrewd and effective signing in that sense. Antony not so much, but my view is that even if he individually weren’t a big success last year, he did help the team catching up to Ten Hag’s ideas and function as a team moreso than Jadon Sancho could. I think most would agree last season that it wasn’t the contribution to the team that was the big issue with Antony, it was the ridiculous price and the lack of contribution from others in that position.
What we do know, is that United had just fired the two most important people in recruitment, while Murtaugh and Arnold were both going the ropes outside of their fields of competency. That is certainly the opposite of what TH had in Overmars/Ajax, and the opposite of what Klopp has had at Liverpool, Pep at City and Arteta at Arsenal. Wether that made TH more central in identifying targets, and wether that was the lesser of evils given the FUBAR situation above/around him, I won’t even guess.
What I’m quite certain of is that until we have a functional set up with DoF, Tdir, HoR etc, we can’t expect to see functional recruitment at the club, completely tegardless of who the manager is.