I think we're gonna see EPL clubs challenging strongly for the UCL in the foreseeable future. We have arguably the strongest league in the world that is attracting the best talent in the world. And as far as our record of 3 wins in the competition goes, yes, it's not good enough and we should've won more. But people need to remember that for a long time only one team qualified for the European Cup, then two teams and so on and so forth. The EPL was also way behind the Italian and Spanish leagues too, for a large part of Fergie's early tenure. And it was extremely difficult to win the competition. But having said that, we should've won at least a few more.
But we have to look forward now and not cry over spilt milk. Someone earlier said that United are too focused on the future, rather than the present, I have to disagree. It's Chelsea that focused both on the future and the present and created a structure from the youth to the first team that has paid dividends, with the aid of Abramovich's money.
What we have to ask ourselves, do we now have a structure that is comparable to Chelsea's at the present time? I would say, yes. Does Chelsea have a person running the football department at the club that comes from a footballing background? I would say, no, Marina Granovskaia isn't someone that has a footballing back ground and got to know the Chelsea owner via working at one of his oil companies, which helped her get the job at Chelsea.
So just to illustrate how far behind we had fallen to the likes of Chelsea when it came to elite level youth development and scouting, I will provide a outlook (below) of what was left behind when Fergie retired to what was created from 2014 to 2017 by John Murtough.
When Fergie retired, his brother Martin also retired with him, which meant we only had one fulltime scout (Jim Lawlor) who subsequently had no access to a database and had stored all the recruitment information in his head according to reports. Derek Langley was the head of recruitment, who collated scout reports from either the part time scouts or the coaching staff, who were sent to scout players. This was the setup that was devoid of a data science department, which left us in the wilderness and is quite simply shocking the way things were left to fester.
Below is what Murtough put in place along with a data science team and a data science department in 2017. Anyone who says that the below names aren't of the best in their respective divisions is a Grade A idiot as far as I'm concerned.
Scouting Bosses:
•Head of Global Scouting: Marcel Bout
•Chief Scout: Jim Lawlor
•Head of Academy Recruitment: David Harrison
•Assistant Head of Academy •Recruitment: Lyndon Tomlinson
•Head of European Scouting: Henny de •Regt
Lead Scouts (Worldwide):
•America: Jorge Alvial, Mark Prizant
•Argentina (Academy): Juan Mauricio Echeverria
•Brazil (Academy - Sergio de Souza): Sandro Orlandelli
•Colombia: Giuseppe Antonaccio
•Japan: Kei Tamura
•Uruguay: Luciano Canepa
Lead Scouts (Europe):
•Austria: Armand Benneker
•Belgium: Roland Janssen
•Central/ Eastern Europe (Academy): Bernard Schuiteman, Radoslaw Kucharski
•England: Ronnie Cusick (North-West), •Mark Anderson (South England)
•France (Academy): Mathieu Seckinger
•Holland: Roy Beukenkamp
•Netherlands (Academy): Rene Moonen
•Portugal: Joao Ferreira (Academy - Vasco Noronha)
•Scandinavia: Tommy Moller Nielsen
•Spain: Gerardo Guzman
•Switzerland: Thomas Bormann
A few names have since departed and have been replaced by others, but I hope the above gives some of you a brief insight on how bad things had got when Fergie retired, structurally. And I believe with the our current squad and the youth that's coming through (tweet below), a Head Coach who has world class or potentially world class abilities, will get us to challenge for all and sundry IMO.