He needs to go this week, he cannot outlast Ten Hag.
Manchester United name John Murtough as Football Director and Darren Fletcher as Technical Director
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
My gut feeling is that Erik doesn't trust Murtough's judgment,so demanded full control. We simply have to appoint a Sporting Director who isn't afraid to challenge Erik on things. IF Erik isn't willing to do that then I feel there is a decision to make on his future.
True.
But I suppose it's because a manager/decision team has to keep making the right decisions. Ole's first set of signings were decent but it has to be followed up. If not the team struggles and those intial signings no longer look the same.
Antony is a disaster of a signing but if this summer had been really good it's suddenly mitigated until we move him on.
But unfortunately we went the other way.
True, with all of our issues with the squad in recent years, we really need to make a lot of good decisions when it comes to signings. We can't afford too many mistakes.
But part of the problem is that even the early "good signings" by Ole and ETH looked and look different after a while. I don't think anyone would say now that signing AWB and Maguire was decent in any shape of form.
I think AWB might but yeah obviously Maguires fee was so crazy he's always up against it.
But I still think had the next summer been a really good one, the team is suddenly performing much better and we view those initial signings in a better light. Good players make not so good player look better. A couple of top midfielders in front of Maguire and he looks much better.
I look at Grealish. For what City paid he's been nowhere near good enough. But he's in a very successful squad and so avoids critcism.
Stick him in our struggling squad for £100 million and he gets hammered.
But like you say, we're now red lining when it comes to transfers. Absolutely no wiggle room. They all have to be spot on.
Can anyone remember if previous managers ever asked for a Sporting Director out of interest
Will any serious club even consider appointing him? I doubt
It was reported that ETH wanted more control over transfers, and didnt want a DOF.
Anyone who lived in Italy know about the Cinema Panettone. They used to be done on a yearly basis during Christmas and where quite a hit until people realized that its the same story/comedy told over and over again, usually by the same actors (Boldi and De Sica) and were basically a money grab.
United had been a cinema Panettone since SAF left. The script is always the same. All our managers seems to want full control over transfers. They seem to only want to sign players they know about even though they are signed for silly money. No one had ever bothered asking questions like why managers whom in the past had operated with DOFs are now reluctant to do that with us, if the manager was the one negotiating these silly deals and why the likes of Mou, Ole and Ten Hag would give the go ahead to very expensive signings (Fred, Sancho, VDB and Mount) only to refuse to play them. They were ridiculed for that (Fellaini for 30m, Maguire for 80m, Antony for 100m etc) and most faced the sack because of that. Meanwhile when injuries hit its always down the manager. Moyes was a mid table EPL manager, LVG was old and weird, Mou was shit without Faria, Ole's training regimen was that of the 1990s wait 1980s oh no the 1930s while ETH's training is exhausting.
Meanwhile the likes of Murtough who seem to always operate in the shadow seem to be applauded at every turn for his work with the women team, his work at youth level and the 10,000 data analysts signed. Yet here's the catch. The manager of the women team left because the facilities were shit, the youth team had trailed way behind City for most of Murtough's reign, the injuries keep piling up year after year which suggest that our fitness/sports scientists are crap and we still sign the players wanted by the manager despite the 100,000 data analysts signed by Murtough. The only guys who were allowed to look behind the bonnet were INEOS and now its leaks that actually they weren't impressed by Murtoughy as suggested when they first visited OT, quite the contrary.
United had been a cinema Panettone since SAF left. The script is always the same. All our managers seems to want full control over transfers. They seem to only want to sign players they know about even though they are signed for silly money. No one had ever bothered asking questions like why managers whom in the past had operated with DOFs are now reluctant to do that with us, if the manager was the one negotiating these silly deals and why the likes of Mou, Ole and Ten Hag would give the go ahead to very expensive signings (Fred, Sancho, VDB and Mount) only to refuse to play them. They were ridiculed for that (Fellaini for 30m, Maguire for 80m, Antony for 100m etc) and most faced the sack because of that. Meanwhile when injuries hit its always down the manager. Moyes was a mid table EPL manager, LVG was old and weird, Mou was shit without Faria, Ole's training regimen was that of the 1990s wait 1980s oh no the 1930s while ETH's training is exhausting.
Meanwhile the likes of Murtough who seem to always operate in the shadow seem to be applauded at every turn for his work with the women team, his work at youth level and the 10,000 data analysts signed. Yet here's the catch. The manager of the women team left because the facilities were shit, the youth team had trailed way behind City for most of Murtough's reign, the injuries keep piling up year after year which suggest that our fitness/sports scientists are crap and we still sign the players wanted by the manager despite the 100,000 data analysts signed by Murtough. The only guys who were allowed to look behind the bonnet were INEOS and now its leaks that actually they weren't impressed by Murtoughy as suggested when they first visited OT, quite the contrary.
This is LVG's take on it.
"At the moment there is a structure with a scouting division and above that is someone at Woodward's right hand. The structure is not so bad but the right hand has to be a technical director with a football view, not somebody with a banker's role," Van Gaal says.
No self respecting club would hire him to shift pies and pour pints in the concession stand. He’ll find a way to feck that up too.
He also requested Rangnick to feck off. And I'm sure Rangnick might have known a thing or two about players, even if he wasn't a good manager.
You only have to look who Rangnick put forward as suggestions for who we should sign to see he knows a good player
Haha can you remind me? I remember Laimer was one
Alvarez,Diaz & Fernandez were the main ones
Is it bad I like them all
Nope because so do I,Alvarez went to City for just £14m which is absolutely wild. We could have got Fernandez for maybe a quarter of what Chelsea ended up paying. Then there is Diaz who is obviously going through a personal problem right now but always delivers when he plays.
Those weren't the names Rangnick suggested but he mentioned them as the quality players that moved during that Window and likes of Alvarez and Fernandez were being Scouted by United way before Rangnick even put a foot in Manchester we just didn't pull the trigger for whatever reason .
Ah OK who were the players again?
What a great post!
Rangnick was shocked a club as big as Man Utd is run without a proper football structure. When he asked for reinforcement in Jan the club scouting department can't find any. Rangnick then named them a few up and coming players who were eventually snatched up by other big clubs.
These all happened under our so called DOF Murtough.
They’re fans like you that believe this shite?
There was no players for him because we wasn’t giving him any money to spend.
The rumour was we didn’t have any information on Nkunku. I’d even guess their was probably a transfer forum thread on him before he even said that.
This was the same club 12 months prior who was about to sign Caicedo. He went into a press conference and said he recommended Diaz, Vlahovic etc etc. I think what he was saying is other clubs managed to buy players as it would be very convenient just it list a bunch of players ‘already’ signed for other top clubs.
Use your brain kid.
It's not usually the employer who has to gain the trust of the employees though. It's the other way round. Murtough is the one who employed Erik.
So far ETH has displayed unparalleled ineptitude at talent id. I know it's hard to look at players from the TV or the stands and judge if they can make it at a certain higher level. Which is why scout is its own specialist profession. But when you're training with them day in and day out you're supposed to have great insight into the character and level of the player. Sanctioning the signing a former player for £90m only for him to be a bust is kinda unforgiveable. Calling Mount "a complete midfielder" and making him your highest priority summer target, only to be benching him for McTominay 2 months later, is also damning.
It's not really about challenging Erik going forward, the situation for Erik and Murtough might be beyond salvaging for both of them already. I certainly hope it is. ETH is 50/50 to be here in the next window and if he is, he's unlikely to be given any money to spend in January. And if by some miracle he survives this summer, if I was Murtough I would flat out tell him he gets no say on the transfers and if he doesn't like it he knows where the door is. It might be that ETH will be glad to be rid of such responsibility.
I don't know nor I remember much but Rangnick PR game is top notch I'll give you that .
Both murtough and fletcher need the boot and hope Jim does not stand for this job for chums rubbish
Yeah the £150m he wasted on Antony & Mount is certainly unacceptable,particularly when we aren't in a position where we just have money to burn
both of them need to go. Im tired of our scouting/transfer department operating in a way that any of us could do with a copy of fifa. Absolutely zero faith in them finding us gems/under the radar options. Shit give me a copy of Football Manager and i feel like i could do a better job.
Yeah our transfer department has been utterly diabolical since Gill went in 2013
Back in the day the pressure for United to hire a DOF was growing. Most fans agreed that football decisions should be taken by football people. Here comes murtough a man with zero experience as a DOF and who was appointed by the football savvy/glazer stooge Woodward. Murtough would later on follow Woodward path of buying players on silly fees/salary and appeasing the manager at every turn. Despite his many 'reforms', our injury record is still appalling, we leak like the titanic and we still depend on the manager on transfers. Which makes you wonder what does murtough do? The same question seem to have been asked by ineos as well
It's been so frustrating seeing us not pull the trigger on these signings and Caicedo too, amongst others. It's annoying to think we had managers also veto Kroos and Thiago amongst others too...what a shambles we have been in terms of decision making by our managers. The scouts are not the problem, it is the people making the final decisions sadly.
Contrary to his army of excuse mongers his incompetence was there from the beginning; you just had to not be dense or blind. Our fan submissiveness is ridiculous when it starts censoring criticism of others, especially ones that might turn out legit (You'd think they'd have learnt any of the 3 or 4 sackings we already bungled). Still remember those long lines of excuses. "He just joined last tuesday, fired everyone and has no recruitment structure so can't be judged till the year 2046 earliest, were buying ere divise players to help ETH fast track his rebuild".
Agreed Our Scouting department may not be the greatest but it isn't as Shambolic as As Our transfers dealings may suggest if that makes sense .
If Erik will be sacked Arnold must sack this clown too.
I don't understand. I was told this guy is a footballing and organizational prodigy. It could be no one else but him, that's how great he is. If we hadn't gotten to him, he would have been appointed immediately by the likes of Manchester City or Real Madrid.
So, why is this happening?
So, why is this happening?
I can’t wait for the PR of how well they have done picking the next manager 
Ed Woodward was a genius compared to this guy.
Sad but true.
he worked under woodward
This guy is a mystery. Our 10+ years or failure started with David Moyes, John Murtough and Woodward. Two of them have gone, yet this guy keeps getting promoted
like wtf?
Also what does Fletcher do? Rangsnick once asked he did not know what these people's role at the club. Maybe that why he got sacked, for asking the forbidden questions
Which is probably why he's just a very poor version of him.
With their track record it wouldn't surprise me if they went with Fernando DinizI can’t wait for the PR of how well they have done picking the next manager
These two numpties need sacking before Ten hag, it's them that dithered for 6 months to find a manager and then they picked one who has turned out to be a dud, then they also got him to do all the player recruitment which they should be doing and most of them have flopped, it's all on them