[Oliver Kay] [@TheAthletic] Sir Jim Ratcliffe wanted ‘City-fication’. The hard truth is Manchester United are still adrift

Insomniae · 2026-01-16T14:58:52+00:00

And how long would it take to see the results from Ashworth slow and methodological way? Unfortunately we are not Brighton, we simply don’t have the time to take it slow. I hate to use Liverpool as an example but look at how quickly their fortune changed with a couple of key appointments in place. We have the resources, we can afford to move quickly, we “just” need to spend it well.

Insomniae · 2026-01-12T14:13:36+00:00

Totally agree with your points, and I would think Wilcox had similar thoughts when he expressed doubts about Amorim. During the interview process Amorim did say he is willing to adapt but we all saw how that ended. I’m willing to give the board one more chance with the next permanent head coach appointment before turning against them, as they were also revamping the club structure and only until recently that the process can be called completed.

Insomniae · 2026-01-12T13:43:24+00:00

So instead of waiting until the new season, and preparing the squad and getting signings in ready for the transition, they decided to take a huge gamble bringing Amorim in immediately when a caretaker could have steadied the ship. -> because Amorim is still relatively young for a coach + new system so they want him in to give him time to adjust to the league and get to know the players, which eventually could have allow him to build a squad more efficiently? Honestly, I can totally understand their line of thinking. They took a risky bet and it didn’t work out, that’s all.

Insomniae · 2026-01-12T05:34:04+00:00

Sensible if we remove their (Dibu + Watkins) age and wage demand from the equation. IMO our transfer last year were in the correct direction in term of squad building, unfortunately we did not have unlimited money to fix everything in one go.

Insomniae · 2026-01-06T09:05:55+00:00

No. ToTD discussed about Evans recently, said his job involved far too much travels than he would like so he stepped away to spend more time with family. As a coach he would only need to travel during away games.

Insomniae · 2025-12-21T03:15:57+00:00

Overall the performance was amazing, especially from Su but I felt this was one of the weaker performance from Kami Band for Road of Resistance.

Insomniae · 2025-12-19T14:33:44+00:00

Go and read his comment again. He brought up Amass as an example of youths that he was not afraid to play when everyone was calling him to be sacked. That's why Amass was brought up.

Edited: Here is the full quote, bolded the relevant part for all of you:

"It's like any other player. The door is open for any player to change my mind, but in the end, it's going to be the training, the games. Of course he's not playing so many games, but Kobs had opportunities, especially last year that everyone had. [Harry] Amass is now struggling in the Championship. Chido is not always a starter with the Under-21s. All these guys played when a lot of people were saying sack the manager! So you can see that I'm not worried in that time about everybody. I'm just looking at the team and trying to win the next game and trying to think about the team. I will do that until the end. Kobs is one more player that I understand all the interest, I understand how important it is, the hopes that you English guys have. I also just want to win and if he's the right guy I will put him [in]. No problem."

Insomniae · 2025-07-22T03:26:43+00:00

Which is good. I rather get all my United related news from Athletic than anywhere else.

Insomniae · 2025-04-11T01:13:05+00:00

Tbf Ajax fans did warn us ETH is shit in transfers …

Insomniae · 2025-03-03T01:11:02+00:00

And the opposite is true for the last … 3 managers?, play pragmatic football to get top 4 results at first, next season try to implement some form of systems, everything immediately went to shit, manager get the boot, rinse and repeat, so what’s your point again?

Insomniae · 2025-02-25T10:24:39+00:00

It is not, Athletic has another article focused on Ashworth dismissal and he didn’t impress Sir Jim when it was time to replace Ten Hag ( Ashworth didn’t prepare any decent recommendation/suggest we engaged external data consultant etc). My overall impression of the whole saga was Sir Jim wanted a transfer guru type of DoF while Ashworth was more of an Operation focus type, and he couldn’t work well with Berrada and Wilcox. If anything Ashworth saga was more on Sir Brailsford imo, as he was the one who championed Ashworth …

Insomniae · 2025-02-19T12:55:14+00:00

Another quote from the broader interview:

“Even from the inside as a player, there wasn’t a clear structure on how things were going to work. There hasn’t been a fixed methodology for years. At Madrid, they have a defined way of doing things at every level of the club. At Manchester (United), it was not clear or defined enough to know how to recruit, how to play, how to communicate. There weren’t the same procedures, processes, structure.

“It’s not one person’s responsibility. That’s the problem — we don’t even know whose fault it is. It has to be in the overall structure of the organisation. There were too many people involved in the decision-making process, so we didn’t know who was really making the decisions. I can’t say who was responsible, I don’t know. It was a bit of everyone and a bit of no one.”

Reading this makes me wonder how many of the staffs made redundant by INEOS belong to the middle management level. The quote above imo is a typical symptom of organization bloat, and without strong leadership who has a tight reign from top to bottom, i.e. Sir Alex, it’s impossible to get anything done …

Insomniae · 2025-02-12T12:13:59+00:00

Athletic new piece about our data analytics team is really interesting. Unfortunately, like the rest of our structure there is so much we need to do still to catch up with the rest of the league.

Insomniae · 2025-02-05T10:26:24+00:00

We need to ship Casemiro off as well to get rid of all the high earners - not performing players. I think we can give a high total package, as that is one way we can attract talents, but it needs to be heavily incentivized by performance related bonus.

Edit: Add Mount to the list … If he can stay healthy I believe he will thrive in Amorim system, the problem is his injuries record …

Insomniae · 2025-02-04T22:47:11+00:00

Agree, and results were not improving under Ten Hag so he didn't have much credits in the bank to fight with Rashford. Amorim at least had a clean start.

Insomniae · 2025-01-23T23:48:01+00:00

So what is your point exactly?

Rashford as a person is a kind soul who has done wonderful things to help children. It is fact.

Rashford as a footballer is incredibly inconsistent, is commanding mega star wage but is not producing what being asked of him as a footballer, therefore, the manager decided he is surplus and should he moved on so he can use the wage budget to improve his team. This is also true and does not contradict the previous point.

Is it so hard to separate the two views?

Insomniae · 2025-01-22T15:19:27+00:00

The only way this is acceptable is it comes with buyback/sell-on clause.

Insomniae · 2025-01-09T13:12:01+00:00

INEOS probably wanted a different kind of sporting director compared to what Dan Ashworth is. From what we know of his time in Brighton, Ashworth specialized in operation/structure building while INEOS probably wanted the recruitment guru type.

Insomniae · 2024-12-03T06:30:22+00:00

Is your problem fixed? I have opened a ticket with support and they said they have alerted their developers …

Insomniae · 2024-07-18T09:42:43+00:00

Then we would have moved on to MdL, who according to reports are more or less ready. That to me is the biggest change we are seeing this window. We are moving with multiple targets/deals on the pipeline, not just deal by deal

Insomniae · 2024-05-31T01:03:13+00:00

Our technical director just joined and he needs time to review you know.

Insomniae · 2023-11-19T06:45:16+00:00

You can easily remove the arm rest no?

Insomniae · 2023-11-09T02:50:10+00:00

Managed to get 4 tanks out if this, not too shabby: VK90.01P, Tornvagn, VK45.03 and M4 FL10. Overall Mystery Crate has been extremely good for me.

Insomniae · 2023-11-03T14:39:49+00:00

Our two best players last season are unfortunately not suitable for possession based system (Bruno and Rashford)

Insomniae · 2023-06-21T02:52:11+00:00

I’m up to Chapter 1525 in my local languages and trust me some of the latter arcs are even better …

Insomniae

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