Inside Man Utd's seismic summer: Recruitment upheaval, job fears and aggressive youth policy (2024)

Manchester United have never known a summer quite like it.

Erik ten Hag’s place as manager at Old Trafford may have remained untouched, but around him, almost everything has changed, with new co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe reshaping a club that for long periods during the Glazer family’s 19 years of ownership felt like it was stuck in a time warp.

Omar Berrada has been getting to work as the chief executive, Dan Ashworth has stamped his authority on his job as sporting director, Jason Wilcox travelled with the squad on their pre-season tour to the United States in his technical director role and Christopher Vivell has been talking to players’ agents as interim director of recruitment. None of those four were at the club in January this year, but now they are considered essential to the future of United under Ratcliffe’s part-ownership.

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Helming the executive team is Sir Dave Brailsford, director of sport for Ratcliffe’s INEOS empire, who has frequently been at the club’s Carrington training ground since the latter got the keys to the club after Christmas. Meanwhile, Jean-Claude Blanc, INEOS Sport’s chief executive, oversees much of the major planning.

The Athletic has spoken to a wide range of United sources, both inside the club or with close connections to them, to build the definitive picture of this summer of change. All asked to remain anonymous, either to protect relationships, or because they had not been given permission to speak.

We can reveal that:

• The mood among staff at the club has been severely shaken in the wake of around 250 job cuts, but those fearing further redundancies have been told there are no such plans
• A team dedicated to handling the Glazers has been reduced as part of INEOS’ cost-cutting
• New signing Leny Yoro was known to have a potential metatarsal issue in his foot upon arrival, but United took a long-term view on the 18-year-old defender
• The academy signing of Arsenal striker Chido Obi-Martin, 16, was unlikely to have happened under the previous regime
• Ratcliffe’s drive for a new stadium is an about-turn from the Old Trafford refurbishment option favoured by the Glazers

There is no guarantee that the changes which have been made will yield immediate rewards. But as the new Premier League season begins tonight (Friday) with the visit of Fulham, a very different United are about to be unveiled.

For all the turmoil off the pitch in the last three months, for many United fans, the most obvious sign of change will come on Friday evening when they kick off their opening game of the Premier League season against visitors Fulham.

The names in the United team out on the pitch may not be all that different from last season initially, with new signings needing time to get up to speed, but there will be a clear sense of freshness in the dugout.

Ten Hag has overhauled his coaching staff, bringing in Ruud van Nistelrooy, a United star as a player at the start of this century, and Rene Hake as assistants, Andreas Georgson as first-team coach and Jelle ten Rouwelaar to lead on goalkeepers.

Georgson was visible in the pitchside technical area whenever United had a set piece in the Community Shield against Manchester City at Wembley last Saturday, a sign of his focus around dead-ball situations. Darren Fletcher, another former United player, has shifted from technical director to be a first-team coach, although he is still providing an important link between academy players and the senior squad, with the ex-Scotland midfielder often taking part in training sessions.

Steve McClaren’s departure at the start of the month to take over as manager of Jamaica’s national team was a surprise externally, but after two years at United and amid a shifting landscape, the 63-year-old saw this as a good time to take on a new challenge.

The squad, too, has been refreshed, with a higher volume of transfers — in and out — than usual in a summer window. Four players have been signed permanently, while five have been sold. It may take time for Matthijs de Ligt, Joshua Zirkzee, Noussair Mazraoui and Yoro, who is expected to be out for three months following foot surgery, to bed in, but all have been bought with long-term aims.

That is all the more apparent with Yoro, because medical scans showed a possible metatarsal issue when he joined last month from French top-flight club Lille. Executives pressed ahead with the signing anyway, due to a firm belief the 18-year-old defender will be a top player for United for the next decade. It was seen as a rare opportunity to capture one of Europe’s highly-regarded young players, ahead of Real Madrid, as the fee (a potential €70million; £59.8m/$76.8m) demonstrates.

United handled Yoro carefully and he trained in only 50 per cent of their sessions, but he suffered a fracture of the fifth metatarsal (on the outside) of his left foot in his second game for the club, against Arsenal in Los Angeles on that U.S. tour. Yoro chose to stay with his new team-mates until the trip was over, and he had surgery once back in England. There is an estimate of three months’ rehabilitation, but he will not be rushed. United had not expected him, as a teenager, to play every week in the Premier League to start with anyway, which is why signing another centre-back (which turned out to be De Ligt) as well was always on the agenda.

There are several voices in the transfer process, with Berrada, Ashworth, Ten Hag, Wilcox and Vivell, joined by Matt Hargreaves, director of football negotiations, Steve Brown, head of recruitment operations, and Andy O’Boyle, deputy football director. Brailsford is across all conversations, although he does not pass judgement on players. His role on a three-person committee, alongside Ratcliffe and Joel Glazer, executive co-chairman, provides a link to the overall club strategy and broader financial picture.

Individuals in the group are collaborating and each has played a different role in the signings so far, from financial talks to building personal relations with targets. Daily recruitment meetings take place in person and via Microsoft Teams. There is a sense of people working out their responsibilities as the days progress. Vivell is currently employed on an interim basis, but he has a good relationship with Berrada and there is an expectation his appointment will become permanent.

Some player agents have reported confusion over who to call regarding a transfer given the various job titles, generally opting to go with the person with whom they have an established relationship. Internally, however, there is no lack of clarity, with Ten Hag embracing the new structure. After talks on the Spanish holiday island of Ibiza in June, and serious consideration over whether to change course, directors committed to supporting the 54-year-old Dutchman fully as manager.

Ten Hag and Ashworth are the club’s leading figures on the sporting side, and are working closely together. Their offices at Carrington, based in the repurposed academy building as work continues on the first-team facilities, are next to each other and they speak daily.

For all the changes of structure, familiar intermediaries are making the deals.

Jorge Mendes was a key figure in the move for Yoro and is also handling Manuel Ugarte’s career. Despite United’s insistence that French champions Paris Saint-Germain’s €60million asking price for the 23-year-old Uruguay international midfielder is too high, people connected to the situation report Mendes is trying to engineer a deal and that a resolution is still possible closer to the August 30 transfer deadline.

Rafaela Pimenta, another high-profile agent who had worked closely with late colleague Mino Raiola and has Manchester City striker Erling Haaland among her clients, negotiated the agreements for De Ligt and Mazraoui.

The arrivals of De Ligt and Mazraoui, who both played for him at Dutch club Ajax, his previous employers, from Bayern Munich signal the continuing influence of Ten Hag. There are now five of Ten Hag’s former Ajax players in United’s squad, with Andre Onana, Lisandro Martinez and Antony being the others.

The club were comfortable with signing both De Ligt and Mazraoui, having had multiple reports on each man, going back years, in their system. Bayern’s decision to sell them this summer appealed to United’s financial position, with the pair set to cost a combined €70million if all add-ons are realised.

Ten Hag had first floated the idea of De Ligt joining United back in January, and his arrival was planned on this summer anyway, but Yoro’s injury accentuated the need to get an agreement finalised quickly.

Muscle injuries to striker Rasmus Hojlund and left-back Luke Shaw, two key positions, are also awkward, coming despite a change in the medical department, with Jordan Reece arriving as head physio to work under head of sports medicine Gary O’Driscoll. Both came from Arsenal and, unlike the situation at United last summer, were in place well ahead of pre-season.

Ten Hag wants his medical staff to have strong relationships with players, where they carry authority to get them to do their rehab and recovery work. “One of the most important (aspects) is you recover,” Ten Hag said while in Los Angeles. “Medical, performance, they have to do things right, but also the players, they have to work the right way, the standards are so high, you have to fulfil them. It is not only game day, it is every day.

“We made strategies in medical and performance to improve them. Nowadays in football, the developments are so fast, every time you have to innovate if you want to be the best.”

Aside from the football department, there is turbulence among United’s rank-and-file staff, with Ratcliffe wanting the 1,000-plus list of club employees reduced by a quarter. That means around 250 people losing their jobs — cuts which have triggered understandable anguish.

Undoubtedly, aspects of United had become bloated, with similar-sized clubs operating with a significantly smaller workforce. The Athletic can reveal a team dedicated to looking after the six Glazer siblings and their families has been reduced in size. Based in London, their task was to assist the club’s owners and their guests when they wished to visit United, which was almost exclusively to watch training on their pre-season tours. Colleagues were unclear on this team’s brief the rest of the time. Several members of that group were cut from this year’s tour party travelling to the United States.

The Glazers have been involved in the club reshaping, and cuts have come in every department. Blanc announced the intentions at an all-staff meeting and then tasked the remaining members of the executive leadership team – Collette Roche, chief operating officer, and James Holroyd, chief commercial development officer – with finding 25 per cent savings on payroll.

The executive leadership team, a construct of Richard Arnold’s time as chief executive, has been reduced to two people after several departures, including those of Cliff Baty as chief financial officer — a role taken on by Roger Bell, who has the same position at INEOS — general counsel Patrick Stewart and football director John Murtough.

The legal process saw employee representatives appointed to liaise between the workers and United’s hierarchy, with senior managers and heads of departments key in consultations. Their proposals to the club board were acted on, and in some situations further cuts suggested in response. It is a process some employees have described as cold, with hard-working, long-standing members of staff left feeling disrespected. Others believe action was necessary after years of poor management and, while unsettled, are also optimistic about the future.

Berrada’s early communications since crossing Manchester from Premier League champion neighbours City are seen as very positive, in terms of emails and personal interactions. One source said the visibility and ambition of the leadership team is a counterpoint to United’s years of stagnation when solely under Glazer ownership.

Fans will inevitably start to feel the impact amid the adjustments.

Staff numbers in the ticket office have been trimmed to such an extent that people calling the customer helpline are reporting unusually lengthy wait times. One subject of enquiries is the new digital ticketing system, which the fans forum and Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST) have already relayed concerns about from match-goers because barcodes are located deep within the official app, rather than on phone wallets.

United have delivered lots of communication but there is apprehension the new system could cause delays at the turnstiles for the 8pm kick-off this evening. Arsenal had to delay the start of their home game on the opening weekend of last season by 30 minutes due to 35,000 fans being kept outside the Emirates Stadium over e-ticket issues.

To help combat a repeat of that at Old Trafford, United have sent an email to local staff in other departments asking them to volunteer to assist, with a £50 payment offered for three hours’ work.

Meanwhile, other staff have been told to stay away from the stadium. Two suites commandeered as offices to facilitate Ratcliffe’s edict for face-to-face working are needed for their original commercial purpose for the Fulham game, and the time required to switch them from one setup to the other means those who have been based there cannot come in to work from Thursday to Monday.

At the start of the three-match U.S. tour, there was a glum mood on the flight out as staff at risk of redundancy had been pulled from going on the trip just a few days earlier, and a small handful were notified that their jobs were at risk while on the other side the Atlantic, in some cases even after being told their roles were provisionally safe.

A strange atmosphere persists at the club, with internal speculation of further job cuts after this current round is over. But club sources are adamant this is the major restructuring move — better to complete it in one go and move on.

Club discretion means staff members are not being officially notified of colleagues losing their jobs; instead they are getting out-of-office responses when sending emails. Morale is also being hit by some employees knowing they are leaving but having notice periods stretching into October.

For all the turbulence, those with understanding of Ratcliffe’s thinking say he wanted to rid United of a jobs-for-life culture and make the organisation leaner. One source familiar with the process feels the restructuring will improve the club overall.

Players returning to Carrington for pre-season are noticing familiar faces missing however, with several departed staff having been on the fringes of the squad in the medical, kit and communication departments. Defender Jonny Evans brought up the topic during a mixed-zone interview after the Arsenal friendly in LA. “It’s been hard to see,” said Evans, who has been at United for 12 years across two spells. “The new owners feel that’s the ­direction that they want to go. But it’s not been easy for everyone at the same time.”

Steve Brown, an analyst who worked at United for 23 years, wrote about his redundancy on LinkedIn. “Don’t lose the soul of the club to save a few quid,” argued Brown, whose father Mick was the club’s chief scout. “The people who were there made it such a special place, rich with history.”

Another area of change this summer is in youth recruitment.

United are in the process of signing Chido Obi-Martin, the 16-year-old Arsenal striker. They have agreed personal terms with the player before looking to settle on a compensation fee with Arsenal, a situation that would not have occurred under the previous regime. United’s past approach at academy level meant waiting for club-to-club agreements and they often shied away from potentially difficult signings.

Ratcliffe has given license to staff to be assertive in the market, and Luke Fedorenko, whose promotion to head of academy recruitment last August by Brown had input from director of academy Nick Cox, built a good rapport with Obi-Martin’s family to help progress the move. United’s history and current record at promoting academy graduates, under Ten Hag, was part of the sell.

The teenager is set to go into Travis Binnion’s youth teams, assuming the move is completed, rather than join Ten Hag’s senior squad, but there will be plenty of mixing anyway given the construction work happening at Carrington. The gym, now located on the indoor pitch, connects the first-team and academy dressing rooms. People at the facility have reported that the mechanical diggers on site and roped-off areas are making for a tight squeeze but also a close-knit environment.

The United women’s team have been displaced to the England national team’s complex at St George’s Park, a 90-minute drive south of Manchester, with Ratcliffe unapologetically telling UK newspaper The Times that “the men’s team make £800million, the women’s team cost £10m”. But they will be back at Carrington after a training camp in Spain, albeit housed in temporary units.

O’Boyle and Dave Harrison, United’s director of football operations, are providing the sports performance insight to architects Foster + Partners, and Gary Hebblewhite, the veteran Old Trafford project manager, is the point-person for the builders working on the project, with Mags Mernagh, director of infrastructure who previously oversaw Leicester City’s recently-opened new training ground, having left. The £50million refurbishments to make the building more open-plan are expected to take all season.

Norman Foster, founder of Foster + Partners and regarded as a key figure in high-tech and modernist architecture, is a friend of Ratcliffe’s and a representative from his company was at the latest meeting of the club’s stadium task force.

That has been seen as an indication of Foster + Partners’ potential role in building a new Old Trafford, and a chance there will not be a tender process. There have been questions raised internally about how United would meet the costs of Foster’s firm, renowned in the architectural world for its grand designs and substantial fees.

The preference for a new home for United built from scratch has come top-down from Ratcliffe, with the task force set the brief of establishing feasibility.

That desire has flipped from the days when Joel Glazer ran his eye over plans presented by Populous, the design firm hired by United in 2022. The drive back then was for a refurbishment of Old Trafford, although Populous did present an option for a new stadium built next to a scaled-down version of the original ground the academy and women’s teams would play in, as is being discussed now.

The Glazers sensed taking on more debt or offering naming rights would have provoked fan fury, so started to head down the less expensive route of building up the current South Stand. Those close to the family have been left with the impression they feel Ratcliffe is now providing cover for things they could never do.

Ratcliffe is still to answer how he would pay for a new Old Trafford, with a stadium set to cost at least £2billion, with fans wary over ticket price rises to help cover the costs.

For now though, the major concern for those in the stands is getting into the ground on time tonight.

Additional reporting: Adam Crafton

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)