John Murtough’s role in Manchester United’s current struggles – Man United News And Transfer News

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Apportioning responsbility at Old Trafford for the woes being experienced by Manchester United at present resembles a blame game of the usual suspects.

The Glazer family are prime suspect number one. Decades of decline driven by debilitatingly deficient and disinterested ownership have converged to convert United from one of the powerhouses of the footballing world into more of a punchline down the pub.

The contempt every United fan, including this reporter, holds for the owners is both justified in its vitriol and accurate in its judgement. Below the Glazers, however, feelings of positivity around figures at the club are beginning to turn as well, with both the manager and his players becoming suspects in the inquest.

Erik ten Hag, who felt like the first genuine step by the club in the right direction last season, has faltered this year. While the general sentiment amongst the fanbase appears to remain in quiet support of the Dutchman, the cracks are beginning to show.

Serious questions around United’s recruitment over the past two summers, which has seen enormous sums invested on his signings, are increasingly valid. To have gone into the Manchester Derby with two of your major midfield signings – Antony (£82 million) and Mason Mount (£60 million) – on the bench speaks to the mistakes made in consecutive transfer windows.

There are reasonable doubts over the Dutchman’s tactical intentions for his team as well.

Ten Hag has spoken at length about his desire to see United become the “best transition team in the world“; an area they were already strong in. The team’s deficiency in possession – a prerequisite to be successful in modern football – appears low down his list of priorities.

United fans have been watching the radical transformation produced at Tottenham Hotspur in one summer by Ange Postecoglou, who lost his best player in the process, with a certain puzzlement as to how poor United remain on the ball in comparison.

Nevertheless, Ten Hag deserves patience and restraint before any definitive decisions are made. The injury crisis, which has crippled the defensive unit in particular, would debilitate any manager. As would the constant stream of controversies Ten Hag has been forced to endure, both on and off the pitch.

In the space of three weeks, the Dutchman went from having a potential right-wing triumvirate of Antony, Jadon Sancho and Mason Greenwood, to having none of them. The effect of the ongoing uncertainty around the club’s takeover cannot be understated either.

In regards to placing blame on the players, it is a similar story to their manager – justified concerns and doubts, but enough goodwill accrued from last season’s success to believe they may be able to turn things around. Individuals must take responsibility for the state of some of their performances, however.

The unrelenting bad luck the team has faced at the hands of VAR has bordered on ludicrous at this point as well, and offers partial context for the results. If Arteta was forced to endure the number of poor decisions United were subject to on Wednesday night against FC Copenhagen, he would likely have packed football in and headed back to the Basque country for an early retirement.  No side has seen close to the number of  goals ruled out by VAR that Ten Hag’s men have this year.

This is an interesting stat.

How VAR has impacted net number of goals scored so far in the Premier League.

While VAR has awarded Man City 2 goals, it has denied Man Utd 5 goals.

But Man Utd get all the decisions. 🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/mPd0SdSf3Q

— UF (@UtdFaithfuls) November 5, 2023

So that covers the list of the usual suspects involved in a club’s poor form; the owners, the manager and the players.

Yet the figures who sit, almost in the shadows, between the owners and the coaching/playing staff, appear to be largely absolved of responsibility. The executive branch of the football operation at Old Trafford, headed by John Murtough, deserves to be involved, and scrutinised, in the blame game.

Murtough, United’s director of football, will have been at the club for a decade come next month. The same decade, incidentally, which has seen United become the aforementioned punchline of the footballing world. But, in fairness, he has not always held that position during this time.

Signed initially as a director of football development on the recommendation of David Moyes, who had worked with him at Everton, Murtough made a favourable impression with the Old Trafford hierarchy. He progressed through the footballing structure, eventually being entrusted with the football director role in March 2021.

David Taylor (The Athletic) contends this position makes Murtough the “highest-ranking employee…at the club’s training ground.” The full remit of his responsibilities are as follows:

“…to find the players, oversee the scouting and recruitment system and, in short, create a fully coherent plan for future success. It is his job, in other words, to put everything in place to make Old Trafford happy again.”

Would it be fair to say the unhappiness at present may, therefore, be justifiably laid at Murtough’s door?

One of the earliest decisions Murtough took full ownership of in his new role was the appointment of Ralf Rangnick as interim manager in place of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. The result? An unmitigated disaster which produced United’s worst finish in the history of the Premier League.

The most baffling component of this appointment, however, was the decision to then let Rangnick depart the club entirely, after initially agreeing he would take up a consultancy role at the executive level to help shape United’s future.

Rangnick had extensive experience as a successful director of football in Germany; he had very fleeting examples of successful managerial stints in the same time. Yet Murtough saw fit to appoint him as a manager and then not exercise any of his wisdom as a director, after seven months of intimate experience with the first team.

Rangnick’s assessment that the United squad needed “open-heart surgery” – to the tune of “ten new players” – feels as accurate in November 2023 as it did when he made the comments in April 2022. The person responsible for the outlay of over £400 million on recruitment between these dates must be culpable for this profligacy.

Murtough’s brief as the man tasked with “oversee[ing] the scouting and recruitment system” appears to have fallen into a repeated pattern of purchasing whomever Ten Hag asks for. There have been no proactive signings, only reactive ones based on the manager’s desires; a manager who has never held that specific position of responsibility at a major club before.

Would a responsible and competent director of football have sanctioned an £82 million investment on Antony? Would a responsible and competent director of football have chased Frenkie De Jong for an entire summer, only to change tack at the last moment and purchase Casemiro for £70 million?

They’re the decisions Murtough signed off on in a two week period last August. Decisions he is supposed to be leading on, not merely approving.

A more responsible and competent director of football would have produced a United squad with a far higher quantity of quality than the one currently residing at Old Trafford. The players Rangnick revealed were on his radar in January 2022 – Julian Alvarez, Christopher Nkunku and Luis Diaz, among others – would hop, skip and jump into the current team.

Now, by contrast, there are many sources at Old Trafford who believe Murtough has “done all sorts of brilliant work behind the scenes” and the measures he’s implemented will begin to bear fruit over time.

Murtough has worked closely with Ten Hag to try and raise the professionalism of the processes at United, and has correctly backed the manager over big calls on tricky situations (e.g. Cristiano Ronaldo, David De Gea, Jadon Sancho to name a few). His attentive and deliberate work to improve the academy and women’s team at Old Trafford have also been praised.

Consequently, Murtough’s role in United’s current malaise appears to fall into a similar category to the manager and players. While there are examples of positivity, the director must also take responsibility for the instances of negativity. The recruitment has, undoubtedly, been his biggest failing.

This appears to be a conclusion shared by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his INEOS team. The prospective new minority owners at Old Trafford are, according to Taylor, distinctly “unimpressed by some of the transfer dealings that have Murtough’s fingerprints all over them.”

With Ratcliffe’s proposal to assume control over the football operation at United drawing increasingly closer, the position of Murtough is thought to be precarious. There are well-sourced reports suggesting the INEOS owner wishes to install Paul Mitchell as the football director and Jean-Claude Blanc as the Chief Executive of his new-look United leadership team.

The INEOS Sporting Team are also reportedly set to conduct a one-hundred day review of the sporting department at Old Trafford upon ratification of Ratcliffe’s minority bid. This review will function as United’s new chief’s own version of the blame game for the current state of the team.

Whether Murtough is able to channel his inner-Keyser Söze and survive the INEOS inquest remains to be seen.