Sacking the sporting director just five months after hiring him adds to the sense that the billionaire co-owner is taking the club backwards
Dan Ashworth spent about as much time on gardening leave as he did working for Manchester United. Let that sink in for a minute. The man who United believed was such a talented sporting director that they were prepared to wait five months for him to start work and paid up to £3 million ($3.8m) to prise him from Newcastle, was deemed not fit for purpose just five months into the role.
Ashworth is the latest high-profile name to drink from the poisoned chalice of working for Manchester United and see his impressive achievements at former clubs eaten up by his failure writ large at Old Trafford. Serial-winners such as Raphael Varane and Casemiro have been down this path, as have elite managers such as Jose Mourinho, Louis van Gaal and Erik ten Hag.
Now not even the executives are safe. And the highest ranking executive at the club comes out of this bizarre saga looking worst of all: Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
GettyMaking a mockery of 'recruitment' claim
Long before Ratcliffe had even considered buying his stake in United, the billionaire took aim at the club's shoddy recruitment policy. As far back as 2019 he described the club he has supported since a child as "the dumb money". And when he took control of the club's football operation late last year, he said that the key to getting United back towards the elite was fixing the recruitment. He mentioned the word six times in a roundtable interview with journalists in February.
He said: "Recruitment in the modern game is critical. Manchester United have clearly spent a lot of money but they haven’t done as well as some other clubs. So when I was talking about being best in class in all aspects of football, recruitment is clearly top of the list. I’m thinking about getting recruitment in a good place in the future. There’s not much I can do about what’s happened in the past. Our thinking is all about how we become first in class in recruitment going forward. Which means you need the right people."
Yet after talking so much about the importance of getting the right people, it seems Ratcliffe and his INEOS colleague Sir Dave Brailsford have botched one of the biggest calls they could make, the sporting director. United had been playing catch-up with the top clubs in Europe for years by only deciding to appoint a sporting director in 2021 when they promoted John Murtough from within. Before him, chief executive Ed Woodward, whose background was in accounting and investment banking, did most of the work in this key area.
Hiring Ashworth, who had played a big role in the success stories of England and Brighton, was seen as a step in the right direction at last. Ashworth's status seemed to justify the huge effort the club made to get him from Newcastle, which nearly landed them in trouble when it emerged they had approached him while he was still working for the Magpies. But not even one of the best operators in the sport was deemed good enough for Ratcliffe.
AdvertisementAFPTreading on toes
Sacking Ashworth, who was reportedly told about the decision soon after United's 3-2 defeat by Nottingham Forest, which he had brought his family to, was a massive shock. And yet, with hindsight, there was a small clue in an interview Ratcliffe had given to the fanzine The co-owner had talked up the recent appointments he had made within the last year, hailing Ruben Amorim as "a fantastic coach" and Omar Berrada as "a great chief executive". But there was no mention of Ashworth, who, back in that February interview, he had described as "clearly one of the top sporting directors in the world" and "a very capable person".
It has been revealed that Ratcliffe was not impressed with Ashworth's approach to naming a successor to Erik ten Hag. The billionaire was said to be 'disappointed' that the sporting director would not look beyond candidates he had previously worked with such as Eddie Howe, Graham Potter and Gareth Southgate, meaning he ended up tasking Berrada with leading the search for the new boss. Amorim may prove to be an excellent appointment and only time will tell if Ratcliffe was right to dismiss Ashworth's suggestions.
But it ultimately appears that he was not willing to trust Ashworth to do the job he was hired for. Ratcliffe clearly wanted his say in a process which Ashworth was supposed to lead. And that is not a good sign. Ratcliffe's background is in petrochemicals and sport is very much a hobby to him rather than his area of expertise. Treading on Ashworth's toes sets a worrying precedent.
GettyTen Hag call should fall on him
Another intriguing aspect of the breakdown in Ratcliffe and Ashworth's relationship relates to the decision to keep Ten Hag last summer. Ratcliffe clearly harboured big doubts about the Dutchman's suitability for the job after the team finished eighth in the Premier League – their worst performance in 34 years – and in the build-up to the FA Cup final it emerged that the club had held talks with Kieran McKenna, while it was later revealed they also approached Thomas Tuchel and Thomas Frank.
Ultimately, Ratcliffe decided to make a U-turn and not just keep Ten Hag in charge, but trigger the one-year extension in his contract. That decision, and the talks with other potential managers, took place before Ashworth had officially began work on July 1. In a September interview with journalists, Ashworth, like Berrada, was at pains to point out that he had not made the decision on Ten Hag as he was not working for the club at the time. And the remarks, according to the , were said to have 'gone down like a lead balloon' with Ratcliffe.
It is a curious explanation for Ratcliffe taking against Ashworth though, not least because Berrada had also shirked responsibility for the decision to keep the faith with Ten Hag. Both men were not supposed to have been involved in that process and, had they admitted to doing so, could even have found themselves in legal difficulties due to the terms of their departures from Newcastle and Manchester City respectively. But more importantly, that decision should fall on Ratcliffe.
AFP£25m in compensation fees
The INEOS chief had five months to observe Ten Hag up close and determine whether he was the right man for the job or not. He was about to conclude that he wasn't, but the surprise win in the FA Cup final over City made it more politically difficult to sack Ten Hag. He ultimately backed away from making what would have been an unpopular decision at that time even though he knew it was the right one.
And giving Ten Hag an extra year could not erase the fact that everyone knew Ratcliffe didn't truly believe in the coach. Ratcliffe effectively kicked the can down the road until the next season, increasing the cost of dismissing Ten Hag and his staff (£10.4m/$13m according to club accounts) and obliging United to pay around £11m ($14m) to free Amorim from his contract with Sporting CP. United have now spent approximately £70m ($89m) on hiring and firing managers in the 11 years since Sir Alex Ferguson's departure. And almost a third of that has come on Ratcliffe's watch.
The decision to fire Ashworth little more than a month after axing Ten Hag means that in the last year alone United have spent around £25m ($32m) in compensation fees on two roles, and they will now have to spend even more money to replace Ashworth with another 'best in class' sporting director.
