Manchester United’s search for a technical director unlikely to stray far from home

MANCHESTER UNITED announced Mick Phelan as assistant manager on Friday on a three-year contract. He’s a no-nonsense family man, a respected coach who knows the club inside out after years there as a player and a coach. Phelan has a monumental job to try and help to get the team back to the top, but he’s been at the top.

Phelan, 56, was at struggling Central Coast Mariners in Australia when he got the call in December. Old Trafford is a lot closer to his Burnley home than Sydney and the man who was once one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s trusted lieutenants is already working for next season.

“Mick and I have been involved in loads of meetings about recruiting players and how we go forward,” said Solskjaer. “I’m happy with the communication (with the club) and the targets we have put forward. I hope we can get some over the line.”

I don’t think #mutv will be inviting Geoff Boycott back on anytime soon. Ffs Geoff! #mufc #MUFCPOTY pic.twitter.com/imBV8m7iVx

— Gwilym Cox (@gwilymcox) May 9, 2019

So do United fans who are fuming after a very disappointing end to the season following a baffling drop off in form. After doing so well in the first three months under Solskjaer, United have won two of their last twelve games. No nonsense former cricketer Geoffrey Boycott wasn’t wrong when he said on live MUTV in a decidedly off message view that: “Somehow it has faded away. The football hasn't been inspiring and if anything they’ve let themselves down and the people who support Man United. It’s not just the results but the football has been hard to watch.”

United will work hard to right the wrongs. They are still to appoint a technical director but absolutely intend to do this and that person will work alongside Solskjaer and Phelan looking at the first team from a long-term perspective. The new appointee will have input on transfers along with the managerial pair. Scouts and analysts will also have their say, but there will not be one single person in charge of transfers with the power of, say, Monchi at Sevilla. 

“The club will announce when they feel they have found the right man,” said Solskjaer on Friday. “Until then we work on the same structure that we have now.”

What the club have wanted has changed. Jose Mourinho, for example, didn’t want a technical/sporting/director of football, so initially, United were looking for a director of football operations that would have no say in transfers as Mourinho stipulated.

Whoever gets the job must understand Manchester United, the culture and traditions of the club. That means that experienced sporting directors with no previous United connection who’ve put themselves forward have politely been told ‘thanks but no thanks’.

That can be looked at two ways. As a positive, since Bayern Munich and Ajax have usually kept things in-house with success, that Anfield boot room mentality. Sir Alex Ferguson approves of this. Or negatively, since someone from outside might be a better person to do the job, might be multi-lingual with a greater knowledge of world football and the agents who work within it.

The best sporting directors don’t only know that there’s a brilliant right back in Bari, Berlin or Bordeaux, but they know who his agent his, who his agent knows and works with, what their intentions are, whether they are to be trusted and what the intentions of the selling club are.

Numerous former players have been linked to the post, but some names aired have had no contact with United about it. There is also no truth in links to outsiders including Paul Mitchell, a Mancunian in a senior role at RB Leipzig.

"A shambles" is how Gary Neville describes #MUFC considering former players Rio Ferdinand and Darren Fletcher as the club's new Sporting Director despite them having no experience in the role.

— Sam Pilger (@sampilger) May 6, 2019

Rio Ferdinand was one of the former players mentioned. He’s happy living back in London, where he always intended to return after he finished at United. He’s involved in a football agency representing players and still watches a lot of football – I spoke to him in Camp Nou before the Barcelona v United game. He keeps in contact with many of his former players and he’s respected by them. Does that make him the man cut out to be a technical director at Old Trafford? It’s impossible to answer since he has no experience in such a role.

Fans also assume that former players would be interested, yet many, including Gary Neville, earn far more from their own business and media dealings than they would working for United. Rio would have to give up a lot of his busy and well-remunerated workload to work 200 miles from where he lives.

Neville has long advocated Edwin van der Sar for the role, but a) he’s happy in Amsterdam for now, though he did say he’d consider another challenge in 2-3 years b) he’s already a chief executive, so a technical director would be a step down.

Less busy is Darren Fletcher, a bright, football-obsessed former United player who does live in Manchester. The 35-year-old is out of contract at Stoke City this month and will leave the club. A decision has yet to be made about whether he’s to carry on playing. Fletcher has long soaked up football culture from around the world with a nerdish Jamie Carragher-like zeal for magazines and information. He’s very popular at Old Trafford and, like Solskjaer and Phelan, would draw on the Alex Ferguson mantra of how to win.

There are also internal people at the club who know what they’re doing, from John Murtough, an intelligent Mancunian United fan who joined the club in 2013 having worked with David Moyes at Everton and also the Premier League where he was head of elite performance. He’s already United’s head of football development.

United already employ a goodly number of knowledgeable football minds with superb CVs, but for whatever reason the recruitment has had more misses than hits. Fans want to see that stop and want to see players join who justify their vast wages, transfer fees and reputations. It’s that simple. Except signing footballers has never been an exact science and United seem to have fared far worse than most in their recruitment.