Manchester United are without a sporting director. Ratcliffe and INEOS decided early on to take Newcastle’s genius sporting director, embarking on a tough process and paying around £5 million to make it possible. Ratcliffe was left as the winner. The idyll lasted for five short months before Dan Ashworth was history at Old Trafford. United legend Rio Ferdinand believes it was inevitable.
When Ashworth finished on Sunday, reports came through the English media that it was a lack of commitment on Ashworth’s part that forced a breakup. Rio Ferdinand rather calls it a good old-fashioned power struggle.
“You have to remember that the jobs where he’s been before, where he’s been hugely successful, whether it’s at Brighton, West Brom, Newcastle or with England with the FA. A type who dictates and has the final say on a lot of things that happen,” Ferdinand says on his YouTube channel.
“It was a completely different situation at United where you have Wilcox and Berrada, who lead the football operations together as a three. And then it is overruled, Sir David Brailsford and Sir Jim Ratcliffe. So it’s a committee approach rather than one person making the decisions. Maybe Dan Ashworth couldn’t handle it and wanted autonomy everywhere, he wanted his fingerprint everywhere. My honest opinion is that it’s a different way of working for him, and he may not have been able to adapt to it,” Ferdinand doses.
It will be interesting to see if Manchester United then find a “puppet”, or simply drop the need to bring in a new sporting director.
