Here's another sad rag lament
The painful lessons Manchester United can learn from City
Daniel Taylor Mar 6, 2022 173
Take a walk around Old Trafford on a match day. Head to the Bishop Blaize pub, the Tollgate or the old Stretford Ex-Servicemen’s Club, with its No Prawn Sandwiches sign on the wall, and tell the fans in these establishments that Manchester United — the mighty Manchester United — need to “aspire” to be more like Manchester City. What do you think the reaction would be?
David Moyes used that word after one Manchester derby and it was held against him by many supporters as the hard evidence he did not understand there was a certain way in which a Manchester United manager ought to speak.
In his time at Everton, Moyes described one game against City as football’s equivalent of “going into a gunfight armed with a knife”. But that, with respect, was Everton. The expectations are different at Old Trafford, where all those years of greedily accumulating trophies with Sir Alex Ferguson, season after season, bred a mentality probably best summed up by the “Not Arrogant, Just Better” banner that used to be seen at games.
United’s supporters were accustomed to happier times. They have found it galling to see City having all the fun, particularly when they remember the gulf that existed between the two clubs before September 1, 2008, the date the Abu Dhabi United Group took control on the other side of Mancunian Way.
But football moves quickly. The modern-day City are, once again, enjoying the view from the top of the Premier League. Pep Guardiola is their manager. The last decade, in particular, has seen a full, peacock-like spreading of City’s feathers. They have finished, on average, 20.75 points clear of United in every season since Ferguson’s retirement. City are the champions of England.
Remember those days when Ferguson liked to call City’s stadium “the Temple of Doom” and completely ignored them when he went through the list of clubs — Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Leeds — he considered to be United’s biggest rivals?
This season, United are already 19 points back. They have not managed an authentic title challenge since winning the league in 2013. They have spent over £1 billion in that time. And, painful as it might be, maybe it is time for everyone connected with the club — the fans, the staff, the people in the boardroom and, perhaps more than anyone, the Glazer family — to accept that, yes, United should aspire to be more like City.
Recruitment
The problem in any discussion about City is that the default setting for many is to argue that it is virtually impossible to compete against the immense wealth of Abu Dhabi.
To a point, that is a perfectly reasonable argument. Of course City’s success derives largely from their owners’ resources. Of course it would not have been possible without the money-no-object mentality a decade ago that led to Ferguson complaining about their “kamikaze” spending.
In this case, however, it doesn’t absolutely hold up given that United, throughout Ed Woodward’s time in office, spent some of the most mindboggling sums imaginable and still managed to end up outside the top four as many times as they finished in it.
It was a heck of a feat, if you think about it properly, to have splurged over £1 billion without any tangible reward at the end of it. But Woodward has gone now and that, for United, is not necessarily a bad thing. The more relevant question is whether Richard Arnold, the new chief executive, is an upgrade. Arnold was previously the managing director and United, put bluntly, are stuffed if he is as accident-prone as his predecessor when it comes to the business of buying footballers.
Schweinsteiger was past his best when he arrived at United (Photo: Getty Images)
It is, after all, fundamental to a team’s success. Recruitment is key. Every successful club gets this part of the business right and, as City have shown, it is not just a case of trying to blow everyone out of the water in every transfer window. It is not true that City’s sole tactic is to outbid everybody else. It is not the case that they automatically offer the biggest salaries or pay the agents the most extravagant fees. That is usually what United do.
The reality is that City have put in place a much more sophisticated system that requires wider analysis of the City Football Group (CFG) as a whole and the 11 clubs under its umbrella.
City’s talent-spotters are not just scouting for Guardiola these days but also for New York City, Girona, Yokohama Marinos and all the rest, from Manchester to Montevideo, Melbourne to Mumbai. It is a global operation that means City can develop players throughout their own network. Not all will be good enough to play for Guardiola in the Premier League. But some will, and the ones who come up just short all have their value. Every year, City are banking significant sums from player sales that have been generated this way. City, and CFG, believe they have the most sophisticated database of scouting reports in existence.
All this, of course, is not something that United can just try to replicate given they are a one-club operation looking for talent in the more old-fashioned sense. It is a reminder, however, that the elite clubs should always be looking for new, innovative ideas to get ahead of their rivals.
United have to be cleverer. They have to be better when it comes to the data and analytic work that has helped City and Liverpool leave everyone else behind. Arnold, in particular, has to do better than Woodward because — here’s the thing — some of United’s transfer-window experiences have been more in keeping with the various tragicomedies otherwise known in Manchester as the “Typical City” years.
The time, for example, United signed Bastian Schweinsteiger without being savvy enough to realise that Bayern Munich, of all clubs, would never sell one of their own unless that player was past it. And, boy, Schweinsteiger was past it.
Or the time Marcos Rojo arrived from Sporting Lisbon for £16 million in and nobody at Old Trafford had the slightest idea he was being investigated for an alleged bottle attack on two men in Argentina and had the possibility of a criminal trial ahead of him. United were completely in the dark until after they had announced his five-year contract and a member of staff typed his name into Google to find out more about the new signing.
It is the kind of story that, in another era, would have happened on the blue half of Manchester (to United’s relief, Rojo settled out of court and the case was dropped). Not any more, though. City rarely get it wrong with their recruitment these days whereas, across town, United would dearly wish they could say the same.
Academy
Jose Mourinho did not always give the impression, in his two years as United’s manager, that he was absolutely devoted to the club’s academy. It did trouble him, though, that there was a pattern of United players enrolling their sons in City’s junior system — and he wanted to find out why.
Mourinho sought an explanation from Lee Grant, United’s back-up goalkeeper, whose son, True, was part of City’s academy.
It was a fair question, Grant acknowledged, but the simple explanation was that City had a brilliant reputation for nurturing young talent and, as a father, that was always going to matter the most. Mourinho didn’t necessarily like what he had heard but he did respect it — and it was probably what he expected to hear anyway.
Nor is this anything new. Robin van Persie, Phil Neville and Andy Cole all had their sons in City’s academy. Darren Fletcher, now United’s technical director, is the father of twins, Jack and Tyler, who play in City’s under-15s. “Nothing compares to the set-up City have over there,” says Viv Anderson, another former United player, whose son, Charlie, wore blue rather than red during the years City started investing heavily in talent, as well as its education and coaching programme, to gain the upper hand.
This is not to say United’s conveyor belt of young talent has stopped rolling. Anthony Elanga is evidence of that. Mason Greenwood was a superstar in the making until his arrest, and subsequent absence, and in this coming week United are hoping to secure a place in the FA Youth Cup final for the first time since 2011.
Their semi-final against Wolverhampton Wanderers is booked in for Wednesday and, if nothing else, that is a sign of progress six years since Woodward announced a “root and branch review” to explore what had gone wrong inside the club’s academy, and what needed to be done about it.
United, lest it be forgotten, have won the FA Youth Cup a record 10 times, seven more than City. Since 1932, more than 200 youth products have broken through at Old Trafford, amassing more than 18,000 senior appearances and 2,500 international caps, as well as World Cups, European Cups, the Ballon d’Or and Footballer of the Year honours, OBEs, knighthoods, league championships and all sorts of other trophies.
Yet Woodward’s 2016 review coincided with a 12-match losing run for United’s under-18s. One defeat, 5-1 to Chelsea, was the heaviest home defeat in their entire history. The club were guilty, undeniably, of having taken their eye off the ball. Just consider another statistic from the time: of 126 players called up by England for a round of games at under-16 to under-21 level, Chelsea provided 17 of them, and City 12, with United contributing two.
The numbers are much more even now. United’s youth team were relegated from their league in 2019, the first time that has ever happened, but returned the following year and like to think they are back on track. It is no longer the concern that it was six years ago.
Still, though, there is plenty of evidence that City have got ahead when it comes to their production line and the emergence of what Gary Neville has described as various David Silva clones.
City have reached five of the past seven FA Youth Cup finals. Their under-23s are eight points clear in a league they romped last season. Their under-18s have a five-point cushion at the top of their league and, on Saturday, they beat United’s under-18s 5-1.
Last season, the club had 45 players on their books who won international caps last season at under-15 to under-20 level. Thirty-one of those played for England but it is probably the next statistic that will hurt United the most. Almost two-thirds of City’s academy players come from Greater Manchester.
Hiring the right people
One question, above all, feels relevant when it comes to the changing of the football landscape in Manchester. Why did Woodward spend so many years talking about appointing a director of football without actually going through with it?
At City, it was Brian Marwood whose work behind the scenes was so influential to what can be seen now. Marwood, City’s director of football, was a supreme planner who put together the bricks to create what he called “one house of football” for the senior team, the women’s team and all the various age levels. Don’t underestimate his part in City’s current superiority.
Woodward, in contrast, delayed and delayed before the various restructuring at Old Trafford over the last year that led to John Murtough being given the title of football director, with Fletcher as technical director and Ralf Rangnick possibly taking up a consultancy role once he finishes as interim first-team manager. Was it because, as many people suspect, Woodward loved going after the superstars himself? Woodward’s strength was in other areas of the business than the transfer market; it just took him far too long to realise this.
All of which has left United with a bit of a jumble compared to the relatively smooth process at City — described inside the Etihad stadium as a “journey of planning” — that has led them to 16 trophies in 13 years.
The presence of Soriano (left) and Begiristain (right) has been vital to City (Photo: Matt McNulty – Manchester City/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
At City, the chief executive, Ferran Soriano, previously held the same role for Barcelona. Txiki Begiristain, who took over from Marwood as director of football, was with Soriano at the Nou Camp. Together, they formed a powerful alliance as Guardiola assembled possibly the most beautifully constructed Barca side there has ever been.
Anyone who has read Soriano’s 2012 book, Goal — The Ball Doesn’t Go In By Chance, will know this is the guy whose vision, over a decade ago, was for the multi-club model that City now do better than anyone.
One chapter is titled “Innovation.” Others detail his financial strategies, his negotiation techniques, his knowledge of business and, laid out over more than 200 pages, his philosophy for how a football club should be run. Soriano quotes professors, scientists, inventors and various leaders of industry. It is difficult to think of any other CEO in the Premier League who could deliver such a forensic study. He is, in the words of one colleague, a “genius”.
Guardiola speaks even more effusively about Begiristain, the former Barca player who bases his football ideology on everything he learned from Johan Cruyff. But it is not just a Soriano-Begiristain thing. And it is not just Pep. This is what City do: throughout the entire operation, they have brought in highly-skilled, elite performers.
And United? Where is the genius? Who is the visionary who will lead this club to a better place? Who empowers the staff in the way that, say, chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak does for City?
The answer, unfortunately for United, is that the people at the top of the club have simply not been on the same level as those at City. It is one of the biggest failings of the Glazer family, as United’s owners. And this, perhaps, should be one of the more alarming issues for the millions of United fans who are watching what has turned into a long game of catch-up.
We can all debate what United must strive to do better, how they must learn from their mistakes and adopt new practices, but it is never going to work unless the people in the most important positions have the vision, the talent, the energy and the necessary leadership qualities. And City have been better on that front for longer than United would probably wish to remember.
Getting the right manager
Here’s another key question: why have City been so much better when it comes to changing their manager, from Mark Hughes to Roberto Mancini, Manuel Pellegrini and Guardiola, and managing to keep the club on an upward trajectory?
Too often with United, it has been a case of trying one thing, then going for another style, then changing again and hoping it will work out. Moyes was given a six-year contract and lasted ten months. Louis van Gaal seldom lived up to the “genius” tag that Woodward gave him (Woodward was not convinced Guardiola would suit the Premier League). Mourinho seemed embittered and past his peak years when he replaced Van Gaal and, though United desperately wanted it to work for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, there were too many occasions when it felt like a five-star club had employed a three-star coach.
“What United need most is a brilliant manager,” Gary Neville, who speaks a lot of sense on these subjects, said recently. “The one thing that has been proven is that if you have a great manager — Jurgen Klopp, Pep, even Thomas Tuchel at Chelsea — they sort the whole club out. You might be in disarray but the manager comes in, gets control, knows exactly what he wants.”
Rangnick made a similar point at his news conference on Friday. “City and Liverpool have continuity and consistency for the past five or six years. They have a very clear identity of how they want to play. This is the secret behind their success, they know exactly how they want to play, a corporate identity. This is what all the top clubs have in common. This is something that needs to be developed at Manchester United.”
The bad news is that it is not easy to find someone of this calibre. One senior figure at Old Trafford confided recently that, whoever comes next, it still feels far-fetched to imagine United winning the league for as long as Guardiola and Klopp are around.
Rangnick, too, sounds like he knows it is going to be a long haul. “They’re the best two coaches on the planet,” he said. “It’s pretty easy in football. You need to have the best possible people, a clear idea of football, stick to that idea and make decisions with that in mind.”
All the other important things
Head along John Gilbert Way, then over the bridge towards Old Trafford, and you get some kind of idea about the amount of land that United own at the back of the stadium and that, for reasons never fully explained, is never put to better use.
A more progressive club might have copied what City have done with their 7,000-capacity academy stadium, or Barcelona previously with the Mini Estadi, to have a place where their reserves, youth and women’s teams can base themselves. A big project, of course. Expensive, too. And, realistically, we probably know enough about the Glazers to realise the chances of this happening are somewhere between minimal and non-existent.
Is it unreasonable, though, to think United’s long-distance owners might sanction whatever it would cost to extend the Sir Bobby Charlton stand? This is the oldest stand at Old Trafford and is probably best known on social media these days for its notoriously leaky roof. Architects have apparently been brought in to explore the possibilities (it is no longer thought to be such a problem that there is a railway line at the back of the stand) and we all know, if it was the other way round, City would have big plans. United should, too, because Old Trafford is looking tired. It needs modernising.
It is certainly revealing that United have not carried any major work on their stadium since 2005, while City have been expanding the Etihad, opening a village-sized training complex, creating a plaza outside the ground and winning awards for providing the best match-day experience.
Last night, City’s women beat Chelsea in the final of the FA WSL Cup. They share City’s academy stadium, train at the same complex as Guardiola’s team and have the most sophisticated facilities in the sport. OK, they would probably have liked to have won the WSL more than once, as six-time runners-up in the last seven years, but seven trophies since 2014 is not too shabby.
United’s women’s team have done pretty well, therefore, to be third in the WSL table, two places above City. But why did it take until 2018 for United to join the party by launching a women’s team? Why have United, as a whole, become a club who follow others rather than lead from the front?
These are the sort of questions that probably explain why Woodward never went through with his promise to hold regular “town hall meetings” in which he intended to meet supporters face to face. It never happened, almost certainly because it would have turned into an interrogation.
Have the club got lazy? Is it too easy to trot out the excuse that the decline is all because Ferguson is no longer around? Have the club been guilty, under the ownership of the Glazers, of blurring their priorities?
At United’s training ground on Friday, it was Rangnick’s turn to talk about the gulf with City and face questions from journalists about how long, realistically, it might be before this changes. Solskjaer had been in that position a few times and, before him, Mourinho, Van Gaal and Moyes. But perhaps these questions would be better put to Joel, Bryan, Avi and all the other members of United’s ruling family.
The little things, too, that might not matter hugely but all contribute to the sense that the club needs a shake-up. Why does United’s social media operation seem so inferior to City’s? Why is United’s website so impenetrable? Their digital marketing, their branding, their understanding of the modern football fan — all these things, City seem to do so much better.
To clarify, we all know about United’s ability to pull in lucrative sponsorship deals and global tie-ups. This, perhaps, is why the Glazers are not more proactive. The money keeps rolling in. The rich get richer. This will always be the case because United are such a giant of a club, with the kind of global fanbase and internet reach that City can only dream of.
To go back to the original point, however, who can really say United should not “aspire” to be more like the club that Ferguson depicted as “noisy neighbours” and is now, quietly, without making too much fuss, going about the business of trying to win their fourth league title in five years?
The problem for Moyes when he used that word was this: United were champions at the time. They aren’t now, though, and it will be a long time before they are again unless they acknowledge exactly what it is their opponents this weekend do so much better.
