Every top head coach is only as good as the sporting director charged with building the squad from which they select their team.
So Manchester United’s decision to part ways with Dan Ashworth, just five months after hiring him from Newcastle United, highlights how much of a hurry the club are in to become competitive under new boss Ruben Amorim.
One source told ESPN that Sir Jim Ratcliffe, United’s minority owner and principal decision-maker, had quickly become unimpressed by Ashworth, believing he lacked the personality and skill set to do the job. So rather than allow an unsatisfactory situation to deteriorate, a decision was made to act now in a dramatic damage-limitation exercise. Sources said that relations between Ashworth and Ratcliffe had been “rocky” for weeks, but that the swiftness of the decision to part company on Sunday morning has surprised many at the club.
Ashworth had been in charge of United’s summer recruitment strategy, when £182 million was spent on five players. Yet less than six months on, arguably only £12.8m defender Noussair Mazraoui has lived up to his contract. The rest have been distinctly underwhelming. And although Ashworth was involved in the decision to fire manager Erik ten Hag in October, the identification and recruitment of highly rated 39-year-old coach Amorim from Portuguese champions Sporting CP was overseen and executed by CEO Omar Berrada.
Since assuming full control of football operations at Old Trafford in February following the acquisition of a 25% stake as minority owners, Ratcliffe’s INEOS group have torn up the existing structure at the club. Senior executives from the previous regime have gone, including football director John Murtough, and subsequently Ten Hag, following a dismal start to the season.
Ashworth, previously technical director at the English Football Association and sporting director at both Brighton and Newcastle, was supposed to be part of the new era as INEOS moved quickly to hire experts with successful track records to fill the vacuum of knowledge at United that had developed and grown since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement as manager in 2013.
Ashworth was recruited from Newcastle after a lengthy compensation battle with the St. James’ Park club — United ultimately paid £3m for him to start work on July 1 — and Berrada (formerly at Manchester City), technical director Jason Wilcox (Southampton) and interim director of recruitment Christopher Vivell (RB Leipzig and Chelsea) were also hired to form part of the senior leadership team under INEOS.
Sources have told ESPN that INEOS spoke to Michael Edwards, the former Liverpool sporting director credited with building the squad with which Jurgen Klopp turned the team into Premier League and Champions League winners, in the months prior to their United investment in the hopes of persuading him to return to football at Old Trafford. The 45-year-old had been out of work since leaving Liverpool in the summer of 2022 and had rejected a number of offers to work again in football, but despite holding talks with INEOS, Edwards rejected the opportunity.
Shortly after those talks with INEOS, Edwards returned to Liverpool in March this year in a role as CEO of football operations for the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group. Edwards was immediately tasked with finding a successor for Klopp, who had announced his decision to stand down as manager at the end of the season, and Liverpool ultimately appointed Feyenoord coach Arne Slot, who has guided the team to the top spot in the Premier League and Champions League tables, losing just once all season.
Ashworth had less immediate success at United. His start date came after INEOS had decided to retain Ten Hag as manager, despite speaking to several potential successors in the run-up to the FA Cup final win over Manchester City in May, but he was nonetheless charged with overhauling Ten Hag’s failing squad.
Sources told ESPN that aside from Matthijs de Ligt, the Netherlands international centre-back signed from Bayern Munich in a combined £50.5m deal with Mazraoui, every summer signing was driven by the recruitment department headed up by Ashworth. Ten Hag wanted De Ligt and, despite believing the squad was already well stocked with centre-backs, Ashworth sanctioned the move in order to show faith in the manager following his retention in the role weeks earlier.
Sources added that the decision to acquire forward Joshua Zirkzee, a £36m signing from Bologna, was driven by Ashworth’s team based on data analytics, and the Netherlands forward has so far looked out of his depth in the United team, scoring just three goals in 21 appearances. Defensive midfielder Manuel Ugarte (£42.2m from PSG) has had a disrupted start at United and has yet to secure a regular place in the team, while centre-back Leny Yoro (£52m from Lille) only made his debut in Wednesday’s 2-0 defeat at Arsenal after suffering a foot injury during preseason.
So the jury is still out on Ashworth’s one, and only, summer window, but United have little time to waste. The club’s finances are stretched to the limit due to losses of £113.2m in their most recent accounts and continued struggles on the pitch will only deepen the problem if they fail to return to the riches of the Champions League. Astute recruitment has always been a key factor in success, but with so many teams now mastering the art of data analytics, United are playing catchup.
Ratcliffe was damning of United’s recruitment in an interview with the fanzine United We Stand this weekend, saying the club were a long way behind in data analysis.
“It doesn’t really exist here,” he said. “We’re still in the last century on data analysis here. There’s immense amount of useful data that we can get from data analysis and we’re in the ‘very poor’ bracket with data analysis here.”
None of that can be blamed on Ashworth, who only started work in July, but the signings made on his watch were not good enough to buy him more time. Edwards has shown at Liverpool how the right person with the crucial expertise can make an instant impact and the challenge for Hugo Viana, who will replace the hugely successful Txiki Begiristain as Manchester City sporting director next summer, is to be more like Edwards than Ashworth.
Viana made his name at Sporting CP, alongside Amorim, and one of his most impressive deals was the £17m signing of Viktor Gyökeres, a relatively unknown forward playing for Coventry City in the EFL Championship, in 2023.
After scoring 68 goals in 72 games, Gyökeres is now one of the hottest prospects in Europe and being linked with an £80m move next summer, with United and Amorim high on the Sweden forward’s list of admirers.
Ashworth knows all about Gyökeres, having sanctioned his £1m transfer from Brighton to Coventry in 2021. That’s the price on the ticket for all sporting directors. Managers and coaches are judged on results, but sporting directors are only as good as the decisions they make on players, and Ashworth has already paid the price for his.
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