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A leader at Manchester United was abruptly removed on Saturday. Yes, Bruno Fernandes was substituted in the defeat to Nottingham Forest. It proved the prelude to a more seismic change. The departure of Dan Ashworth, confirmed on Sunday morning, means United have stripped themselves of the man they headhunted, who Sir Jim Ratcliffe described in February as “one of the top sporting directors in the world”, who only a few weeks ago, along with CEO Omar Berrada, hired new head coach Ruben Amorim.
Ashworth’s brief tenure – marginal reigns, someone quipped – can feel a microcosm of Ratcliffe’s United. There was the initial excitement, the promise to target the best of the best, the wait, the cost, the anticlimactic reality and then another sacking. There was the money poured down the drain, too, given that United forked out some £2m in compensation to Newcastle for his services and now, while his exit is officially by mutual consent, it was instigated by the club and they will presumably have to pay off Ashworth. Once again, fans and staff are entitled to feel they will have to pay for the failures of the decision-makers.
It amounts to a further waste of money from a co-owner who has put up ticket prices, sacked around 250 employees – with the possible exception of the ambassador Sir Alex Ferguson, all almost certainly paid rather less than Ashworth – given Erik ten Hag a new contract only to dispense with the manager several months later and spent around £200m in the transfer window. Perhaps Ashworth and co will be vindicated in time but thus far, only Noussair Mazraoui, the cheapest of the five acquisitions, could rank as a success.
And if that reflects in part on Ashworth, the decision to retain Ten Hag in the summer came when he was still on gardening leave; he and Berrada claimed they had no input in it and they, unlike Sir Dave Brailsford or Jason Wilcox, had not been able to work alongside the Dutchman at Carrington. As Ashworth goes, it is having spent almost as long on gardening leave as in situ at Old Trafford; he had 133 days to look at his lawn, 160 to assess a failing club.
In an interview published on Saturday, and seeming to display a remarkable lack of self-awareness, Ratcliffe told United We Stand criticised United’s buying before his arrival and said they wanted the best recruitment in the world. That one of his flagship appointments has gone several months later suggests his own recruitment is substandard. United’s statement announcing his exit referred to a “transitional period for the club” but Ashworth was supposed to be part of a new structure that would last for years; he was never intended to be an interim sporting director.
But so far the Ineos reign has been characterised by impatience and incompetence. There has been plenty of talk about grandiose ambition, of wanting people who are “best in class”, of being “one of the best clubs” in the world, of having a stadium to rival the Nou Camp or the Bernabeu (but preferably one someone else should pay for). Yet United retained Ten Hag after finishing eighth in their worst Premier League season thus far. They are now 13th. They bought players for Ten Hag and now have a squad that doesn’t suit Amorim. “I like the squad,” said Ashworth in September; in the same interview when he and Berrada gave Ten Hag their “full backing”.
Times change at Old Trafford, and quickly. Ashworth, the man charged with shaping United’s future, instead becomes part of their past, his reign spanning a mere 23 games. For him, it has been a disastrous 2024; perhaps longer, given that most of the credit for getting Newcastle into the Champions League belonged with others. For United, who dispensed with football director John Murtough as part of their preparations for bringing in Ashworth, there is a question if they hire another executive, if they reshape their ever-changing structure further.
“Our antenna wasn’t perfect at United and we’ve made one or two errors,” Ratcliffe told United We Stand. Was that a reference to Ashworth? Rewind to February when Newcastle were reluctant to release him and there was talk they wanted £20m and he said: “What I do think is completely absurd is suggesting a man who is really good at his job sits in his garden for one-and-a-half years.”
Ten months on, the decision is that Ashworth will not be – and presumably has not been – really good at his job at United. He is a decent man, and has behaved with integrity. It was apparently tough for all sides to conclude it wasn’t working. But Ashworth will now go as another inglorious chapter in United’s recent history while his swift unravelling may act as a deterrent to many a potential successor. Ineos presented themselves as the answers to the problems at United. So far, however, they have merely increased.
