Matt Maher: Dan Ashworth's United exit a classic case of too many cooks
Farewell then, Dan Ashworth, the now former Manchester United sporting director who spent as much time on gardening leave than he did in the actual job.
Ashworth’s sacking after just five months at Old Trafford is clearly embarrassing for the club’s relatively new regime, who fought so hard and paid so much to get him from Newcastle.
Yet from a distance, it perhaps isn’t all that surprising. The new structure former Albion sporting director Ashworth was joining at United always looked rather messy.
In addition to appointing him as sporting director, co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and board member Dave Brailsford also moved to bring in Jason Wilcox as technical director. At many clubs, those roles are one and the same. Throw in a new chief executive in the shape of Omar Berrada and Christopher Vivell as director of recruitment and it really is little wonder the club’s strategy in recent months has looked rather haphazard.
There is undoubtedly some irony in Ratcliffe, who has previously railed at United’s bloated structure and expressed his desire to make three-quarters of the club’s 1,000-strong workforce redundant, allowing so many senior staff to be recruited in roles which would appear to so clearly overlap.
Ashworth is thought to have taken the blame for the decision to keep Erik ten Hag as head coach, even though his job was supposed to be more wide-ranging and not so directly involved in recruitment or the hiring and firing of the men in the dugout.
In reality, that was never going to work. Ashworth, Vivell and Wilcox have all come up through similar routes, working at smaller clubs where they ran the show. They all have their own contacts, those agents and scouts they lean on for advice. That is an awful lot of voices to be involved in a club which has suffered more than anything over the past decade from a distinct lack of direction.
For Ashworth the dismissal will be bruising yet in truth his dismissal will be viewed in many quarters as simply another example of United’s dysfunction. His stock remains high and he should not struggle to find more work.
United will now find out whether removing one big voice from the room helps them find the clarity required.
