Perhaps they constituted a five-man firing squad in the plush seats. Or maybe, as Erik ten Hag said, they are colleagues with whom he is in constant communication. Jim Ratcliffe, Dave Brailsford, Omar Berrada, Dan Ashworth and Jason Wilcox sat in a row at Villa Park.
They will have a more private meeting today; long scheduled, just as Ratcliffe had planned for weeks to turn up in the second city. Yet some meetings become more important, more consequential than others. The new Manchester United hierarchy, the Ineos administration, always intended to make regular assessments of how it is going at Old Trafford.
A one-word summary may be “badly”.
The immediate issue is whether or not disruptors who have brought considerable change were mistaken to opt for continuity in one position. Ineos have made around 250 staff redundant. They will have to determine if it should have been 251 and if, perhaps, they got their first major decision wrong.
They retained Ten Hag. It is three months since they triggered a one-year extension to his contract, six weeks since Berrada and Ashworth gave Ten Hag their full support – albeit while saying the choice to keep him was made before their arrivals – but it is three days since Ratcliffe declined to offer the Dutchman his backing.
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