It's about time...INEOS moving to put round pegs in round holes

ON the day Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was paraded in the No.7 Suite as the permanent United manager at Old Trafford, word came from the boardroom that the club was 'close' to appointing a technical director.

- SAMUEL LUCKHURST

Whatever one's definition of 'close, it is not nearly two years. It was 719 days later when Darren Fletcher was unveiled as the technical director and John Murtough as football director.

It is typical of United that they went through title changes. There was head of football, director of football and technical director. The technical director turned out to be the football director.

The dual role of Murtough and Fletcher, two internal hires, was a curious strategy when the assumption was there would be one figurehead. Ed Woodward had not yet fallen on his sword over the Super League and was still the key decision-maker.

The Reds had taken the best part of two years to settle on someone who had been on their doorstep all along in Murtough, who joined the club in December 2013 and was promoted to head of football development in 2016.

Woodward explained that United overlooked established and exotic names, such as Dan Ashworth, Ralf Rangnick and Paul Mitchell, as they did not want someone renowned for recruitment. Murtough had jointly run the academy during its state of flux in 2015-16 and built the women's team from scratch in 2018.