You have to admit, that really is very funny. After all the scribbling over the summer about how sporting directors are now arguably even more valued and sought after than head coaches, and after weeks of waiting for Dan Ashworth’s transformative move to Manchester United, he has ended up on the Old Trafford scrap heap in almost record time.
Manchester United spent about as long waiting for Ashworth to be able to make the switch from Newcastle as he actually spent in the job itself, with the club mutually consenting Ashworth just five months after his arrival at the club.
There are always significant missteps in the early days of any new ownership’s regime, and Ashworth has apparently quickly been seen as one of them by INEOS. Is that a kneejerk of immense proportions, or a swift, decisive action to correct an obvious mistake?
Details are sketchy at the moment, which makes it difficult to say, but only time can bear out the truth in any case. Just look at United’s summer business, which was generally regarded as appropriate and sensible as the new Premier League season approached, but was quickly exposed as woefully deficient.
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The folly of their decision to hold onto Erik ten Hag was certainly pressed home by United’s poor early-season form. Ashworth has been on record to say he played no role at all in the decision to keep the Dutchman, and nor is it clear what his stance was on his dismissal at this stage.
Nor is it clear at what point United had made up their minds that Ashworth would be given the heave-ho. It’s not uncommon for everyone at a club to be aware of an impending departure like that but to keep it closely under wraps; it does neither party any good to leak it.
But the lack of Ashworth quotes on the club statement that announced Ruben Amorim’s arrival feels significant. This isn’t a ‘they can’t sell him because he’s on the club calendar’ kind of thing: such omissions are rarely done by accident. It’s a moment’s work to include them. Press officers often base those kinds of quotes off a quick one-minute phone call, or just write them on the quoted party’s behalf and get the sign-off by text or email.
That makes their omission more likely to be purposeful than not. The club may have wanted Ashworth’s name nowhere near Amorim’s appointment, or Ashworth himself may not have wished to be associated with it; the early reporting suggests it may have been a little of both. Either way, both parties would have known there was an issue.
Whatever that problem was, it is an undeniable setback for United that screams of their indecision about what they actually want to be. Ashworth’s appointment was meant to set them up for the longer-term future by giving them a level of certainty and cohesion that has been demonstrably lacking at the top of the club for years.
United may see it differently, arguing that their decision to wield the axe so quickly is the clear and decisive act of a club that still knows the direction they want to go in and had found that Ashworth was not that. Amorim’s arrival may only have compounded that feeling and it’s possible they have an appointment in mind who they feel better aligns with his vision.
Still…the whole point of hiring a sporting director is that they are meant to be more of a constant than the head coach, ensuring a cohesive through-line to the club’s thinking. It should not ideally work the other way round.
INEOS might also argue that sticking with Ashworth despite feeling it was not working was the best thing to do, and that fear of embarrassment should be last on their list of priorities when they’re trying to rebuild themselves.
United, as an institution, have been embarrassing enough for ten years without adding more to that by going down the wrong path just because of the optics of it – and god knows that club has held itself back because it has been more concerned with saving face and rarely admitting to a mistake than actually doing what is in their own best interest.
Even then, you have to ask what had happened in those five months to lower his stock so considerably; they did not go through a protracted HR wrangle with Newcastle by accident. To effectively go with Amorim over Ashworth is a vote of enormous confidence in their new manager, but the wisdom of that will only become clear over time.
Quite possibly, Ashworth’s face simply didn’t fit at United. It happens sometimes. Their weight is now well and truly behind the Ruben Amorim machine – and it has to pay off for them.
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The Kyiv IndependentOlena Goncharova
