INEOS have a lot of work to do to clean that mess that exits at Manchester United. Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford will have an introduction period before making drastic changes and they might want to take note of some of things Ralf Rangnick said while he was interim manager.
Rangnick will not be remembered too fondly by United fans because the results were as bad as the football. It was clear that players weren’t rallying behind a man they knew would be out the door at the end of the season.
The German was brought to the club with a view of becoming a strategic consultant, but was very critical of how the club operated and it wasn’t long before he was sent through the exit door.
He went on record as to say United needed open heart surgery to fix the problems at the club.
“You don’t even need glasses to see and analyse where the problems are,” Rangnick said, as per The Guardian.
“Now it’s about how do we solve them? It’s not enough to do some minor amendments – cosmetic things. In medicine you would say that this is an operation of the open heart. If this happens and everyone has realised that this has to happen and if people want to work together then it makes sense and I believe it doesn’t take two or three years to change those things. This can happen within one year.
“For sure [strong leadership is needed]. This is something that not just one single person as a manager can do. With all respect to Jürgen [Klopp] and Pep [Guardiola] I’m sure that they didn’t do all the things themselves [at Liverpool and Manchester City]. There were also other people involved in those two clubs, people in certain positions, no matter what area it was, in order to rebuild and build something we want to build here. In all areas you have to have top people and they have to work together in a very close, reliable way.”
Jesse Marsch, who managed Leeds previously and has a close relationship with the former United interim coach, has done a podcast with Simon Jordan and echoed what Rangnick has revealed to him in private about the club lacking cohesion.
“That the communication with the scouting departments, sporting departments, directors – that made them feel there wasn’t much of a future there, and that was the case.
“In any club, especially the best, the pressure from within for everyone to understand what the identity is, and the commitment for everyone to stay disciplined to do that everyday, normally dictates how good they can become. From afar, and from what I’ve heard, that has been lost at Man United.”
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