TOTD EXTRA: Mission Impossible?
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Hello and welcome to the second edition of Talk of the Devils Extra. If you didn't catch the first one, it was on United's striker situation, which hasn't exactly improved since, so go back and have a listen to that if you've not done already. Extra is going to be a twice-monthly bonus pod, giving us the opportunity to get deeper into the biggest Manchester United stories on The Athletic.

Today, we're looking at the future direction and ambition of the leadership team at Old Trafford just over a year on from INEOS's investment in United. They've launched the Mission 21 and Mission 1 projects to turn the men's and women's senior teams into title winners, hopefully in time for the club's 150th anniversary in 2028. And my goodness, does it feel like a lot of work that needs to be done to turn those dreams into a reality.

We've got Andy Mitten and Laurie Whitwell with us for this one. Ollie Kaye will be joining us in a short while as well. He's been writing about Dave Brailsford's role in all of this. But first of all, Laurie, can we just explain exactly for anyone who doesn't know what Mission 21 and Mission 1 are?

Yeah, so it's fairly straightforward in that Mission 21 is the idea of Manchester United taking a 21st league title and having an ambition to work towards that, putting a name to it, creating a sense of urgency amongst staff and everybody around the club that that is the ultimate goal, not to let seasons drift by where there's not that clear future.

I suppose, of the ambition. And so, yeah, Mission One is the first women's title. That's what they're after there. Obviously, they haven't won the league title yet with the women. And, okay, it might sound weird

easier said than done right um put a name to something and it magically happens well obviously it doesn't but i think the idea is that they're trying to make sure that people are absolutely aware of what the ultimate goal is yeah so dave brailsford and omar barada seem to be the two that are communicating this mission or these projects it's like mission impossible isn't it in some ways certainly for the men's side the women are in a little bit better shape at the minute but andy fundamentally is this a good idea for this to be

out in the public that the team, the leadership team, are aiming to get Manchester United back to this point? Or considering the amount of scrutiny there is on every single second of work at Old Trafford, could it actually be counterproductive? Yeah, because you're setting yourself up for the fall. I don't mind the idea of focusing on a date at a certain point. I like the idea of it coinciding with Manchester United's 150th anniversary.

If you go back to the 100th, Manchester United were in a pretty poor position, pretty similar to now back in 1978. The problem is if it doesn't happen, Manchester United will get a lot of criticism. But what does that mean? What is criticism? At least it's a drive and a focus towards a point where

for the men and for the women's team, as we speak now, it does look far-fetched because this season has been so, so poor. Things can turn pretty quickly in football. They can turn...

within the timeframe that we've been given. But to turn Manchester United into a team who are in the lower half, to a team that's winning, not just competing for, finishing second or third, winning the Premier League, it's a bit of an ask. Yeah, Ruben Amorim stated this ambition once again after going out of the FA Cup to Fulham, that the ambition of the club is to win the Premier League title. It attracted criticism from Wayne Rooney, who was on a BBC broadcast at the time. It raised eyebrows, I think,

with Manchester United fans as well. Because the fact is, Laurie, the team are so far away from the standard required to win the league and there's not actually that long to 2028. We're talking three years, three months or to look at it a different way, considering how central recruitment is to all of this potentially, there's only six transfer windows. I suppose when you start

attaching names you know project 150 is obviously the one that andy touched on there you know for 2028 the 150th anniversary of united being formed or or the club at least i mean ultimately though united should be aiming to win the title that is clear that that kind of almost doesn't need to be said really but this is something i think that the football leadership felt that they needed to reintegrate and perhaps with today brailsford which we'll get into in more detail being at

quite influential on this point as well to sort of say to staff, you know, to present it as a kind of, right, this is what we're aiming towards. Okay, I know there's a lot of chaos going on at the moment and it might seem a sort of speck on the horizon, but we have to actually build towards it. We're not just kind of vaguely going about our business because that felt like under the glazers,

determination, that absolute drive to win the title wasn't there because you had people that were in Joel and Avram on the other side of the Atlantic basically pulling the strings from a distance and not really engaged on the day-to-day on the ground every

every time that United qualified for the Champions League, then the spending on transfers seemed to dwindle. So it felt like that was the ultimate aim, really, to kind of keep United in the Champions League, keep the revenues coming in. They would push back against that, but you have to look at the results. They speak for themselves in the decade since Alex Ferguson retired. So I think the idea here is to energise minds, to focus people onto this task. And I think Brailsford did the same kind of thing at

British Cycling after he left the Team GB, you know, the Velodrome, went onto the road racing side of things. People laughed at him when he said he was going to win the Tour de France with a British rider. I think he said within five years maybe and ultimately... Did it in two and a half. Did it in two and a half and then they did it seven times overall and I know that wasn't without controversy as well at times, you know, in terms of pushing the lines or maybe even stepping over them, what was actually allowed but certainly I think

people around that would say, well, that was a job well done and we actually achieved what we set out to do, in fact, exceeded it. Yeah, they've also moved the focus of the club and they've spoke about this publicly from commercial success to sporting success again, which is something we all appreciate

celebrate the problem Andy that they've got at the moment is the finances clearly I mean we're talking at a time where there's been yet more announcements of cuts and redundancies a short time ago the financial results now show they've lost over 300 million pounds in the last three years and

I thought it was a really interesting Financial Times article over the weekend as well. They don't often reference rival publications, but it was spelled out so clearly in the piece. Failing sporting performance, the lack of Champions League football, failed transfers, changes at management and executive level is basically explaining the majority of that £300 million loss. There's been criticism of the decisions that have been taken over some of the redundancies and some of the cost-cutting as well, but

But do you think actually looking at the sporting project more, looking at this sort of target, is that going to be more effective in turning things around and returning standards than just those cost-cutting measures there's been so far? You've got to get Manchester United back to winning. Everything else stems from that.

At the start of that FT piece, it began by saying that what Sir Jim Ratcliffe does is he buys struggling companies and he turns them around. He rejuvenates them. And there are parallels here. Now, it's okay saying sports first, and there has been criticism from Louis van Gaal, for example, that Manchester United is overly commercial. And that is true, but those commercial revenues have also helped Manchester United be able to compete for top players, not that that money's been...

spent well and there can be a clash there can be a situation of needs must so if you look now Manchester United are set to go on a post-season tour which

which hasn't been done since the 70s. Why? Money. Commercial. United need money in the bank. United is still a big name where promoters will pay for the club to go and fill a stadium in your country and get that money banked. Would any of the players want to go on that? Would it help sporting endeavours? No, not at all. So there's compromises all around. One other example I heard of

A project was, I was at Leicester City in 2014, that famous game, the 5-3 against Manchester United. And I read a very definitive statement in Leicester City's programme that they intended for the Foxes to be a top four team within five years. And I just spilled my coffee laughing my head off. Leicester City is a top four team. What are you on about?

Two years later, they won the Premier League. Yeah, so it's like manifesting something, isn't it? And we're getting into the realms of other podcasts, maybe, which I don't really want to do at this precise moment. But financial austerity, fundamentally, Laurie. Obviously, INEOS feel this is the way that they need to go about things to correct the financial problems that the club have got at the moment. But...

practically and ideologically, does it not make it harder to achieve these big ambitions and create the sort of thriving and progressive environment needed to meet these big ambitions when you are making these sort of financial cuts and changes?

Yes, it has to be, right? Because if they had a blank checkbook and they could go and do, you know, perhaps what Man City have done in this January transfer window where they have signed three players straight out the gate that can go into the team immediately. Okay, they're young, so they've got to develop, but it feels like, you know, they had problems and they've addressed them and...

it seems like they'll probably end up finishing the top four which was clearly aimed to make those signings in this window so yeah if they had unlimited finances then they'd be able to accelerate this kind of process you'd think although having said that as Andy said United have had money before and they've spent it badly you know so there's no guarantee that that would actually turn things around but even the decisions that's been made to sort of cut jobs that

and not maybe anything like the amount of money that's been spent on some of the decisions that have been made about the management or that Ashworth coming in and going or the cutting out people's lunches or hot lunches, depending on how this ends up playing out. Those types of things, do they really need to be made at this point if you want to get to being a Premier League title winner this quick?

We'll talk in a moment about Oli's piece, but there's things in there about the janitors at NASA referencing their task is to get Man on the Moon, which is the type of company ambition that INEOS want everyone at Manchester United to get behind. That's made harder by these sorts of decisions, isn't it? Are they absolutely necessary at this point if they want to get United to be title winners so quickly?

I don't think so. Clearly what Ratcliffe is doing is trying to strip the club back so that he feels like everybody there is absolutely intensely focused on one aim and all this extra stuff, is it really necessary? Now you definitely will get people arguing strongly against that, particularly on the commercial side as Andy's touched on where

that money, people in those jobs to get those sponsorship deals, to convince partners to pay more money. The Qualcomm deal, for example, that they heralded in the last financial reports, the people that were involved in that have gone. So are you really going to be able to actually produce these kind of commercial deals to then get the money in to buy the players that will help you win the Premier League? Yes, that is absolutely a concern. Also, the morale around the place, I think it is absolutely at rock bottom for a lot of staff and

that I think does feed into the environment around the football team as well. I mean, Amarant's touched on that, hasn't he? Okay, to what extent? We can all debate it, but I feel like, you know, to actually win the Premier League, having a positive attitude around the place, that's what you want. Now they will say, okay, well, listen, we had to make changes because the way the club was going wasn't successful. So we feel that

putting new people in place will aid that and then you'll have a positive attitude around the place and you'll have people that are absolutely geared towards making this team a success. We can absolutely debate whether that's the right thing because I think there's a lot of people that feel very strongly that it isn't. What's the Glazers role in all of this, Andy, as well? Sitting back, laughing the socks off because they don't have to make these decisions. Under the Glazers, Manchester United were actually profitable up until about 2019

The pandemic, right? Yeah, that's exactly. And you can't cut costs forever, but Manchester United became bloated under the glazes. Mark Armstrong's come in as a new chief business officer. His job is to raise revenues. It's much more easier to raise commercial revenues when the team's

are winning because sponsors like to be associated with winners. They like to show their shared values. Nobody likes to say, yeah, we are proud to sponsor this 15th best team. 14th. 14th. At least not the level that Manchester United are trying to pitch at, which is a global level, which is recognition where the sponsors want their brands to be seen in the Champions League.

None of this happens without the Glazers, Ian, because the Glazers put Manchester United into this situation with that highly leveraged buyout, put the club into debt, continue to put a strain on the club

They took all those dividends out of the club. So Jim Ratcliffe is trying to work a way out of this. And it is like threading cotton through the eye of a needle. It's very difficult, more so when the team are not winning. And I've made the point several times on podcasts that each Premier League place is worth almost £4 million. So if United are going to go to Asia, for what?

a little bit more than that. It just shows how important it is to get the Premier League. That is not happening. So it puts even more pressure on. There was talk of Manchester United, the budgets being based on the fact that the club are playing European football. That may not happen again next year unless Manchester United now win the Europa League. But the Glazers are getting away with this scot-free because...

they've made this investment, which someone else is trying to grow now. The debt that they've put on the club, the interest payments, it makes people wince. And that is why on a weekly basis, you hear Manchester United fans protesting against the Glazers. I said it many times, it should never have been allowed to have happened, wouldn't be allowed to happen now. And it is very sorry that a football club has been treated this way. It's such a,

a pertinent issue now as it has been every single year since it happened 20 years ago. Before we take a break and introduce Oli on the other side of that, Laurie, let's talk about the women's team for just a moment because of the two senior sides, they look to be the ones who are closer to completing their mission. As we record here now, they're only five points behind Chelsea in second place at the top end of the WSL. But there has been some awkward conversations that have taken place since INEOS.

have had their investment in Manchester United about the women's side. Are they just being carried along for the ride in this or do you think there is serious ambition and focus being put into the women's team? Yeah, it depends who you ask, I think. I get the vibe from everything that Ratcliffe has said publicly and probably privately as well, that his ambition, his focus is the men's team.

Charlotte Harper did a really good piece on this, didn't she? A year of the women's team under Ineos and the kind of comments from an Ineos spokesman were certainly not the most engaging on the topic. It was almost like, listen, we're not going to lie to you. The men's team is the focus really. That being said,

certainly Omar Barada made a point of bringing up the women's team in his meeting last week. Mark Skinner attended it as well, actually. And Dave Belsford certainly has brought it up in the Mission One project that he's outlined to staff. So I think there's certainly people that are aware that it needs to have full recognition as much as the men's team. Now, clearly, you'll look at it and go, well, the men's team are the side of the business that generates the money, right? That's where...

the broadcasters come in for that's what the sponsors you know predominantly come in for that's what the match day revenue goes towards you know 75 000 every week you

You can also say that the men's team is where they've lost all the money because they've been spending inadvisably on players and wages. So if you get it right, clearly the men's team is a profitable arm. But I feel like there is certainly people at the club that want the women's team to come through and progress. Because I think you can certainly see that that is an area, even if you want to go for a business argument, that is an area of growth and that could actually become worthwhile ultimately.

I put this point to Shijun Ratcliffe. I said, there's a perception you're not interested in the women's team. And he replied, the perception is slightly misguided. There's only so much that you can do and our focus has been on the men's team. If not, you get spread too thinly. We need to sort out the main issue, the men's team, then the women's team. The women's team is an opportunity. Women's football is growing really quickly in popularity and size. We need to participate in that. The girls wear a Manchester United badge on their shirt and they're representing the club.

OK, it's interesting to get his perspective on that. I know that even referencing them as girls will offend some people because it's a women's side and I think some of the language around the way that Sir Jim Radcliffe has spoken about the women's side is probably an area of annoyance as well. OK, after the break, the Athletic senior football writer Olly Kaye will join us to discuss the men at the heart of this new strategy for Manchester United.

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You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Okay, well, I'm delighted to introduce Oli Kaye onto Talk of the Devils Extra. Oli, thank you so much for being with us. It's really good of you to do this because we wanted to get into your sort of specialist knowledge of Sir Dave Brailsford and the job that he's got on at Manchester United. Obviously, we've seen the piece and people will have read it as well on The Athletic.

about this being the toughest challenge of Dave Brailsford's career so far. Why do you think it's so tough for him? Because he's obviously had some pretty amazing achievements in sport so far and he's taken on a lot of different sort of missions during that time. Well, I think for one thing, his background is entirely in cycling in terms of his success with

the British cycling team and with Team Sky and Team Ineos as it became in a general role with the British Olympic team he spent decades working in cycling he knew the industry inside out and

as well as being successful in it, he was blessed, I think, with the opportunity to create something from scratch almost with British cycling because there was suddenly loads and loads of investment in cycling and various other sports. He was a big believer in this marginal gains theory where you have people...

performing at what you think is their optimum level and then you improve everything around them whether it's the nutrition whether it's the science whether it's the data analysis whether it's you know giving them the right pillows and mattresses to it you know and it worked brilliantly in cycling and the spectacular success at

in a Tour de France as well, which is probably more amazing, really. More relevant with these missions as well, right? Yeah. Staying you're going to do something when it seems like you're a long way off it and managing to do that quicker than you intended. Yeah. So Team Sky was launched in 2010 and he came out very quickly with this ambition. Well, we're going to win this with a British rider within five years. I think that was probably considered almost as...

outlandish as trying to win the Premier League by 2028 in United's case but it's... Don't laugh too hard please. Sorry but they did it within two and a half years with Bradley Wiggins and look I know the techniques and so on and some of the practices have been certainly questioned and his role has been certainly questioned in subsequent years but

But they did that. They set that target and left no stone unturned. But I think it's totally different when you're starting something with a totally new team in a sport where there is clearly a linear relationship between power and your facilities, et cetera, and results.

And then football where you're inheriting what is a huge and failing organisation, which has been drifting for, let's say, 11 years, where the whole thing has got this sort of huge cloud over it and this huge, you know, you're not starting with a blank canvas at all. You're having to deal with inherited players, inherited staleness, inherited mental jadedness, inherited issues all over the club.

And I think to say you can apply the sort of Team Sky, British Cycling kind of approach of clean slate, everyone driving forward towards the same goal, thinking that it's going to be a really clear, clean progression to that kind of target, I think is totally different. And it's a sport and an industry which is illogical. It's a huge club which is...

has got probably more challenges than any of the big, big, big clubs in Europe. I think it's probably the most difficult one at the moment to turn around because of the weight of history, the weight of expectation, the weight of debt. I just think it's so difficult to do. Even before we get into the question of marginal gains versus big gains, but I do think having a clarity of mission, a clarity of objective is,

is really important. I just question whether they know how to get from A to B. Yeah, that is the big question. Laurie, do we actually know what Steve Brailsford's role is at Manchester United? He's not got a clearly defined title in relation to Manchester United. Clearly he has to Ineos, but he seems much more involved in the management and day-to-day running of the club than maybe we anticipated when this takeover first took place.

I think we always thought he would have an influential role just because of how closely he was working at Nice, for example. He had a camper van outside their training ground whilst that was all getting reconstructed. I mean, it's a very expensive camper van, I think £300,000 worth of kit. He's not done that over in Manchester, but he is very present at Carrington. I think there's been moments where he's perhaps been not as day-to-day present, maybe when Dan Ashworth was Sporting Director and

And obviously Jason Wilcox was in the building. But certainly when Ineos first got the keys to the place, and we were talking, he was there, wasn't he, at the ground, the first match to the Aston Villa game, Boxing Day, after they'd got the thumbs up from the SEC and the Glazers to complete the deal. Did you not anticipate there being more of a handover, though, when football people were put in place by the leadership team? Yeah, and I wonder if that was the original plan. And then obviously Ashworth goes, right? And I think Brailsford has certainly...

some of the stuff that he will be doing is in Ashworth's wheelhouse, right? And then Wilcox as well, Jason Wilcox, you know, technical director now perhaps doing more sporting overarching ideas as well on that side. But certainly he was someone at Carrington that came in and was trying to put people in positions. From speaking to people sort of around the situation, I think that's what he would feel is his best attribute, putting people

elite sports people in the right positions and getting them all working, creating that environment where they're pushing each other. So for example, I think James Morton is somebody that he knows from INEOS where he's a nutrition expert. So he's been doing work around United and there's other people as well that have been appointed on that basis. And you might say, well, is this a bit of a

had a grey area where you're kind of working for Ineos and he's a board member as well for United let's not forget as well but you're not technically employed by United so how does that exactly work is there a clear line of authority he obviously answers to Ratcliffe right he's got a close relationship with Ratcliffe and I think he's able to from what I can tell speak

speak quite openly with him and that's not the case I don't think for all the people around Ineos and his inner circle so that's an interesting dynamic for sure and you can certainly question is he the right person to be so involved in the sporting side of things given as Oli's touched on there his records in cycling and

I think that's where you've got to just make sure that it does work, where you've got the football people making these football decisions. I think he would say that he doesn't ever get involved in that kind of decision-making. I think there's a quote, isn't there, where he says that he can see a cycling race in multicolours because he's been watching them for so many years, whereas in football, he still sees it in black and white. He's actually colourblind, I think, as well, so that's maybe sort of partly his thinking on that particular metaphor. But from what he says in public terms,

anyway, he feels that he doesn't get involved in that level of sort of decision making. So for example, Omar Barada, I think, you know, drove the kind of appointment of Ruben Amarin, let's say. So, you know, you have to kind of trust those people and that's an interesting position for him because his role has been in commercial previously really and although he did obviously then do more sporting functions at City before he came to United, it's

It's a really interesting one to debate. I think the fact that he is at Carrington and the energy and drive that he has, even at age 60, and what he's achieved in his career to this point, I think that's a net positive for United because you've got people there on the ground seeing things day to day.

Now, clearly there is a debate as to whether that's actually then going to provide success. I think Nice, for example, there was certainly a lot of turmoil there when they first went in there. They didn't get everything right by far, but then it actually did turn around and they were sort of second, I think, in Ligue 1 when he then switched his focus to United. And OK, Nice hasn't exactly, you know, gone and torn up the French League since that point. So maybe you can question that. But yeah, there's...

There's sort of crumbs of evidence there that this could work, but clearly it's such a fragile situation that it's going to take some strong leadership and a lot of people pulling in the same direction. Nice are third now in Ligue 1, which is very good for them. Above big clubs like Monaco and Lille and Lyon, they had a disastrous campaign in the Europa League. But with David Brailsford and with one of the earlier questions, should there have been...

longer handover. So what happened was you had John Murtagh who stayed for about four or five months. My understanding is that he could have stayed, but it would have been in a lesser position. And then you had this huge appetite from Manchester United fans. Proper football structure, bring proper football people in. So nobody cared when...

this long list, and it was, of senior executives departed from Manchester United. And then Dan Ashworth was much heralded and we've seen the criticism around that and the optics of that do not look good at all. So you now have a situation where Dave Brailsford, and I echo what Laurie said, I do hear good things about him around Carrington. He's working on the football structure with Jason Wilcox and Colette Roach and Omar Barada is doing more football than

but he's also overseeing the commercial as well. Are those four people the right people to get Manchester United back is a key question. We don't know the answer to that. They're going to try their best. We've seen other people try their best as well. But that is where Brailsford is. He's hands-on. He's down there at Carrington, which isn't ideal because it's been redeveloped and they've got a vision for the future. But

But they're working on a building site at the moment. So that doesn't help anyone. And one of those visions is for open plan, the sharing of ideas, for example. At the moment, they're in little cubicles. But when I went to see Jim Ratcliffe, who else was in the room there? It was Sir Dave Brailsford and it was Omar Barada. Those people are absolutely central to Manchester United in 2025.

It does pose the question, Oli, about who exactly is making these decisions because also Sir Jim Radcliffe's overriding influence over the decision-making at United has also been a topic of major conversation around this. In terms of the sort of INEOS influence on United, why do you think that they feel they need to create these sort of big statements? Why do you feel that their influence on the club is...

is almost starting with this sort of statement last autumn that they want to get the men's team to be title winners, that they want to get the women's team to be title winners. Well, I think it's probably important to say that this mission statement was meant for internal eyes and ears. It wasn't meant to be for the outside world to hear, but obviously, inevitably, the outside world does hear because Old Trafford these days is leaky in more ways than one and it's inevitable that something like that comes out.

I don't think the idea of having this as a stated target, mission statement, etc. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think if you look at United's last 11 years, since the Moyes season, I think there's always been this sort of

desperation to get back to the top as soon as possible and probably try and take shortcuts, short-term managerial appointments, short-term signings. I don't need to go through them all. But a lot of the things have been designed, I think, to take shortcuts. And I think this is probably the first time in, I mean, you could maybe say the very early Solskjaer period, but it feels like

perhaps the first or second time over that time where they've thought, right, we are in a mess right now. This is where we need to get to in three years. This is our mission. How do we get there? I think there's actually a benefit in saying almost let's go one step, two steps back to take three steps, four steps, five steps forward. I think it's similar to what Arsenal did under Arteta. I think that kind of

is beneficial. Yes, it brings a certain pressure, but maybe it sort of alleviates a certain pressure in the short term and allows the club to be able to build next season in a way where everyone's not saying they have to win the league or they have to be in the top four. If you can say next season, the goal is to keep building towards this goal of winning

winning the Premier League by 2028 or at least being in a position to challenge for the Premier League in 2028, I think that's a sensible thing as long as strategically, vision-wise, there is actually a clear plan and a clear sense of how they are going to achieve that. With the Brails for thing, I've heard a lot about

elite performance mentality, improving on the nutrition side, improving sports science, strength and conditioning, data analysis, all of that. I'm still absolutely none the wiser 12 months after

Ratcliffe and Ineos arrived I'm still non-wise as to what the football strategy is and I'm still baffled that the guy they brought in to lead that was sort of chucked out the window at the first opportunity it's very strange and that probably just brings more attention on what's Dave Brailsford doing what's Omar Barada doing because the guy who was meant to be leading the sort of football strategy is no longer there.

Just before we move it on, Laurie, recruitment has been put at the heart of so much of Manchester United's issues and has been put at the heart by the manager, Ruben Amorim, as the reason why people are losing their jobs. The route out of this could well be recruitment as well. And talking about the changes that are being made at executive level, Christopher Vivel came in as an interim director of recruitment. That's now been made permanent. So that's at least a sign that INEOS are making some progress

move forward on this?

Yeah, I mean, certainly he arrived at Manchester United with a reputation for being an impressive person in the recruitment world. He had a short tenure at Chelsea. I think it was a bit of a, you know, we talk about a mess at United and sort of lines of delineation. I think certainly there were some issues there as well at Chelsea and he left before not too long. But I think he did good work at Red Bull, had a hand in a lot of players that you'd think are pretty good signings at that point. So,

But yeah, I mean, the idea, at least you've got that as a permanent appointment now, working with Jason Wilcox, Technical Director, Omar Barad, as you say, and Dave Brailsford above all that as well. I mean, so I don't think he gets involved in the actual decisions on who they're going to go for, but clearly there's a financial...

limit to what they can go towards and obviously that's then communicated with Sir Jim Ratcliffe with the Glazers they've got these ex-co meetings that happen every month where they kind of discuss this kind of stuff and recruitment is going to be huge I mean they obviously only signed one player in January Patrick Dorg who was a 20 year old from Lecce for you know sort of okay money but you could see how he would his value would rise in years to come so I think that's the approach that they want to go down and obviously there might also come a point where they think getting young players off

for every single position might be detrimental because you need players to win

more regularly than three or four years in the future and having some stability with an experienced player might help that. We've sort of seen with Chelsea at the moment, aren't we, where it looked like it was going to be flourishing at one point and now it's kind of, okay, maybe they do need a bit more guidance from experienced players. So it'll be really interesting to see exactly who they go for in the summer market, money allowing. Yeah, that's a future podcast, isn't it? Certainly. We've already talked about the striker situation for the summer on the last extra, obviously. Oli, just...

Looking at the decision makers now, Manchester United fans wanted to dream when INEOS had their investment confirmed just over a year ago that things could be better, that they would sort out footballing structures. But considering the way things have gone on the pitch since, even since this mission statement was made, we understand, last autumn, Dan Ashworth's left, the manager, Eric Ten Haag, has left and Ruben Amorim has been appointed. So,

Is the club actually a little bit further away from achieving these ambitions than maybe they were when they were first made? Because even the financial picture feels far more severe now than then. And the prospects of no European football next year only worsens that. Yeah, genuinely, I think they're further away. And I didn't think that was possible this time last year. I thought it would be easy to make initial improvements. And I expected that in the summer to involve a change of manager. And I think the fact that...

They didn't change the manager straight away and they ended up in this sort of confused halfway summer transfer window where it felt like the recruitment reflected both Ten Hag and the new recruitment team without really fully reflecting the desires of either. I think it's a totally wasted year, to be honest. It's great in one sense that Amarim came in November rather than having another sort of interminable year.

interim period but it feels like he will be starting from scratch almost when next season starts and he'll also be starting with probably with a lot less credit in the bank than he would have done had he arrived minus the problems of this season basically yeah I'm staggered by how poor the club's decision making has been and

I look at the last summer's transfers and I don't think there's a single disastrous signing in there. I don't think you could say with total certainty that any of those players will be players that the manager will be desperate to build around over the next two or three years. United have had these various points like they did under Mourinho after perhaps his second season, under Solskjaer after his two and a half years in where it felt like they've now reached a point where they can kick on.

And they've very, very quickly fallen a long way from those relative high points. And it's a long, you fall down a lot further than you get back up again. So perhaps a bad summer or a confused summer in the transfer market and the manager and so on last summer, I think has genuinely set them back.

at least this season. Yeah, it's the first time they've had a double drop in the league table, isn't it? If they're going to finish roughly where they are now, as we sit here now at the start of March, then it's the first time that they've gone there. Usually they've gone from 7th or 8th and bounced straight back up again, haven't they, into the top four. Yeah. I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto-friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger, so I can get in more squats anywhere I can. One, two, three.

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Another aspect, Andy, that we've not talked about yet is the fan sentiment around Manchester United at the moment, around some of the decisions that INEOS, the leadership team, has made so far. At the moment, we've got Manchester United fans campaigning against the overarching owners, the Glazers, which obviously has been the case for a long time for very clear reasons. But we've now begun to see fans actively chant against Sir Jim Radcliffe. We've got Musk campaigning against

against what they see as potential ticket rises ahead of next season and, of course, against the ticketing decision that was made for the £66 tickets earlier on this campaign. Also, the 1958 group now are communicating on social media about a protest ahead of the fixture against Arsenal at the weekend.

stating the treatment of fans, the ongoing lack of communication and transparency, and the uncertainty of the club's future as well, which we didn't think would be the case, obviously, a year ago when this investment was ratified. You've got the clear glaze of reasoning as well, why the protests are still taking place. So United's leadership team need the fans on board for this to become reality as well, don't they? And they've just not got that, it doesn't feel like at the moment. The fans can be a big asset, but...

The fan sentiment has dropped alarmingly, even since October. I use the example of Sir Jim Ratcliffe presenting a shirt to Bruno Fernandes for his 250th appearance and getting polite applause from the main stand. You're not going to get that now. That said, historically, United fans have never liked the leading executives, even when the team were winning absolutely everything. That is the default because you're the bad guys. You're putting the ticket prices up. So you mentioned different issues, Arianne.

The Glazers, that is historical, pertinent and still relevant for reasons we've discussed many times on this podcast. There is nervousness and uncertainty about ticket prices for next year. So that's why you see more targeted and specific protests linking with the Football Supporters Federation, linking with fans of other clubs, which I think is good. And we've seen some encouraging signs in recent weeks, Liverpool, West Ham United, Fremantle,

freezing the ticket prices. I'm surprised, if I'm honest. I thought that there were going to be increases at most clubs, especially at clubs where demand is high. We don't know the outcome of it. We do know that Jim Ratcliffe has been meeting the fan advisory board face-to-face. There's very competent people on that fan advisory board, professional people giving the time up for free to try and get a better deal for Manchester United fans. And then you have the general sentiment, which

which is because the team is so poor and losing matches. And you think, why do we go to football? Football is supposed to be enjoyable. It's supposed to be a release from day-to-day life. Maybe this is the norm for most football fans. You know, someone said to me last week, it's just like being an Aldermath Lake fan now. You see your team lose all the time. It's not that bad, surely. Maybe most football fans, this is just the norm. Fan sentiment is on the floor. It can change vastly.

very, very, very quickly. Literally in six games, people will change the tune. And I would always guard against following fan sentiment too much with regard to football decisions. Someone's got to be taking a more longer-term, strategic, less emotional-based decision to look at which players stay and which players go. We hope it's the new people. We don't know whether they're going to be successful or not. Can they be successful, Oli? Just to round off this conversation. You...

One of your lines in the piece, I presume it was your line, it could well be Adam's because you did write it together, but it says basically, Brailsford continues searching for marginal gains and a cultural transformation during a period of financial austerity at a huge dysfunctional club in an illogical, chaotic, unpredictable sport in which he has little experience. I mean, if that doesn't sum up the size of this task, I don't know what will.

I've felt a number of times over the last decade that if United finish sixth, seventh, whatever, you know, that season of drifting, for example, under Ranić, second half of that season, 21, 22, it can't get any worse than this for United because they're a huge club, huge resources. They

They still have a number of talented players, good players, international players. The worst it can get is 6th, 7th, 8th. If you look at Liverpool, Arsenal in their worst seasons in the Premier League era, they've not been bottom half finishers. They might have finished 8th on the other occasion. I think it's almost impossible to get it so badly wrong at a huge club. And United is an absolutely huge club. I think it's almost impossible to get it so badly wrong that you're finishing in the bottom half.

And you can't use, oh, Brentford are good these days, Fulham are good these days. There's no excuse for this depth of underperformance, whether it's for the owners, for the players, for the recruitment. I find it staggering. And I've always assumed that they will be better off, you know, the next season would be a new start and whatever.

they would sort of bounce back and gradually rise up again. I feel like it's inevitable at some point they will get it right, the same way it felt inevitable in the 80s that eventually United are going to get it right. And of course they did spectacularly. But I think this is the first time when they've been really in the doldrums and it feels like there is actually scope for it to get worse because of the financial position, because of the sort of confusion, I think, between...

the manager's vision and the squad at his disposal. I can't see another season as bad as this, but it might not get much better next season. If they're financially constrained, it might be that they're selling better players rather than building around them, or they're not able to get better players in. I just don't know what the vision is. I don't know what the way out of it. I do feel like two, three, four years' time, United will be in a much better place, but how they get there, I don't know. It's just almost like

you're looking for some sort of natural buoyancy level to take them that way rather than a vision to take them that way. Project 21, Mission 21, whatever it's called, it's, you know,

It's there. They have a vision, so they will assume it will happen, but I've no idea how. I think that sums it up rather nicely. Oli, anything to add, Laurie, before we finish? I suppose just one small caveat is that Omar Barada, the chief executive, obviously, in his talk in the meeting where he announced further redundancies at Old Trafford, said that the financial picture had been projected with Europa League qualification for the next four years, which is

cuts against the sort of mission 21 by you know 2028 i suppose um maybe you can have those two sort of competing things running side by side parallel but it was quite interesting that that's you know the actual when you come down to the nuts and bolts of the thing that's what they are projecting he didn't realize that we're going to win the europa league and be in the champions league next season clearly when he made that statement so yeah we'll see about that one

But Oli, thank you so much for being with us on Talk The Devils Extra. It's been brilliant to have you here. Laurie and Andy, thank you as always for being on the podcast too. We will be back with our normal podcast reacting to the Real Sociedad first leg last 16 tie in the Europa League, which has become so central now, of course, to Manchester United's season. But we hope you enjoyed this special extra edition. We want you involved in the conversation as

As always, get in touch, devilspod at theathletic.com. Also use the hashtag TOTDX on social media. And we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for your company. Thanks for listening. Take care. Bye-bye. The Athletic FC Podcast Network.