The blueprint to fix Manchester United: what does a club want to be when it so clearly lacks football intelligence?

It was another rejection that was as damning for the club as it was damaging to the team.

Earlier this year, when Manchester United made initial steps to sign a midfielder of the type they now so badly need, it was made clear this wasn’t the type of move the player was interested in.

”It’s not the right time,” he said. An agent was much more blunt. “We can’t put him in that situation right now.”

United, one of the greatest names in football history, did not currently represent a good career move.

All of Christian Eriksen, Paolo Dybala, Jadon Sancho, Declan Rice and Matthijs de Ligt have come to the same conclusion over the past few months. Some of United’s own players have been wondering the same thing over the past few weeks, not least Paul Pogba.

The good mood among the squad from pre-season has so quickly evaporated, shown to be as fragile as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s midfield.

An incomplete team have taken just five points from four games so far, to make it a mere 13 from the last 13 in all, and illustrate this is no simple blip or temporary drop-off.

It is the “situation” many in the game are dismissive of. United are not seen as a club even close to competing for the top trophies right now. They are widely seen as a dysfunctional club, with so many issues.

Any one of those issues are worthy of deep debate on their own – from the actual level of Solskjaer as a coach, to the level of the squad, to the recruitment process – but the reason they are there in the first place, and unlikely to be resolved, is because of the one fundamental issue at the centre of it all.

United don’t seem to know what they want to be as a football club.

They want to be the best and biggest in the world, sure, but that is an aim as vague as some of their planning and decision-making.

The real issue is they don’t seem to have a clear vision as to what is required to become that, or an articulated philosophy that underpins everything. Every issue, and every single choice, stems from that.

This is all distilled in the indecision over the role of technical director. It is alas not personified by the technical director, since there remains none, and thereby no idea of a team.

That is after all the position that would decide so much of this, not least the type of football team they actually want to be. Hence the situation right now where their squad has six centre-halves but only two centre forwards, and is one injury away from crisis in every other area.

Hence a team that seems to only really be comfortable when counter-attacking, even though the very fact they are a big club will mean they automatically have the majority of possession in the majority of games.

Hence these results, and this situation. Hence the profound need for a blueprint to offer clarity about where they’re going.

United don’t have to go very far, however, if they want a tangible vision of what works.

They can just go over the road to Manchester City, in another damning reversal of history. United, despite so many forewarnings have made many of the same mistakes Liverpool did in the early 1990s. Their basic complacency allowed a previously subdued rival to completely surpass them.

Back in 2009, when the recently taken-over City were looking to undertake their own transformation, executive Brian Marwood would often take a pointed detour past Old Trafford on his daily drive. “It was a reminder of what greatness looked like,” the book ‘The Club’ reveals.

“We needed to remove the excuses,” Marwood added. “We wanted to create a best-in-class environment, but then we needed to know what best in class looked like.”

It now looks exactly like City 2019. The repeat Premier League champions have become just that by stealing a march on the rest of the field. City are at the forefront of absolutely every area of football, from development to the finished product, that ends in so many goals that represent the very cutting edge of the sport’s tactics.

Much of this was because they went out and wholesale appropriated the brains trust behind the best in the world – “the Apple of football – in Barcelona 2008-11, who have further proven that in Manchester.

On the pitch, Pep Guardiola has so insightfully integrated all of the actual sport’s latest evolutions – most pointedly, Jurgen Klopp’s counter-pressing – into his possession-pressing approach to ensure it remains the dominant tactical ideology.

In the boardroom, director of football Txiki Begiristain commands the greatest network of contacts and expertise in the game, which essentially provides the database for a level of strategising that trumps anyone else.

Beyond all that, chief executive Ferran Soriano has implemented the most ambitious and original idea in sport administration, with the creation of the City Football Group.

All of these sit in with chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak for the club’s major transfer meetings, to decide which players they should bring in over the next 18 months.

One of the important elements about this, though, is that there is never a single target discussed at these meetings who hasn’t been rigorously vetted beforehand.

You wouldn’t have a situation, like at United, where a player’s name can suddenly be thrown out at such meetings from nowhere. You wouldn’t have a situation, like at United, where Jose Mourinho actually said no to bidding for Virgil van Dijk in the January 2018 window because he didn’t want a centre-half at that point, only to then decide he absolutely needed one above anything else a few months later. The thinking is far too joined up at City. The different parts of the club are all joined up. One complaint at United is that there is nothing really wrong with the scouting, as such, it’s that the departments don’t seem to complement each other. They’re not feeding an overall plan.

“They’ve got reports on so many players, but they mostly go ignored,” one source says. “Some of the players they’d spend fortunes on, they’re not as good as better players who they’ve got reports on, but mostly go ignored.

“There’s no unity of ideas.”

This is something said a lot, which is why it’s also said a lot that United are “an agent-driven club”. “If certain players are offered, there’s a better chance of them biting.” It has led to this situation where so many players have been collected over the last six years, but they aren’t necessarily complementary.

This, again, wouldn’t happen at City. The really important element there is that those highest-level meetings would only ever discuss players they know would fit into the club’s idea of play, something that is now so honed that this can be seen “within five minutes”. It minimises mistakes in the market, and maximises everything else.

This is what it keeps coming back to.

City – like Liverpool, like Barcelona, like Juventus, like Borussia Dortmund – have such a clear idea of how they want to play, that runs right through their clubs.

So, in truth, do so many lower-level Premier League sides from Leicester City to Norwich City.

They all have a more identifiable philosophy than England’s most successful club.

United, however, don’t just lack that. They seemingly lack the football knowledge to implement it.

The big problem – in the words of one prominent European director of football – is that “one of the hardest things in football is coming up with your initial philosophy”. There are all sorts of concerns to consider, not least how the game will evolve. It takes a lot of insight to decide on this, and integrate it throughout a club.

The great advantage United have, and share with City, is that they also have the money to very quickly correct all their ills. It is amazing how fast things can turn around once you put in place the right steps. Liverpool are the ultimate recent example of that. This is what is so frustrating about watching United. It would be easier for them than almost any other club to change this.

The challenge, and question, is whether the will is there, or not so much the will, since executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward obviously wants what is best for the club. It’s whether the deeper realisation of what is necessary will ever be there.

So much of this again comes back to the search for a technical director, since this is precisely the figure who should decide this.

That search is now going on for just under a year, and appears no closer to completion. Worse, there are questions as to whether they are even close to an idea of what the job would specify.

Woodward has spoken about the role revolving around long-term vision – and something more “holistic” – rather than recruitment.

Others say the club’s actual actions indicate very differently. One figure whose expertise was consulted in this protracting process says they don’t seem to know what they want, as is illustrated in this long wait to make an appointment.

One widespread quip has been they may just want “a yes man”.

The current consensus is that United are actually seeking a committee that would include former players like Darren Fletcher and Rio Ferdinand, feeding into a technical director, with head of corporate development Mike Judge and Woodward then sitting on top of that.

This committee would seek to bring in a younger profile of players, with an emphasis on a British background, that would be capable of “fast and incisive football”. This, for his part, is what Solskjaer has been trying to implement.

This, however, isn’t really a philosophy. They are disparate parts, and individual elements.

“Bringing through youth” and “fast football” are really just desired end products, not integrated plans and approach.

A further example of this thinking comes when deciding on any target. Whereas City’s judgement is solely based whether a player has the talent and profile to fit the football, United’s is based on whether they would be in any prospective 18-man Champions League final squad. 

It just again feels the wrong way around.

Sources say Woodward is keen to go his own way, however, and there is actually a business logic here that does replicate their neighbours’ thinking.

Back in one of the more testing times at City over the last 11 years, Soriano was at a dinner in London explaining the exact thought process behind the club’s planning. The Catalan drew the analogy of a boat race and argued that, when you are behind, it is impossible to get back in the lead by following the same path as the leader. You have to try a different way.

That lends some sense to United’s approach, but the base reality is you still need football intelligence to identify that different way. The idea of football is itself supposed to be what’s different.

This is what United lack.

This is why the team lacks cohesion. This is why they go from different profile of manager to different manager, to so many different styles of players, and can’t seem to decide on a technical director. Because there is no unifying football vision.

As so happens at a football club, the pitch eventually reflects the boardroom, no matter the manager.

The current manager is now giving serious thought to throwing Mason Greenwood into the team.

This basic act would be in-keeping with United’s history, but only superficially. That is the issue. It is another reaction to circumstances, rather than part of a greater design.

That is what is lacking at United. That is the blueprint that is now required. It’s the only real way to turn this situation around.