Recruitment and the project
My argument is that recruitment only makes sense inside a plan: without tactical knowledge and authority to support and challenge the manager, clubs overcompensate and drift, as I wrote about the Carrick decision and about United's failure to develop Rashford.
The posts
- Opinion End of Pep paradigm and recruitment at top clubs With the tactical era that shaped two decades now fading, sporting heads and managers are far less certain about which direction to build their squads in.
- Opinion The Carrick decision The results justify continuity, but without tactical knowledge and authority above the manager, United risk repeating the ETH and Amorim pattern.
- Opinion Losing Rashford is the club's failure United failed to maximise an asset through constant changes in managers, game models and roles, and the end result is what matters.
- Longform Do players make the tactics or do tactics make the players? Why the idea has to precede the personnel, and what Ten Hag's refusal to commit to one approach costs United in recruitment, coaching time and identity.
- Longform Hostages of history Three causes: a club that never replaced Ferguson's structure, a manager whose principles stopped adapting, and a media war neither side could win.