JASON WILCOX HAS MADE HIS FIRST MISTAKE BEFORE EVEN STARTING AT MAN UTD
Only three managers have ever won titles at Manchester United. The first, Ernest Mangnall in 1908 and 1911, left few discernible traces of method or style. The second, Sir Matt Busby, rebuilt the club twice, initially from the rubble of the Second World War, secondly from the wreckage of British European Airways Flight 609. The third, Sir Alex Ferguson, invoked the spirit and style of Busby to create a 25-year dynasty that yielded 13 Premier League titles.
Between them Mangnall, Busby and Ferguson contributed a record 20 championships. The other 20 coaches to have led the team from 1892, when official club records began, failed the ultimate challenge. Which begs a question of new technical director Jason Wilcox when setting the parameters for success at Old Trafford, what is the fundamental element he must get right? Playing style? Methodology? Player recruitment? Technical teachings? Or none of those things?
Rather than coding a particular “game style”, which reports this week say Wilcox will tackle as his first priority at Old Trafford, the evidence suggests the priority is identifying the right manager, the man not only capable of bringing technical appreciation and coherence to the whole project, but who is able to evince from his players a base level of performance beneath which they dare not dip.
The question of how the right man achieves this is probably not measurable by conventional means. What makes Jurgen Klopp the brilliant motivator he is? What fires the relentless passion of Pep Guardiola? They probably do not know themselves. How do you evaluate the genius of a coach like Busby, whose best advice to George Best was to go out and enjoy himself?
Not much technical appreciation there. What Busby did confer was connection, affinity, trust, a bond with his players that made them feel valued and minded to give everything for him. The business of coaching the Busby Babes and later the trinity of Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton fell largely to Jimmy Murphy.
Ferguson relied on the likes of Archie Knox, Brian Kidd, Steve McClaren, Carlos Queiroz and Mike Phelan to set out the cones. What Busby and Ferguson did was set the culture, the atmosphere, the standards, which gave the players a clear idea of what was expected of them, gave them an identity, a sense of importance and belonging.
That is not to say that the structure around them, which is a key part of the Wilcox audit, is not important. Self-evidently no club can prosper without an efficient infrastructure into which all staff are invested. Equally, a technical grasp of the game is largely a given in any coach worth his badges.
Rather teasing high performance from a human component is always complex and requires emotional intelligence too. As Xabi Alonso remarked during speculation linking him to Liverpool, good coaching is not necessarily about an appreciation of technical attributes, but establishing a connection with players.
Wilcox is tasked with reporting on training, recovery, the medical operation, match day preparation and delivery. You wonder what he made of Sunday’s display at Wembley, which bore the hallmarks of Erik ten Hag’s reign; an aimless, disconnected Marcus Rashford, an ineffective Rasmus Hojlund, a porous midfield, a disjointed, fragile group prone to collapse and players unsure of their roles.
Ten Hag saw the fortuitous victory over Coventry City as evidence of his team’s qualities, not their failings. Compare that to Ferguson’s anger following Aberdeen’s Scottish Cup victory over Rangers in 1983. He said his team could take no glory from the result, a “disgrace of a performance” that fell below standards set. “[Willie] Miller and [Alex] McLeish played Rangers on their own,” he raged.
Ferguson would later bring his exacting standards to bear at Old Trafford, where he managed with conviction. His predecessors Ron Atkinson, Dave Sexton, Tommy Docherty and Frank O’Farrell were equally familiar with the style template laid down by Busby. Atkinson and Docherty both produced attacking teams packed with flair. They understood the requirement. Indeed Docherty might have achieved the dream had he not fallen in love with the physio’s wife, Mary Brown, an amorous association that cost him his job.
Ultimately, Ferguson had an instinct for the alchemy of personal relationships, and was able to tease from his players the necessary performance in big moments, just as Busby did. The message coming out of United has been one of reluctance to rush into a change of coach. The upheaval brought about by Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s involvement and the desire for radical structural change has thus far protected Ten Hag from serious scrutiny.
That changed with the appointment of Wilcox. Sunday’s humiliating victory over Coventry, United’s position in the Premier League and the abject failure to negotiate a straightforward Champions League group, all point to a coach drowning not waving. Ten Hag has seven games to convince Wilcox that what we see from his team is somehow the fault of factors outside his control.
The appointment of Wilcox from Southampton was driven by incoming chief executive Omar Berrada, renewing a relationship that began at Manchester City, where Wilcox was academy director. Wilcox is preparing the ground for the arrival of new technical director Dan Ashworth, forming a triumvirate at the apex of the club’s decision-making with enough expertise to classify failure when they see it.
Just as Ratcliffe understood the need to appoint the best in class to put the new infrastructure in place, so those hires recognise the primacy of the human component in delivering on the principles they lay down. That starts with identifying the best coach, not establishing style cues.
2024-04-23T15:53:01Z dg43tfdfdgfd