Manchester United change while staying the same

Meet the new boss, he's keeping the old boss

Stats are from FBRef unless stated otherwise.

It took eleven years, six managers, four Chief Executives and god knows how many players, but the Alex Ferguson era is finally over.

The Glazers were the worst part of the Ferguson era, but they were a part of it. So much about how they ran the club stemmed from having the GOAT British manager able to call the shots. They didn’t need to worry about a competent football operation because Ferguson would just do it for them. He was a cheat code for running a football club because he’d do it all himself.

Institutionally, the club could not get to grips with how to move on from Ferguson. The idea of the all-powerful manager was strong, from ex-players entrenched in the old ways to club officials who didn’t want to make real decisions. John Murtough got eventually promoted to Football Director, but this was never a clearly defined structure. It was not a European-style model in which the sporting director had the real power. I’m not really sure what it was. The club needed, from the top down, an idea of how the organisation’s hierarchy would function. The Glazers, totally disinterested, could never offer that.

Enter Jim Ratcliffe. We can argue all day about whether his ideas of how to run the football operations are right or wrong. We can argue about whether he’s put the correct people in place. But it’s a fact that he at least has an idea about how the football side should be run. He’s been running Nice for some time now alongside cycling team Ineos Grenadiers. This is someone very interested in making sporting institutions run properly.