Peter Fitzpatrick

⚽️I have not posted much lately, I would be repeating myself but that hasn’t stopped me before. But what is depressing is that so many ‘just do not get it’. It is very SIMPLE. If you want the TL:DR version — anyone that claims that it will be easy to turn United around are very reckless/clueless and will fail. Expect it to be a mountainous task provide enough resources for it — then add 50%, and it might work. Nothing else will. 🔺Ineos came in with a business plan. They concluded that money was not an issue, but that the money spent had been poorly spent. So Ratcliffe and Ineos strategy was to recruit top management personell, and ensure that the money going forward would be spent well. Ratcliffe sets this out very clearly in the early interviews. 🔺This business plan was very flawed: 1. In theory — if it worked — Ineos business plan would at best have been ‘just enough’ for a Liverpool. But United is in a real rut. Just enough is never going to be enough to deal with a 13 year hangover since Fergie left. I think that it is quite absurd that this is not recognized. If you become a manager of MUFC, everything else equal — your job is harder than if you became a manager for Liverpool. Same for a player. There is simply a lot of baggage. Issues in the locker room. An organization that is all over the place. All players doesn’t become depressed if Liverpool has a bad start. Simply, if a PL club can perform on a scale from -100 (relegation) to 100 (win title) — Liverpool start every season at +20 and United at -20. A ‘just enough’ business plan — even if it worked — still would not even remotely have been enough. 2. Money has always been an issue since the Glazers came in. It really has, many are really misinformed on this topic, to a large extent due to Glazers misinformation about paying absurd wages which never have been true. So it was an issue when Ineos came in. And just as Ineos came in, all top teams started to increase investments significantly to get into the new CL — which has driven up wages on average 30% in the PL just the last 3 years — while United went in the other direction, reducing a wage bill that wasn’t even competitive to start with. 3. You can’t recruit top management personell in football (if they exist). Everyone is tied up on long contracts, mandatory 1 year gardening leaves, etc etc etc. In the environments that work really well — there always exists a very strong symbiosis between all parts of the organization, scouting, manager and the conditions a team functions in. Take Tixi from City and let him work with Dortmund — does he perform really well? Or was he the right guy in the right place at City? You can’t just throw together a new front office and expect it to fire on all cylinders from day 1. And more than anything else — doing a good job in elite football is more than anything about time and flexibility. It is a lot easier to sign a top CB or whatever if you get 36 months instead of 12 months. We have no flexibility. Hang on to players we should have moved on from 5 years ago. And we have no time. All deals must be made on specified time. We would never start a defensive rebuild a season in advance to get more time. 🔺So — we start way behind our rivals, we have less resources than our rivals and it’s wishful thinking to think that a new front office will do as good a job as their rivals. This is why it’s simple. ‘Just enough’ is never even remotely going to be enough for MUFC.