The Manchester Cityfication of Manchester United goes on.
Having already hired a chief operations officer, academy director and senior communications executive who were all part of City’s success over the last decade, United have now recruited Sam Erith as their interim performance director. Like the previous three appointments, Erith will be viewed as a sign at the Etihad that United are putting together a proper footballing operation capable of competing with them again.
If it is taken as a compliment at City that their achievements are being indirectly recognised by their city rivals, it has reiterated that they cannot afford to take their position for granted. However, as Pep Guardiola has said many times, simply copying and pasting in football does not usually work.
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Former City COO Omar Berrada spoke to reporters last week on record and at length, and many of the things he said were principles that the Blues have long employed: the importance of getting transfers right to operate sustainably, inserting protective clauses when selling on young players and the need to get everything in order to challenge regularly across all competitions were all preached. Something else Berrada said (when he didn’t need to) was that he fully backed manager Erik ten Hag.
“Do we still believe in? Erik? Absolutely,” he said when asked if he would still be backed through a(nother) bad set of results. “We think Erik is the right coach for us and we’re fully backing him.”
Ten Hag has been under serious pressure for months owing to United’s performances and results that have been well below the level expected. The manager has used multiple press conferences to tell journalists and pundits who have raised criticisms of the team that they don’t know what they are talking about.
And while he boasts about being the second best team behind City during his time in charge (owing to a League Cup and FA Cup win), a 0-3 no-show at home to rivals Liverpool means that United are already six points behind City in the table. Ten Hag’s hopes of overturning an 11-year streak of City being the best team in Manchester already look to be in danger.
Yet, when Berrada and sporting director Dan Ashworth could have been more neutral about the position of a coach who they inherited, they chose to strongly back him. Having chosen to use their first public address in the United hierarchy to stick up for Ten Hag, going against their word any time soon would not be a good look.
There is a chance that they are correct and the different appointments that have been made around Ten Hag allow for improvements to be made on the pitch. However, there is also evidence that the regression United showed last season has not been rescued with the team still struggling to offer either performances or results.
For all City must expect a stronger United given the increasing number of familiar faces at Old Trafford, one of Berrada’s biggest calls looks pretty good for them right now.
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