Taskmaster takes reins at Man U

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This article was published 26/11/2021 (1721 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If Manchester United have been a laughingstock (they have) the past week, month or decade (all true), well, fun-time is over (finally).

And especially for the club’s players.

Thursday’s news, as first reported by The Athletic, that Ralf Rangnick will take over as Red Devils’ interim manager, means the Premier League’s eighth-placed squad will be working this Christmas — working like they’d have to at any modern outfit.

They’ll be arriving to Carrington at least 90 minutes prior to training, submitting to blood and saliva tests, making the video room their second home and running, running, running like their jobs depend on it (they do).

It’ll be a shock to the system—the whole system, from the first team to the medical department to the academy sides to the boardroom — but perhaps most shocking of all is that the United decision-makers, whoever they are, actually went ahead and made what is inarguably the most enlightened judgment of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era.

Perhaps it was an accident. And given this administration’s history of choices, that cannot be ruled out. In any event, it’s a happy one. At least it will be. Probably.

But again, not for the players.

Rangnick, a developer of the “8-second rule”, has a custom-made clock installed at training that ticks down the seconds the players have to win back the ball, as well as the 10 they’re allowed to produce a shot. Given that he’s about to oversee a team that can’t even retain the ball for eight seconds, nevermind set up in a press to regain it, he has his instruction cut out for him.

Does he have the students?

The pioneer of the “Gegenpress” and mentor of Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel — now his top-flight rivals — not only demands final-third pressure and short, crisp passing but also fancies a defender who can play a long pass to launch an attack. He doesn’t have one of those at United, and mobility among the back-line and midfield is also nonexistent.

How much of it, of everything, can he teach to the likes of Harry Maguire, Victor Lindelof, Fred and Scott McTominay? Further forward, will Bruno Fernandes, Marcus Rashford, Mason Greenwood and Jadon Sancho quickly and willingly learn how and when to press the opposition?

Incidentally, Donny van de Beek is probably the United player most accustomed to Rangnick’s system, so his future at Old Trafford is immediately brighter than it was under the departed Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, whose positivity was desperately needed following Jose Mourinho’s grim tenure but whose tactical nous and game management skills were quite evidently limited.

(That it was baffling to see interim-interim manager Michael Carrick deploy an attack that interchanged positions on Tuesday against Villarreal only shows how low United have sunk in this regard.)

And what of Cristiano Ronaldo?

The all-time great, soon to be 37-years-old, might be the fittest player at the club — maybe in all of football — but he’s not going to press or contribute much defensively. That said, if he keeps scoring at his current clip he’ll still be undroppable. United need his goals, and one of the more ridiculous notions surrounding the club this season — among many — is that he has somehow unbalanced the team. As if it had any balance to begin with.

Beyond Ronaldo, Rangnick’s list of undroppables won’t be a long one, which is why he sought assurances from chairman Joel Glazer, executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward and group managing director Richard Arnold that he’d at least be consulted with regards to incoming and outgoing transfers, if not being handed the stamp of approval.

The 63-year-old initially turned down United’s offer on Monday but on Thursday agreed to terms that include the role in personnel decisions as well as a two-year consultancy beginning in the spring.

Quite comically, the days in between saw the board reach out to former Barcelona boss Ernesto Valverde and ex-Roma, Marseille and Lyon manager Rudi Garcia.

Other options they considered as they seemingly lurched from one name to another, regardless of coaching philosophy, are rumoured to have included Steve Bruce, Lucien Favre, Paulo Fonseca and Laurent Blanc. The ridiculousness reached its peak when club legend Eric Cantona announced via video message that he’d been named to the role.

It’s quite astonishing, then (and thus the accident theory), that they hired the professorial Rangnick — a football thinker and strategist who will impatiently attempt to catch United up to the modern era in just a few months. Looking into the future, they surely saw a drop in share price that would eventually follow Champions League absences and the subsequent lack of marketable players.

Woodward and Arnold, the Bristol buddies, do know their bookkeeping — they’re basically glorified bean counters — and their financial forecasts must have been sufficiently dire to spur them into sensible action. Money talks. It’s the only voice they recognize, and no doubt it was an angry one following the 4-1 loss to Watford that spelled the end for Solskjaer.

Rangnick’s appointment would also seem to signal the arrival of current Ajax head coach Erik ten Hag when Manchester United install a permanent manager ahead of next season.

Paris Saint-Germain’s Mauricio Pochettino is thought to want the job, and he has previously been a preferred choice among the board, but, not surprisingly, the club have also been linked with figures as varying as Brendan Rodgers, Unai Emery, Julien Lopetegui, Roberto Martinez, Luis Enrique and Zinedine Zidane, who made no secret of the fact he wasn’t at all interested in the job.

How embarrassing.

But the reality is that the United position just isn’t all that attractive. Not right now, anyway. Which is another reason why Rangnick’s presence will be so vital between now and June.

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Manchester United require nothing less than a top-to-bottom overhaul of anything and everything that has to do with the football that’s played on the pitch. They are clunky, old-fashioned and an administrative joke.

Ralf Rangnick is one of the few people in the sport who can quickly streamline the football operation and transform a club into a progressive enterprise.

In other words, his task is to ensure that, by the time he’s finished, no one is laughing.

jerradpeters@gmail.comTwitter @JerradPeters