Dan Ashworth leaves Manchester United sporting director role: Report

The sporting director had joined the club only five months ago.

David Ornstein of ‘The Athletic’ reports that Dan Ashworth has left Manchester United after only five months as the team’s sporting director. After lengthy negotiations between the two teams, the Englishman had left Newcastle United to join the Red Devils earlier.

A ‘pivotal’ role in making the choice to fire Ashworth is allegedly played by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, United’s co-owner. Since his arrival only a few months ago, the hierarchy thinks that the transfers have not gone as smoothly as they had hoped.

Omar Berrada, the chief executive, was consulted following Ruben Amorim’s team’s unexpected 3-2 loss to Nottingham Forest at Old Trafford on December 7.

Although they say it was mutually agreed upon, Manchester United are thought to have been the catalyst for the split. In collaboration with Jason Wilcox, who joined as technical director from Southampton, Ashworth has been in charge of the team’s operations, football performance, and recruitment.

To get United back to contending at the top of English football, Ratcliffe had stated this week that “difficult decisions” would need to be made. In the summer, the Red Devils spent £176 million to acquire players like Matthijs de Ligt and Manuel Ugarte. Since then they have had their worst league campaign start ever and are currently ranked 13th in the Premier League standings.

Ratcliffe said: “We’ve not been good enough at recruitment, you probably agree with that. Everybody would agree with that. And until we’re as good as anyone in the world, then it’s not good enough for Manchester United.

“We must have the best recruitment in the world. Data Analysis comes alongside recruitment. It doesn’t really exist here. We’re still in the last century on data analysis here.

“There’s an immense amount of useful data that we can get from data analysis and we’re in the ‘very poor’ bracket with data analysis here.

“These things don’t happen overnight. You can’t just flick a light switch and sort out recruitment. It’s all about people and we need to find the right people.”

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