Even a cycling man. Leading figures from other sports had dabbled in football, with limited success, but this was a revolutionary – someone who had transformed the fortunes of an entire country’s Olympic output.
Or so everyone thought. The early signs that change was afoot were promising. Ineos’s director of sport made it his priority to conduct a full – and more pertinently – honest audit of workings at all levels of the club.
As he had made his modus operandi throughout his career, he put “market-leading” figures into key positions and set about completing the ambitious project.
Brailsford worked closely with Sir Jim Ratcliffe at Nice before his move to Old Trafford (Photo: Getty)Quite the legacy. The reasons for Brailsford’s spectacular crash, however, run far deeper than a change of sporting environment.
“There’s much to learn from other sports. Ineos in football could be a success. But if you are to be successful at a high level in football, you must be humble, and this was Dave’s problem,” a former senior figure at Nice, one of the other football clubs in the Ineos portfolio, tells The i Paper.
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“He’s a really clever guy, but so strategic. When he came, he knew he didn’t know anything about football. He wanted to be close to us at senior level, only to tell us: ‘I am the right-hand man of Jim Ratcliffe – you have to listen to me.’
“Dave quickly realised who could be controlled and who couldn’t, so he removed the ones who couldn’t.
“I don’t have any problem with the control, if you have legitimacy. He didn’t. Later on, he tried to build a team himself, wasted money and overpaid for players. It was a disaster.”
Brailsford and Ratcliffe chased Dan Ashworth for months, got into a legal battle with Newcastle United and were willing to let him see out some gardening leave before taking on the sporting director role at Old Trafford.
Ashworth instead lasted five months. The reasons for his early and expensive departure have never been revealed, but differences with Ratcliffe and other senior figures at United, Brailsford included, played their part. Structural instability is seemingly rampant at Ineos Sport.
“So there’s Jim, along with his two partners or associates. Then he has a few other legal advisers who are always with him, advising him on business decisions, then he has got Sir Dave and [Ineos Sport CEO] Jean-Claude Blanc.
Dan Ashworth left United just six weeks after Erik ten Hag was sacked (Photo: Getty)“There was another guy close to Dave, John Allert, who is now CEO, another guy, Nick Heemskirk, another senior they brought in was Scott Drawer, another finance guy, Alex Tominey. It’s a lot of names, isn’t it?”
When you put so much of your own fortune into anything, you are more than entitled to meddle. It is just that Ratcliffe, not shy to conduct media interviews on United’s plight, perhaps dips his toe in a little too often.
“Every decision just got over-democratised and a lot of those people who make the decisions don’t spend any time on the ground whatsoever. Any feedback anyone got came back second-hand, like Chinese Whispers.
Jean-Claude Blanc has stepped down from his role as a director at Man Utd (Photo: Getty)“We needed the right to negotiate from Jim to get anything big signed off. We would lose riders because of that delay – some we had been talking about for years. That may happen at United in the transfer market. It may have already.”
Blanc has stepped back from his position as a director at Old Trafford, while Jason Wilcox has been promoted to director of football from sporting director, with that latter change in role occurring in conjunction with the announcement about Brailsford’s exit.
“Even though I was high-ranking, I never made a decision,” the Grenadiers insider adds.
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“Senior management would then hide behind us and say it was us that made these calls.
“Everything was done by committee, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but certainly in cycling, there weren’t enough of those people who were knowledgeable about the sport at ground level. I can make a safe bet at Ineos that is still the case in football.”
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