Roy Keane launched a pointed criticism of Manchester United’s leadership this week, arguing that the continued presence of former figures has hampered successive managers. The former club captain singled out Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill as lingering influences and suggested their roles on the club board remain a problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see who\u2019s making the decisions at Manchester United ,\u201d Keane tailed off during a rant on Sky Sports this week, \u201cyou still have Ferguson and David Gill hanging on like a bad smell.\u201d Ferguson and Gill remain non-executive directors and regular figures at Old Trafford, a reality Keane said affects those appointed after Ferguson left the dugout.<\/p>\n
The club\u2019s history was used as context. United hold a joint-record 20 top-flight titles but only three managers are responsible for those successes. Ernest Mangnall led in the first decade of the 20th century, Sir Matt Busby oversaw the club\u2019s peak across the 1950s and 1960s, and Ferguson later dominated for decades. Busby, like Ferguson, did not fully relinquish influence when stepping away. After appointing Wilf McGuinness as his successor in 1969, Busby kept the title of manager while McGuinness was designated \u201cchief coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot everyone, sadly, would play for Wilf,\u201d United\u2019s David Sadler would later reflect. \u201cThe side as a whole did not give 100% effort for him. It was as simple as that.\u201d Busby returned for an ultimately doomed second spell, a fate Ferguson has so far avoided.<\/p>\n
Keane also directed his ire at the club\u2019s recent recruitment and decision-making, criticising minority co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and director Jason Wilcox for their roles during Ruben Amorim\u2019s \u201cdisastrous 14-month reign.\u201d \u201cWhat happens in these job interviews? I\u2019m intrigued,\u201d Keane asked, his beady eyes dancing around the Sky Sports studio. \u201cWhy do they keep giving certain people a job? What happens in the interview that they sit there and go, and 12, 14 months later, \u2018he\u2019s not the guy for us.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAlmost forget the CV,\u201d he added. \u201cYou need something on your CV, of course, that you\u2019ve won a trophy or managed a long time. But you\u2019ve got to look somebody in the eye and go, \u2018Are you the man to get us places?\u2019\u201d Keane dismissed the idea of Darren Fletcher as the permanent manager and expressed a preference for Eddie Howe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Keane says Ferguson and Gill’s continued presence creates a ‘bad smell’ over United’s succession. etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,969],"tags":[1021,1379,1087],"class_list":["post-5910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-premier-league","tag-amorim","tag-club-structure","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}