Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand says the Red Devils have still not addressed the issues that Ralf Rangnick identified during his time as interim manager.
The German had a disastrous six-month spell with the Red Devils but he was forthright in his opinions regarding the club’s need to radically overhaul their footballing operation. However, Ferdinand claims the problems are now bubbling back to the surface during Erik ten Hag‘s second season in charge:
“People are looking for a scapegoat, that’s the way the media is right now people look for a scapegoat and go that’s the reason. I see people saying [Marcus] Rashford isn’t working hard enough, or Bruno [Fernandes] is the captain. Ralf Rangnick’s comments when he left were along the lines of this doesn’t need medicine this needs open heart surgery.”
“No one looked at that comment and thought ‘Let me dig into that’. It shows you that not one individual is going to solve this problem. We had Cristiano Ronaldo, what he’s done in the game, and he can’t solve it. We’ve had a load of managers come in with huge reputations and they haven’t sorted it out. Spent a lot of money and that hasn’t sorted it out.”
Ferdinand has identified systemic problems that United have not solved
As Ferdinand points out, United don’t have a cohesive structure in place behind the scenes to help the manager and his coaching staff. Money has been thrown at the first team in the hope that success will follow.
Attempts have been made to implement a strategy, with the appointment of John Murtough as Football Director, but there has been no resolve to carry out the reform necessary. Again a manager has been left to dictate transfers in a vacuum, as has been the case with every manager before him.
Ironically, with his experience of setting up the Red Bull group of clubs, Rangnick would have been the perfect man to oversee the changes required but he did not take up his consultancy role after being appointed Austria manager instead.
