Manchester United received very bad news on deadline day about Christian Eriksen’s injury status and the club was forced to take action.
Erik ten Hag confirmed that the Dane would miss a large part of the season and that the earliest he could return was May.
Considering that the Red Devils were still fighting on all four fronts and were ready to play their first domestic final six years ago. Ten Hag’s excellence in the field needed support.
But that’s easier said than done, as former caretaker coach Ralf Rangnick experienced. Last season, during the January window, the former RB Leipzig manager asked the club for reinforcements.
emergency protocol started
But they flatly refused and that came at a heavy cost as United were knocked out of all competitions and finished sixth in the Premier League.
But with the Dutchman, the club has started to progress not only on the pitch but also off it.
ESPN has detailed what happened at the club after Eriksen’s forecast arrived and how quickly the club moved to seal Marcel Sabitzer’s loan deal.
United’s think tank, which includes the manager, director of football, assistant manager and recruiting managers, sat down and had a meeting and thus activated the “emergency protocol”.
????How Sabitzer’s loan was completed⚽️
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An exhaustive list of potential targets was drawn up and the club went to work and finished their job in just 12 hours, an impressive job by the recruiting department which has been criticized before for taking time when it mattered.
“As soon as it became clear that Eriksen would be sidelined for months rather than weeks, the team led by director of football John Murtough, assistant director of football Andy O’Boyle, director of data science Dominic Jordan and chief of recruiting operations Steve Brown activated an “emergency protocol” designed to quickly identify realistic targets in troublesome positions.
“On Monday, Ten Hag was presented with a list of 10 names, deemed potentially available and of sufficient quality,” the report revealed.
Murtough Folly and ETH Phone Call
The club had plenty of data on Sabitzer as United had previously been linked with a move by the Austrian and a phone call between the player and manager convinced the club to go in for the kill after Sabitzer mentioned how desperate he was to come to Old Trafford. .
Interestingly, the negotiations with Bayern Munich went smoothly, mainly due to the good relations between the two clubs, something Murtough has been credited with since taking up his new role.
“Negotiations with Bayern, which began hours before the 11 p.m. in March 2021.”
Another factor that helped United get the best possible deal was the fact that they moved the entire recruiting operation to Carrington instead of splitting it between the London and Manchester offices.
This allowed the meetings to proceed quickly, which in turn helped the deal move much faster.
The grueling match schedule meant the club needed to back the manager and they did the best they could considering the Glazers’ no-spend stance in January. Now, it’s up to Ten Hag to continue his magic.
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