Chelsea chaos offers Manchester United and Ineos an obvious warning

The Ineos revolution is continuing at speed at Old Trafford, with Manchester United now working on plans to appoint Dan Ashworth and Jason Wilcox into key roles within a new football structure at the club, with talks with Newcastle and Southampton aimed at bringing them in sooner rather than later.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is targeting people who are best-in-class to lead the change he wants to bring to a club with a staggering record of underperformance over the past decade. Ashworth is highly rated as an experienced sporting director and Wilcox is admired within the game and has had his credentials pushed forward by incoming United chief executive Omar Berrada.

It looks like a strategy that can help restore success at Old Trafford and it's a clear improvement on the leadership offered by the Glazer family, who remain majority owners of the club but are very much taking a backseat. While they spent more than a decade focusing on internal hires, Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford are looking externally to bring in the best possible people for the job.

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But that alone is no guarantee of success, as they will find out on Thursday night when United head to Stamford Bridge for a fixture with a traditional 'top six' side in an even more chaotic state than them. Chelsea are on their third manager already in the Todd Boehly-Clearlake regime and at an executive level, the structure has been ripped up and redefined at least twice.

A £1bn recruitment spree on the pitch was matched with a series of hires off it to shake up football operations, but it has produced a team that is