Ineos look dumber than the dumb money Sir Jim Ratcliffe said Manchester United spent

This was all so avoidable. And predictable. Manchester United keep a manager they don't want to keep, merely trigger the one-year extension in his contract, foist a senior assistant onto him, sack the manager and appoint the assistant as caretaker.

Ineos's card was marked the moment they lost their nerve to sack Erik ten Hag in May. How unbefitting an image for United that Sir Dave Brailsford visited Ten Hag in Ibiza to inform him his contract had not been shredded.

It was enlightening that United cited their points average this season as part of the rationale to finally sack Ten Hag. That has Brailsford's fingerprints all over it.

It turns out exposure to natural light, sleep windows and hydration plans do not suddenly make footballers better. Cycling is Brailsford's wheelhouse and he should have stuck to it.

READ MORE: 'We won't be bailing him out again' - the untold story of Ten Hag's sacking

READ MORE: 'No excuses' - why United sacked Ten Hag

United deserve better than an aloof svengali running the show. Great football teams did just fine for upwards of a hundred years before they were subjected to the high performance jargon of a cycling guru whose Team Sky outfit was found to have "crossed an ethical line" with its Therapeutic Use Exemptions for Sir Bradley Wiggins.

Dan Ashworth is a football figure. He had washed his hands of the decision to keep Ten Hag as his start date was July 1. Ten Hag's contract was extended on July 4 and the decision to lengthen it was taken before Ashworth entered the building.

That was Ashworth and chief executive Omar Berrada's get-out. They were on gardening leave until July. Yet before May, United had hired Jason Wilcox as technical director and head-hunted Toby Craig to become