Needless Omar Berrada call can benefit Man City in growing Manchester United battle

The Manchester Cityfication of Manchester United goes on.

Having already hired a chief operations officer, academy director and senior communications executive who were all part of City's success over the last decade, United have now recruited Sam Erith as their interim performance director. Like the previous three appointments, Erith will be viewed as a sign at the Etihad that United are putting together a proper footballing operation capable of competing with them again.

If it is taken as a compliment at City that their achievements are being indirectly recognised by their city rivals, it has reiterated that they cannot afford to take their position for granted. However, as Pep Guardiola has said many times, simply copying and pasting in football does not usually work.

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Former City COO Omar Berrada spoke to reporters last week on record and at length, and many of the things he said were principles that the Blues have long employed: the importance of getting transfers right to operate sustainably, inserting protective clauses when selling on young players and the need to get everything in order to challenge regularly across all competitions were all preached. Something else Berrada said (when he didn't need to) was that he fully backed manager Erik ten Hag.

"Do we still believe in? Erik? Absolutely," he said when asked if he would still be backed through a(nother) bad set of results. "We think Erik is the right coach for us and we’re fully backing him."

Ten Hag has been under serious pressure for months owing to United's performances and results that