Sir Jim Ratcliffe is righting the wrongs at Manchester United with Dan Ashworth move

On the day Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was paraded in the No.7 Suite as the permanent Manchester United manager at Old Trafford, word came from the boardroom that the club was "close" to appointing a technical director.

Whatever one's definition of "close", it is not nearly two years. 719 days later, Darren Fletcher was unveiled as the technical director and John Murtough as football director.

It is typical of United that they went through title changes. There was head of football, director of football and technical director. The technical director turned out to be the football director.

The dual role of Murtough and Fletcher, two internal hires, was a curious strategy when the assumption was there would be one figurehead. Ed Woodward had not yet fallen on his sword over the Super League and was still the key decision-maker.

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United had taken the best part of two years to settle on someone who had been on their doorstep all along in Murtough, who joined the club in December 2013 and was promoted to head of football development in 2016.

Woodward explained that United overlooked established and exotic names, such as Dan Ashworth, Ralf Rangnick and Paul Mitchell, as they did not want someone renowned for recruitment. Murtough had jointly run the academy during its state of flux in 2015-16 and built the women's team from scratch in 2018.

Fletcher attended a meeting amid United's recruitment reboot towards the end of the 2018-19 season but did not officially rejoin the club until January 2021 when he served a brief stint as first-team coach. The arrival of Erik ten Hag has brought clarity to Fletcher's role after