Manchester United have dramatically reduced the size of their scouting department in the last few months.
One of the primary objectives of Ineos’ time at Old Trafford has been to cut the size of the workforce and make the club a financially leaner organisation.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has frequently complained that United have had a much more bloated staff than their rivals and has sought to address this.
There have already been several rounds of lay-offs at the club and the scouting department has been no different.
It has already been reported that the department would be targeted as United want to run a more focused operation, with a greater use of data analysis rather than the traditional method.
The Manchester Evening News have reported the sheer scale of the cuts, as United have been left with just ten first-team scouts.
It is reported that, “Christopher Vivell, the director of recruitment, has been empowered to oversee United’s recruitment network since he arrived at the club last year.”
After considerable rounds of redundancies, “Armand Benneker, Marco de Sisti, Roy Beukenkamp, Giuseppe Antonaccio, Ben McFarlan (technical), Jose Mayorga, John Lambert, Norbert Düwel, Steve Head and Nicolas Cinalli are all still listed as United-employed first team scouts.”
Ineos want Vivell to take ownership of the scouting process to try and shake off the habits of years of poor investment in the squad.
The paper also points out that United’s strategy “follows the trend of several clubs scaling back their in-person scouting network in favour of recruitment analysts.”
Brighton and Hove Albion, who enjoy an excellent reputation for finding gems, “let go of the majority of their scouts last year due to their dependence on a bespoke data model.”
Ratcliffe has also previously bemoaned United’s lack of data use in comparison to other top clubs and this is something they will surely look to expand over the coming months and years.
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Alex Browne
Alex is a huge Manchester United fan, inspired by greats of his homeland such as George Best, Harry Gregg and Norman Whiteside. Proud owner of such niche shirts such as Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba and Gary Neville. Grew up pretending to be Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the back garden, with little success.
