HITC understands that Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has succeeded in landing the final member of his all new footballing department at Old Trafford.
Landing a top sporting director was always key to United’s off-field plans going forward and Ratcliffe was quick to identify Dan Ashworth as that man.
Ratcliffe tasked his and INEOS’ top man at United, Sir Dave Brailsford, with putting together the footballing department.
Brailsford, INEOS’ director of sport, and Jean-Claude Blanc, INEOS’ CEO, were both made board members at United by Ratcliffe and they quickly went about targeting their top targets, which quickly emerged as Ashworth, Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox.
Deals were done quickly with Manchester City for Berrada, who becomes the club’s CEO this summer, and Southampton for Wilcox, who has already taken over as technical director – but there road to land Ashworth was not as smooth.
Top target Dan Ashworth finally seals Old Trafford move
Ashworth became a target for Untied in late 2023 and HITC revealed in January that Newcastle were already looking at options to replace him.
Ashworth was placed on gardening leave by Newcastle in February after he confirmed to them that he wanted to join United and since then talks have been ongoing.
Newcastle demanded £20million for Ashworth, something that United were not willing to do. HITC revealed that Ratcliffe wanted Ashworth to start work at the start of June, whilst Newcastle were ideally not wanting him to work for them this summer.
Ashworth has been working on taking Newcastle to arbitration whilst talks continued in the background and HITC can confirm that Ratcliffe himself has taken on a personal interest, indeed he spoke with St James’ Park counterpart Amanda Staveley.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe annoyed by Ashworth process
Ratcliffe could not hide his annoyance earlier this year when asked about his quest to get Ashworth out of Newcastle.
“It’s a bit silly, personally. I won’t get dragged into that,” he said.
“What I do think is completely absurd is suggesting a man who is really good at his job sits in his garden for one and a half years. We had a very grown-up conversation with City about Omar [Berrada].
“When things got done we sorted it out very amicably. They could see why he wanted to take that challenge.
“You look at Pep [Guardiola] when he’s done with one of his footballers; he doesn’t want them to sit in the garden for one and a half years. He doesn’t do that. That’s not the way the UK works or the law works.”
However, HITC can confirm that Ratcliffe has now got his man and Ashworth is now set to take his place as the head of football at United as sporting director.
Ashworth, who will report to Brailsford, will run everything football related on a day to day basis with Wilcox his number two as technical director whilst Berrada will be in charge of commercial activities along with Blanc.
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