June 6 – There’s never a dull day at Old Trafford—on or off the pitch—as the grand old club lurches from crisis to absurdity to seismic change. News now is that Sir Dave Brailsford is scaling back his role.
Brailsford enjoyed incredible success revitalising Britain’s Olympic cycling programme, but since joining Jim Ratcliffe at United, he’s suffered a series of punctures. One could say the chain has definitely come off the bike after the Red Devils finished 15th in the Premier League – a position that would make even a flat tire look like progress.
The 61-year-old famously coined the concept of ‘marginal gains’ explaining: “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
However, with United resembling Frankenstein’s chopper, that concept looked more like a mountain bike crash in slow motion.
Thankfully for Brailsford, he won’t suffer the same fate as the 500+ United employees who’ve already received their pink slips in Ratcliffe’s cost-cutting spree. He’ll remain as sporting director at Sir Jim’s petrochemicals firm INEOS and continue as a United director, though his day-to-day involvement will be reduced.
Brailsford once observed: “Do you really know how to clean your hands? Without leaving the bits between your fingers? If you do things like that properly, you will get ill a little bit less. They’re tiny things but if you clump them together it makes a big difference.”
One wonders if he was referring to previous and current managers – Erik ten Hag, Ruben Amorim – or the squad of individuals who consistently underperform despite being massively overpaid. Either way, it seems United’s problems require more than just better hand hygiene and a 1% improvement here and there.
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