With Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s 25% stake in Manchester United finally agreed, the football bods, business experts and fans alike are all now wondering what the club will look like under the British billionaire’s regime, but there’s also another important name newly appointed at the helm: Sir Dave Brailsford.
While most of the headlines have naturally revolved around the big-money man and primary deal-maker, who has reportedly spent around £1.3 billion to purchase his chunk of shares and a seat on the Man United board, Dave Brailsford joining the club’s executive team is also hugely significant.
Officially starting in his capacity on United‘s football board on New Year’s Eve 2023, just days after sitting in the stands to watch the Red Devils’ 3-2 comeback against Aston Villa, the 59-year-old has already set about meeting staff, touring the facilities and taking a look under the bonnet, so to speak.
Part of the reason that his arrival is of such interest comes not only as a result of his seniority and proximity as Ratcliffe‘s de-facto right-hand man but because unless you had prior knowledge of his CV or INEOS and their sporting division’s key figures, most people are relatively unaware of who he is.
Sir David John Brailsford CBE is a British sports coach with a long and decorated career in cycling, helping Team GB net a remarkable total of 14 Olympic medals in 2008, taking home eight gold medals for British Cycling at both Beijing and London 2012. He was ultimately knighted for his efforts in 2013.
After this first wave of success, he was then put in charge of the Team Sky cycling team which featured the likes of Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas and went on to win eight Grand Tours before the team name was rebranded as the INEOS Grenadiers in 2019. Short version: they’ve won a lot.
Across both iterations under the ownership of Ratcliffe’s conglomerate (the fourth biggest chemical engineering company in the world, estimated to turnover £50bn a year), Brailsford enjoyed a decade of dominance as Team Principal before being made Director of Sport at INEOS in December 2021.
Sir Dave Brailsford’s background might be predominantly in cycling, but he’s more than dabbled in football since heading up INEOS Sport.
Having been put in charge of all sporting activities including cycling, sailing (INEOS Britannia), football — OGC Nice in France, Swiss side FC Lausanne-Sport and now United) — rugby (All Blacks’ official ‘Performance Partner’) and Formula 1 (co-owner of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team), the Derbyshire-born sports performance director is being entrusted with the Premier League project.
What is Braislford’s role at Manchester United?
With United being folded into the existing INEOS Sports portfolio, Brailsford will continue his role across all disciplines and is expected that an outright sporting director will be appointed to oversee the football side of things at Old Trafford, specifically — of which Ratcliffe and co. have been given ‘full control’ of.
Although John Murtough is currently in post and has been since March 2021, it is thought he will depart the club once INEOS takes over, having faced plenty of criticism over Man United’s transfer policy in that time, including an apparent row with Sir Alex Ferguson over failing to sign Jude Bellingham.
Names linked with the job include Dougie Freedman (Crystal Palace), Paul Mitchell, who has worked with the likes of (Spurs, RB Leipzig), as well as Dan Ashworth (Brighton, Newcastle), with some reports suggesting the latter two could come in as sporting director and head of recruitment, respectively.
Either way, whoever is given the job will then report to Brailsford and the business magnate from Failsworth above them, who make up what is effectively being touted as a trio of executive board members strictly tasked with footballing matters. So who makes up the third element of that trifecta?
Who else is taking control of footballing operations at Man United?
Whilst Patrick Stewart (no, not the bloke from Star Trek) has been put in charge on an interim basis following the departure of Richard Arnold, the club is still on the hunt for a new full-time CEO and, for all intents and purposes, that individual looks to be Jean-Claude Blanc.
The French businessman and sports executive is best known for his time serving on the board at both Juventus and PSG — his time in Paris coinciding with the Qatari takeover in 2011 and the start of their Ligue 1 supremacy — but more recently joined Ratcliffe’s ranks and
Being made CEO of INEOS Sports in December 2022, like Brailsford, Blanc has become one of the new United owner’s closest confidants and looks set to be installed as the new CEO imminently.
With the January transfer window now open and the final details of Ratcliffe’s deal soon to be fully ratified by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), the club will be hoping to put all these puzzle pieces in place sooner rather than later.
Once again, full confirmation of all these particulars is still pending and, by the terms of their current agreement, the Glazers could still technically buy out Ratcliffe before he even gets going, so the next few months could prove critical for Manchester United.
Featured Images — Sky Sports/The Manc Group/INEOS (via YouTube)
Sport
Pep Guardiola hints at when Manchester City fans can expect to see their latest arrival
Danny Jones
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has given supporters a rough timeline as to when they can expect to see their new signing, or at least their latest arrival, make his first appearance.
The Blues wrapped up the January transfer window with four major signings: their new attacking number seven, Omar Marmoush (who has already bagged a hattrick on his home debut) promising defensive duo, Abdukodir Khusanov and Brazilian Vitor Reis, as well as their ‘mini-Rodri’, Nico Gonzalez.
However, the club has had another late arrival who was technically signed back at the start of last year but who has spent for the last 12 months or so loaned back to his previous parent club, River Plate in Argentina, waiting to make the move over to the Etihad Stadium – and now he’s here in Manchester.
Speaking on his touchdown in 0161, Pep said Claudio Echeverri won’t be thrown into first-team action straight away but did give a rough estimate as to when City fans could expect him to get involved. You can see him discussing the integration plan in his post-match press conference following the Spurs win.
The mention was only brief but there’s still plenty of reason for Man City fans to be excited by the late January signing.
“Yeah, he [Claudio Echeverri] is going to start to train and mainly will be for the end of the season, maybe the [Club] World Cup and as soon as possible [that] he arrives he can adapt quick for the future.”
As mentioned, the 19-year-old Argentinian attacking midfielder from Resistencia officially put pen to paper with CFG back in January 2024 and was quickly dubbed ‘the next Messi’.
Now, although the football world is often quick to jump the gun with these things and he isn’t the first and certainly won’t be last to be slapped with this premature title, he’s done more to back up these claims since then than he has rubbish them.
Starring at the 2025 Under-20 South American Championships, netting six goals in nine games to finish the tournament as the second highest scorer thanks to notable braces against Brazil and Uruguay as the young Argentine’s finished as runners up.
He also notched 48 senior appearances for River Plate thus far, netting four goals and grabbing eight assists in that time, not to mention having already captained his national team at the 2023 Under 17s World Cup, where he scored another five.
Safe to say there’s plenty of talent to be tapped in this lad.
Once again, Echeverri won’t go straight into the senior set-up for a little while yet, barring a major injury crisis, but he’ll be a more than exciting addition to the City Football Academy and for future first-team lineups for years to come.
Who knows, maybe he’ll be included in an FA Cup matchday squad? Nevertheless, you can expect him to not just come of the bench but hopefully show what he can do at the Club World Cup this summer.
City‘s first fixture as reigning champions of the competition will be against Moroccan side Wydad AC on 18 June 2025.
You can watch Echeverri’s first full interview as a Man City player down below:
The new Man City signing is excited to be finally be part of the club 13 months on from agreeing his contract.
‘Nothing is eternal’: Is Pep Guardiola hinting at the end of Manchester City’s supremacy?
Danny Jones
Pep Guardiola looks to have suggested that more than a decade of Manchester City’s supremacy and Premier League dominance at the very least might be coming to an end.
Speaking in his post-match press interviews after City were knocked out of the Champions League by serial European Cup winners Real Madrid, Guardiola cut a somewhat more deflated figure than usual following the 3-1 defeat.
A Kylian Mbappe hattrick which was closed out within an hour of play was enough to stretch the aggregate score to 6-3 over the two legs and Madrid doubling their lead across the tie proved yet again why, not unlike City domestically over the last decade, they’re the kings of the continental competition.
In contrast, however, Pep seemed to accept the loss much more easily than perhaps we’ve seen in the past and rather than appearing familiarly frustrated or defiant in the press conference; instead, he seemed rather reflective, responding to one reporter: “Nothing is eternal”.
🗣️ "Nothing is eternal" – Pep Guardiola.
🔵 Subscribe to our Manchester City page on BBC Sounds for the latest interviews. #MCFC#bbcfootball
Insisting that they have to decide whether a significant rebuild is needed to keep competing at the very top level consistently as they have done since the 54-year-old arrived back in 2016, he argued that it is only with that they’ll be able to determine what comes next.
As for the result itself, he made no bones about Carlo Ancelotti’s side having “deserved it”, stating simply that “the best team won” and that fans and players alike have to “accept the reality: they were better.”
Having been a familiar foe for Pep long before he arrived in Manchester, both at Barcelona and Bayern Munich – not to mention City having faced Los Blancos a dozen times before Tuesday night since 2012 – there have been less surprising outcomes for supporters to come to terms with.
“With time, the club and everyone is going to accept what it is but for now we have 30/40 games for the Premier League next season to try and be here [in the Champions League] and to improve. Nothing is eternal”, said the Catalan coaching genius.
On the other hand, he also went on to add that it was merely a reflection on the night itself and not what his team have achieved in recent years.
He went on to remark that “when we were playing outstanding it hurt more” to be knocked out of the UCL when he felt they deserved to stay in it, but still insisted: “We have been unbelievable and we have to try step by step to get better from today.” Tonight just wasn’t the night.
Who knows? Perhaps it was just some more melodrama from a manager with an undeniable flare for pageantry and playing into/in the face of narratives when he doesn’t come out on top – which hasn’t happened all that often until their dip in form this season.
Plus, there’s certainly still plenty for him and the fans to be positive about; not only has the arrival of their ‘Egyptian Prince’ and the media’s Mo Salah successor, Omar Marmoush, got plenty of people excited – especially after that first-half hattrick against Newcastle – but so too have the other January signings.
In fact, for all of his downplaying in this particular presser (which you can hear in full HERE), it felt like there were only upsides after their victory over Newcastle, even going so far as to dub new signing Nico Gonzalez a ‘mini-Rodri‘.
You can watch the highlights from the game down below:
Pep is right, nothing is eternal – but sometimes you just come up against talents like Mbappe and there’s very little anyone can do about it.
Danny Jones -
3rd January 2024 
