Richard Arnold is preparing to take over from Ed Woodward at Manchester United, and it’s interesting to hear about how he’s been preparing for the role.
According to The Athletic, Arnold has been seeking to build positive relationships with the club’s former players who work as pundits, which is perhaps a sensible move, but also a worrying sign of the power these influential ex-Red Devils stars hold.
The likes of Gary Neville, Roy Keane, Rio Ferdinand and Paul Scholes are great figures in Man Utd’s history, and will go down as some of the finest players ever to play in the Premier League.
They’re now regularly on our screens as pundits, and Neville and Ferdinand are pretty vocal on social media as well, so of course Arnold will want to be in their good books.
This seems far from ideal, however, as these pundits should really be giving balanced analysis on what’s going on in football without club loyalties blinding them.
Of course, we love that Neville speaks so passionately about his old club, who clearly remain close to his heart, but some United fans may well feel that his loyalty towards Ole Gunnar Solskjaer didn’t actually help the team.
Solskjaer is another former United player, and that clearly helped him remain in the job, probably for longer than he really deserved to.
If MUFC want to move on and build an exciting new era, they perhaps need to be less reliant on the Class of ’92 and others having such strong links with the club.