Scrutiny of United's director of football is the model working as designed

Key takeaways

• When a director of football shapes recruitment and appoints the head coach, doubts about the coach lead naturally to questions about the director.
• BBC Sport reports that, with Michael Carrick's position as Manchester United head coach under scrutiny, attention has also turned to director of football Jason Wilcox.
• The director-of-football model is meant to make a club's direction outlast any one coach, so it also makes the director the person who answers for that direction.
• Most of the evidence that would settle whether the scrutiny is fair, such as internal reporting lines and who signed off each decision, is not public.

The structure puts the director in the line of fire

The argument here is simple. Scrutiny of Manchester United's director of football is not a side effect of a difficult spell. It follows from the way the club has chosen to organise its football operation. BBC Sport reports that, with questions being asked about Michael Carrick's position as head coach, focus has also turned to Jason Wilcox in his role as director of football. That is what you would expect under a model that separates coaching the team from building the squad.

In the traditional English arrangement, a manager controlled both jobs. The manager picked the team, chose the targets, worked with the chairman on the budget and often shaped the club's whole playing identity. When things went wrong, there was one obvious person to hold responsible. The director-of-football model, now common across the Premier League and long established in continental Europe, splits those jobs. A head coach handles training, selection and matchday decisions. A sporting director or director of football oversees recruitment, contract strategy, the pathway from the academy, the analytics and scouting departments and, crucially, the hiring of the head coach.

Once that split exists, responsibility for the squad sits partly with someone who never stands in the technical area. If a coach struggles, the obvious questions follow: who chose that coach, who built the squad that coach inherited, and whose plan both were meant to serve. In a director-of-football structure, the answer to all three tends to lead to the same office.

Evidence one: the director chooses the coach

The clearest link between a head coach's position and a director's position is the appointment itself. In most clubs run on this model, the director of football leads the search for a head coach, draws up the profile, runs the interviews and recommends a candidate to the board or ownership. The idea is that the coach is chosen to fit a plan the club already has, rather than the club rebuilding itself around whichever coach it hires.

So when the coach's position is questioned, the process that produced the appointment is questioned too. A director who picked a coach to carry out a defined playing model has, in effect, made a bet that the coach and the model fit together. If the club's decision-makers begin to doubt the coach, they must also ask whether the profile was wrong, whether the search was too narrow, or whether the coach was given a squad that did not suit the brief.

How the appointment at United was made, and exactly what part the director of football played in it, is not set out in the BBC's summary, and it is not known here. Under the model as it normally works, though, the director's credibility is partly tied to how each coach they appoint performs. That is why a period of doubt about the head coach so often becomes a debate about the sporting director at the same time.

Evidence two: recruitment is the director's portfolio

The second piece of evidence is the transfer market. Under this structure, the director of football is normally responsible for the club's recruitment plan. That covers which positions to strengthen, what profile of player to target, how much to spend on fees and wages, how long contracts should run, and when to sell.

These choices shape what a head coach can do far more than any single tactical decision. A coach given a squad that lacks balance, has several players under contract on terms that are hard to move, or depends on players who suit a different system starts at a structural disadvantage. Contracts make this harder still. A long deal with a high salary narrows the club's options for several windows, because a player who no longer fits the plan may be hard to sell for a fee that reflects the remaining contract value. Registration rules also limit how many senior players can be named, so a squad loaded with players who do not fit can block new arrivals.

The transfer windows add a timing problem. Registration is open only during set periods. Business left unfinished at the end of a window cannot simply be finished the following week. When a squad looks unbalanced in the middle of a season, a director has few options until the next window opens. That is when supporters naturally ask who signed off the squad as it stands.

This article does not assess individual signings. It also cannot say how far the recruitment decisions at United during this period were driven by the director, the coach or the ownership. The mechanism still matters. Where a director owns the recruitment plan, the quality of the squad is, by design, the director's record.

Evidence three: the model promises continuity, so it must account for it

The third piece of evidence is the reason clubs adopt this structure in the first place. The usual case for a director of football is continuity. Coaches come and go, often quickly in English football, and a club that changes direction with every new coach can end up with a squad assembled for several incompatible plans. The director is meant to protect the club against that. The plan stays in place, the recruitment department keeps working to it, and a new coach is hired to fit what already exists.

That promise brings accountability with it. If the director is the guardian of the long-term plan, then the long-term plan is the measure the director is judged by. When a club has gone through repeated coaching changes, or appears to be close to another, the obvious question is whether the structure is providing the stability it was set up to provide. A director who presides over frequent turnover in the dugout cannot easily claim that the coaches alone were the problem, because choosing and backing those coaches is part of the job.

Seen this way, the scrutiny BBC Sport describes is not a breakdown of the system. It is the system holding the right person to account for the part of the work that person owns.

The strongest case against: accountability can be misdirected

The strongest case against the argument deserves a fair hearing. Moving scrutiny upwards can be fair, but it can also be a mistake, and there are several reasons why.

First, a director of football rarely controls the budget. Ownership and the board set spending limits, decide how much the club can lose under the Premier League's financial rules, and often approve major signings or contract renewals personally. A director working within tight limits, or overruled on particular decisions, may carry blame for outcomes they did not choose. From outside, it is usually impossible to tell where the director's authority ends.

Second, at a large club the director often inherits a great deal. Contracts signed under earlier regimes may run for several more seasons. Wage commitments, unsold players and squad imbalances can take multiple windows to unwind. Judging a director on a squad that still largely reflects a predecessor's decisions blurs the line between what they built and what they found.

Third, the model depends on patience, and turning attention to the director too early can damage the very continuity the structure exists to protect. If every doubt about a coach immediately becomes a question about the director, the club risks swapping one form of short-termism for another. In that case the whole sporting leadership turns over together, and the plan disappears with it.

Finally, coaches still make decisions that no director controls: selection, tactics, in-game changes and how the dressing room is managed. A director can supply a sensible squad and a well-chosen coach, and things can still go wrong in ways the structure cannot prevent. On this view, scrutiny of the director is understandable but may be premature. It mixes up a coaching problem with a structural one.

This is a serious objection. It does not overturn the central argument, which is about where accountability falls under the model rather than whether any specific person deserves criticism. It does warn that being accountable and being at fault are not the same thing.

What evidence would change the conclusion

Several kinds of evidence would weaken or change this analysis, and most of it is not currently public.

If the club confirmed that the head coach was appointed directly by ownership, with the director of football consulted only marginally, the link between the coach's position and the director's would be much weaker. The same applies if recruitment decisions were shown to have been made mainly by the coach or the board rather than the director. The scrutiny would then be aimed at the wrong place.

Clear information about financial limits would also matter. If the director has been working within budgets set by others, judgements on recruitment would need to account for that. Details of the contracts the director inherited, how long they run and what they cost would help separate inherited problems from new ones.

Over time, the club's own conduct is the best evidence. If the director's plan survives a change of head coach and recruitment stays consistent with it, that would suggest the structure is doing what it was designed to do. If the club rewrites the plan whenever the coach changes, the director's role would look nominal, and the case for holding the director responsible would be weaker.

None of these details is known at present. Until they are, the most defensible conclusion is the structural one: at a club run this way, questions about the coach lead naturally to the director of football.

Sources and further reading

• BBC Sport: reporting on scrutiny of Manchester United's head coach and director of football.
• Premier League: published handbook covering player registration, transfer windows and financial rules.
• FIFA: Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players, setting out the framework for contracts and transfers.
• Academic and industry writing on football club governance and the sporting director model.