INEOS’ cost-cutting drive at Manchester United rolls on with the club’s director of scouting Steve Brown set to depart at the end of the season.
This is part of the cost-cutting drive that will see 200 people lose their jobs, following last summer’s decision to reduce the workforce by 250.
The Athletic have revealed that Brown was offered an alternative role but he declined and will depart at the end of June. He has already informed his colleagues of his decision.
“Manchester Uniteds director of scouting Steve Brown is leaving the club as part of wide-ranging changes to the recruitment strategy at Old Trafford.
Head of scouting to depart “Brown is the highest-profile member of the department to depart United amid the restructuring. Brown thanked his colleagues for their efforts and called United a special place. He will continue working until the end of June.
“He informed scouts of his decision in an email, explaining he had declined the offer of an alternative role from technical director Jason Wilcox and director of recruitment Christopher Vivell due to his experience and career timing.”
The Peoples Person had already relayed a couple of months ago that the scouting department will see a large number of redundancies as Sir Jim Ratcliffe felt the club was overstaffed in that department.
The Red Devils have a 80-strong scouting group, which was already cut down from its earlier strength of 140 scouts which included 50 full-time and 90 part-time scouts.
Brown had joined the club back in 2016, hired by former football director John Murtough and was involved heavily in selecting transfer targets during Erik ten Hag’s tenure.
Brown worked alongside EtH The former manager’s Dutch-centric approach has been criticised and rightly so and INEOS now have Christopher Vivell, who is the director of recruitment, to assist Ruben Amorim.
As per The Athletic’s report, Brown was “a key figure in the launch of Project Bethlehem, the codename for Uniteds huge recruitment rebuild, and also TrackerMan, the clubs bespoke centralised database of hundreds of players using scouting reports and data.”
That had not always worked with plenty of scouts reporting that their data and information was not acted upon swiftly by the club.
Vivell has certainly changed all of that with smart deals for younger stars and INEOS will hope the club can continue to work efficiently this summer.
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Ayantan Chowdhury Ayantan has worked for 10 years in the Indian sports media industry, writing for the biggest newspapers and websites but his heart was always set on writing about his favourite club. Currently an editor at The Peoples Person. You can follow him on X: @ayantanc_25
