At the final whistle at Elland Road, television cameras lingered on Manchester United’s chief executive, Omar Berrada, watching from the stands — a moment the writer uses to underline who ultimately answers for the club’s direction.
The Guardian columnist contends that responsibility for the club’s current malaise lies above the touchline. Berrada, who appointed the interim head coach and therefore has the power to dismiss him, is singled out as emblematic of wider executive dysfunction. The piece notes that Berrada, who was recruited from Manchester City primarily to expand commercial revenue, has also been involved in hiring or rehiring the two predecessors whom he later had to dismiss.
The argument put forward is that removing the manager will not cure the institutional issues that produced the appointment in the first place. Problems of governance, recruitment and long-term planning are identified as the deeper causes, and the columnist suggests they will persist so long as the club repeats the cycle of blaming successive coaches for systemic shortcomings.
Rather than defaulting to another managerial sacking, the writer urges a different approach: greater accountability and a reassessment of decisions made at the executive level. The piece closes with a plea that, for once, those in charge consider alternatives to the familiar pattern of change at the top of the dugout rather than at the boardroom.