The best compliment you could offer Manchester United football director John Murtough is that nobody is really talking about him anymore. That, you imagine, is just how he likes it.
It hasn't always been like this. The clamour was for United to appoint a name as their first director of football, a Monchi, a Paul Mitchell, a Luis Campos. Not to hand the biggest job on the football side of the business to someone who had been working in the shadows at Old Trafford for seven years.
Murtough has understood the role and played his part in United's success this season, however. He got the appointment of Erik ten Hag right and has led the football department with diligence and professionalism.
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Having alighted on Ten Hag as the right manager, he also helped encourage the club to back him in the summer transfer market. The window was an unqualified success and Murtough deserves credit for that.
But it is Murtough's first decision in the job that now reflects well on him. He had been in the role, alongside technical director Darren Fletcher, for six months when it became clear Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's time was coming to an end.
The writing was on the wall after the 5-0 defeat to Liverpool on October 24 and at that point there was a clamour to make an obvious change. The Solskjaer era was effectively over and Antonio Conte was available. Not just available, but desperate to get the job.
Instead, United held firm. Solskjaer was a dead man walking in the job for another month, but the win he managed against Tottenham led Conte to North London. At the time the perception was that United's prevaricating had cost them the chance to appoint an elite manager.
In reality, the intense and high-maintenance Italian wasn't considered a good fit for the Old Trafford gig by any of the key decision-makers at the club. Last season it looked like United had erred, that their loss would be Tottenham's gain, but it was never a scenario likely to last long.
Murtough may have made a mistake in appointing Ralf Rangnick as interim manager, although it's worth remembering the German torched his own reputation as well. Conte took Tottenham to fourth, but he still offered them no long-term stability and no long-term planning. The push to sign Ivan Perisic on a free transfer was an example of that.
United opted for an interim to get them to a position where they could properly press the reset button. Ten Hag impressed Murtough and Fletcher with his vision for the club when they spoke to him during the appointment process. They could see what he wanted to do and, collaboratively, they are achieving it.
Such aligned thinking was unimaginable under Conte. The 53-year-old has experienced personal trauma this season but he's also been a sullen and provocative presence at the club. The pin had been close to coming out of the grenade for a while, but the explosion that occurred at St Mary's last weekend was bigger than anyone could have imagined.
To misappropriate one of his more telling lines. This is the history of Conte. When things go well he is a genius. When they go wrong it is everyone's fault but his. He can deliver success to clubs, but it is only ever short-term. It is expensive and it is generally achieved with squads at the end of a cycle rather than the start of one.
Who knows how it would have gone for Conte at United, but the feeling is that the squad Ten Hag inherited at Old Trafford is in a similar position to Tottenham's. They need some clear structures, a modern way of playing and some careful man management, someone who can balance the risk and reward of when to criticise players and when to put an arm around them.
Ten Hag has provided all of that and more at United. It's unlikely Conte would have had the same impact, given his failings in North London.
This is no longer a tale of Conte being the one that got away for United, but Ten Hag eliciting pangs of regret at Tottenham. He was reportedly interviewed for the job in the summer of 2021 but didn't impress and was judged to lack charisma. That's one accusation, at least, that you couldn't level at Conte. His charisma just got them nowhere.
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