There is that scene in Moneyball where Billie Beane, played by Brad Pitt, sits at the head of a table for a scouts' meeting. He hears them out, he rolls his eyes, he bites his tongue, he spits into a cup, he buries his hand in his hand. Eventually, he snaps: "Blah, blah, blah."
Three times, Beane asks, "What's the problem?" Three times, the scouts are unable to identify the problem. Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, urges them to 'think differently'.
"You have a lot of experience and wisdom in this room," one scout respectfully replies, "now you need to have a little bit of faith and let us do the job of replacing Giambi."
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Jason Giambi, the first baseman, has joined the New York Yankees. Oakland are 'organ donors for the rich', as Beane bluntly puts it.
"Is there another first baseman like Giambi?" Beane asks.
"No."
"And if there was, could we afford him?"
"No."
"Then what the f--k are we talking about, man?"
Rewatching the scene, you could place Ralf Rangnick in Pitt's place and it is not a stretch to imagine it playing out as similarly as a meeting with the Manchester United scouts.
United are higher up the food chain than the A's and had a fleeting marketing partnership with the Yankees in 2001, the year Giambi headed east. They do not always act like it, though.
Marcel Bout and Jim Lawlor can no longer implore the power-brokers to 'have a little bit of faith and let us do the job'. Bout was rewarded for two years of failure on Louis van Gaal's staff with the title head of global scouting and then presided over six years of failure in that role.
United hired a Norwegian manager and Bout watched two Norwegians in person (Erling Haaland and Martin Odegaard). The Dutchman infamously had reservations over Matthijs de Ligt's physique due to his reputedly rotund father. In Moneyball , one scout vetoes a target as they have an 'ugly girlfriend. Ugly girlfriend means no confidence.'
Lawlor dined off the glory years with Sir Alex Ferguson for nearly 10 more years. He was heavily involved in the loan deal for Henrik Larsson, a grossly overrated signing, in 2006 and unearthing Javier Hernandez in 2010. United's poor recruitment hit-rate dates back to Ferguson's epoch.
When United finalised their structure last year, a high-level source arrogantly dismissed obvious candidates for the football director or technical director role (Rangnick among them) as they were synonymous solely with recruitment. The same source had previously admitted a football club is 'f----d' if they get recruitment wrong.
Only United could then turn to Rangnick - but to manage the team. Rangnick talks a good game but his teams rarely play one. What did United expect from a coach whose greatest honour was winning the German cup a decade earlier?
If United had not cultivated a compliant culture, they would have appointed Rangnick as their director of football three years ago. Prior to his appointment, he had managed 81 games in the previous 10 years. That was never United manager material, even as an interim.
Rangnick's excoriating assessments have gone down well with supporters and the matchgoers have turned on the players. That is still a damning reflection on the manager, even if he is yet to be subjected to the ignominy of 'You don't know what you're doing' chants.
Rangnick's specialty is recruitment and while his victory lap in outlining Liverpool players that he had identified at previous clubs might have rubbed some up the wrong way, highlighting it might finally convince United to adopt that thinking.
None of Liverpool's five forwards - Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz - broke the £50million barrier. United are sometimes taken for a ride by agents and clubs, and levied with their own tax, but they are responsible for that reputation. Chairmen and intermediaries cannot forget the Supermarket Sweep dash on deadline day in 2013, or the British-record, world-record and defensive record deals.
They did not think differently. Had Rangnick been in post for the ill-fated cultural reset in the summer of 2019 (when United had planned to have a technical director in place), they would have likely turned to Dayot Upamecano or Ibrahima Konate, now of Bayern Munich and Liverpool, rather than spend £80m on Harry Maguire, the only attainable centre-back who could command a record fee for a defender.
"You need mentality, quality, physicality, pace, skills, you need the full package," Rangnick said last month. Too many of United's recent signings do not fulfil that criteria. Jadon Sancho and Raphael Varane were rightly lauded last summer, only United had an idealist who was stuck in the past to manage them.
They have more than one problem.
