Inside INEOS' brutal axeing of Dan Ashworth: How another costly decision was made by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford despite 'mutual' announcement amid clash of personalities

Even by the standards of the men who now run Manchester United, Dan Ashworth’s exit was brutal in the extreme.

Ashworth was with his family in the directors’ lounge at Old Trafford on Saturday evening when he was summoned to a meeting with chief executive Omar Berrada following the 3-2 defeat to Nottingham Forest.

Accompanied by a security guard, Ashworth followed chief operating officer Collette Roche through the media auditorium shortly before 8pm where the press were waiting to speak to Ruben Amorim over United’s second defeat in the space of four days.

Ashworth is a friendly, approachable character but it was noticeable that he kept his head down and avoided eye contact with journalists as he passed through the room.

Mail Sport understands that he made his way across the concourse outside and then through the warren of corridors that connect Old Trafford from the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand to the East Stand where Berrada and United’s other senior executives have offices close to the boardroom.

It was there that Berrada informed Ashworth he was leaving with immediate effect after just 159 days as the club’s sporting director.

The five months Ashworth has worked at United is roughly the same amount of time that he spent on gardening leave at Newcastle from February until the start of July.

Newcastle initially wanted £20million for Ashworth, such was the value they placed on the former FA director of football.

‘What I do think is completely absurd is suggesting a man who is really good at his job sits in his garden for one-and-a-half years,’ said United’s minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe at the time, having described Ashworth as a ‘10/10 sporting director, one of the best around’.

The clubs eventually settled on a compensation figure of around £3m. Less than six months later, Ratcliffe is reaching into his pocket again to pay off Ashworth, although it’s understood the figure would have been even higher had he stayed at the club longer.

When you consider United’s latest financial results which revealed the £21.4m cost of replacing Erik ten Hag and his coaching staff with Ruben Amorim and his backroom team from Sporting Lisbon, the price of under-achievement is grotesque at a time when 250 staff have lost their jobs as part of Ratcliffe’s savage cost-cutting programme.

The money it will save United is being eaten away by the cost of mistakes made higher up the chain of command.

Ironically, one of the reasons given for Ashworth’s demise last on Sunday was his failure to make more cuts to the football operation at Carrington where he was based, and where there was said to be a state of shock around the training ground at the news.

Others include the fact that he simply didn’t fit in to the new leadership team, with sources admitting that Ineos have been putting the structure together at pace over the last year and are still learning about the process.

There has also been talk of a clash of personalities behind the scenes after Ratcliffe and his right-hand man Sir Dave Brailsford brought in Berrada and Ashworth in July to work alongside technical director Jason Wilcox, interim director of recruitment Christopher Vivell and CEO-turned-director Jean-Claude Blanc.

Ashworth is said to have been less keen than Berrada in appointing Amorim as Ten Hag’s successor, preferring an English coach.

It was notable that having been quoted on behalf of the club when Ten Hag’s contract was extended in July, there was no similar comment from Ashworth to mark the announcement of Amorim’s appointment last month.

As Ten Hag’s future hung in the balance, Ratcliffe claimed in early October that the decision was ‘not my call’. In reality, sources insist that Ratcliffe and Brailsford are the two key decision-makers at United.

Although Ashworth’s exit was presented as a mutual decision in a club statement on Sunday morning, it’s understood that the call was made by Ratcliffe and Brailsford in conjunction with co-chairman Joel Glazer.

It’s the latest example of Ratcliffe’s ruthless approach since his £1.3billion minority takeover was announced almost a year ago on Christmas Eve and he assumed control of the day-today running of the club.

If that felt like good news at the time for staff and supporters weary of nearly two decades of Glazer ownership, the last 12 months have brought a more sobering reality.

Although the majority of the job cuts have come among the rank and file, Ineos have reshaped United’s executive team and the football department at Carrington, while dropping Sir Alex Ferguson as a club ambassador.

In recent days, Ratcliffe has upset supporters by raising the cost of tickets to members to £66 while scrapping concessions for kids and pensioners in a move widely seen as a precursor to season-ticket price rises next season.

‘If you shy away from the difficult decisions, then nothing much is going to change,’ the Ineos billionaire said in an interview with fanzine United We Stand which went on sale on Saturday, shortly before Ashworth was shown the door.

The 53-year-old was brought in as part of a revamp of the recruitment department but leaves after just one transfer window in which United spent another £200m on Leny Yoro, Manuel Ugarte, Joshua Zirkzee, Matthjs De Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui.

It’s understood that the club have yet to decide whether to appoint a replacement, with both Wilcox and Vivell capable of taking on greater responsibility in the January transfer window and possibly assuming Ashworth’s role on a permanent basis.

Down the corridor from the office where Berrada met Ashworth on Saturday evening is the boardroom where the two presented a united front to reporters at the start of September and spoke of a bright new future at Old Trafford.

‘We’re a team in all of this. It’s a joined-up process,’ said Ashworth, despite admitting that United’s summer signings were ‘fundamentally in pre-agreed positions as I walked in’.

‘I’ve probably done 25 windows now and been doing this for a fair period of time. I don’t think there’s ever been a window where we’ve said, “oh God, it’s gone absolutely perfectly, we’ve done every single in and every single out we wanted to do”. There are always bits.’

Ratcliffe appears less satisfied with the situation. In his fanzine interview over the weekend, he warned ominously: ‘Manchester United must have the best recruitment in the world. It’s all about people and we need to find the right ones.’ Hours later, Ashworth was gone.

Rather damningly, Ratcliffe also described United as ‘mediocre’ and that much was borne out by Forest’s first win at Old Trafford in 30 years.

A shoddy defensive performance saw United concede goals from Nikola Milenkovic and Morgan Gibbs-White early in either half with Chris Wood heading the third.

Goals from Rasmus Hojlund and Bruno Fernandes couldn’t prevent Amorim from suffering back-to-back defeats as United remained in 13th place in the Premier League table.

Sat with his family close to Brailsford, Berrada and Wilcox in the directors’ box, Ashworth will have looked on and wondered how he could help solve United’s shortcomings when the transfer window opens in just over three weeks’ time. Now it’s no longer his problem.