SIR JIM RATCLIFFE has assembled one hell of a brains trust at Manchester United.
And it seems, by closing in on Ruben Amorim, that they have started to get brainy.
They have started taking intelligent decisions.
They are making Manchester United sensible again.
The Red Devils have fallen so far behind Liverpool and Manchester City in recent years that they have been little more than a speck in the rear view mirror of either of their North-West rivals.
Yet the Kop giants and City have both been strongly linked with Sporting boss Amorim, the hottest young property in European coaching, and it is United who are on the brink of landing him.
At one point Amorim was favourite for the Liverpool job when Jurgen Klopp announced his decision to quit Anfield early this year.
He had been favourite to succeed Pep Guardiola at City since his Sporting colleague Hugo Viana agreed to take over as director of football at the Etihad. So this is a coup for the crew Ratcliffe has put together to run United’s footballing operation.
He poached Dan Ashworth from Newcastle as sporting director, Omar Berrada from Manchester City as chief executive and Jason Wilcox from Southampton as technical director.
These men sit alongside Ratcliffe’s chum, Sir Dave Brailsford, the former British cycling chief and marginal gains man, as the Old Trafford decision-makers.
In the summer, when Ratcliffe made the expensive mistake of handing Ten Hag a new contract after the shock FA Cup final victory over Manchester City, his cabinet hadn’t been fully constructed.
But now that the delusional Erik ten Hag is gone — ranting on about media ‘fairytales’ over his imminent sacking and denying results he didn’t like — they are taking a shot at sanity.
Ten Hag will justify himself with boasts about two domestic knockout trophies.
Yet he assembled a former Dutch Eredivisie All Star XI to lead United to 14th place in the Premier League and 21st in the Europa League.
The £85.5million fee paid to his former club Ajax for winger Antony is a towering monument to an era of staggering incompetence.
Hiring Amorim promises to be an altogether smarter piece of recruitment.
In his first full season in the Sporting job, he won the club’s first title in 18 years and they currently sit top of the Portuguese table with a 100 per cent record.
And if you want any omens, United recruited well from Sporting in the past.
The best Cristiano Ronaldo, to a lesser extent Nani, and then Bruno Fernandes, who especially in his first year at Old Trafford was a very rare post-Sir Alex Ferguson transfer-market hit.
Amorim is only 39. He has only ever operated outside of his native Portugal for a few months on loan in Qatar as a player in the 2015-16 season.
He is heading into one of the most high-profile jobs in world football and there are no guarantees of success, especially given the mess of a squad he will inherit.
The fact that he strongly favours a 3-4-3 system with wing-backs means the Red Devils will have to recruit some more — there are few obvious elite wing-backs in their current squad.
But Ashworth, who has led the process of replacing ETH, has a very decent track record for appointing managers.
Gareth Southgate for England, Graham Potter for Brighton and Eddie Howe at Newcastle, where his first choice was Unai Emery — now, pound-for-pound, the best manager in the Premier League at Aston Villa.
That is what United paid £10m in compensation to Newcastle for. This is why they waited while he pruned his roses on gardening leave for four months. So he could get this decision right.
Most major managerial hunts start out like this:
Who is the best man for the job? Guardiola. Can we get him? No. Has Pep got any mates? Yes.
Some of Pep’s mates are doing pretty well — Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta, Enzo Maresca at Chelsea — and so Ratcliffe will surely have asked his chief executive, Pep’s former pal Berrada, whether the Spaniard has any other friends. Hence the one-time Barcelona playmaker and manager Xavi became a major contender.
But Xavi couldn’t hack the pressure of managing Barca.
And that sort of ‘kid on a Fifa computer game’ mindset isn’t Ashworth’s way.
Amorim will be a more popular appointment than any of the others who have been among the bookies’ favourites in recent weeks.
This lot were never going to go down the ‘give it Ruud van Nistelrooy until the end of the season’ route. They simply aren’t the sentimental types.
As for others with Old Trafford links, it is way too early for Ipswich’s Kieran McKenna or Middlesbrough’s Michael Carrick.
Thomas Frank seemed to be the bandwagon candidate and was sounded out by United this year but his style of football at Brentford is direct and could the Red Devils really have appointed the only manager whose team has lost to them in the last eight games?
Southgate says he is taking a year out, during which he will literally be knighted for the job he’s just done with England.
But he still wouldn’t have been fancied by supporters of any major club. Because, I don’t know, handbrakes or something.
Brailsford offered Potter the job at Ratcliffe’s other club, Nice in France, but he has been out of work since failing in his only elite managerial role at Chelsea.
Howe would have been intriguing given the fact he has become unsettled by behind-the-scenes changes at St James’ Park.
But Sir Jim’s Rat Pack have been impressively decisive in choosing Amorim. Now he must justify the trust of the United Brains Trust.