Ralf Rangnick has revealed his advice to those in charge at Manchester United as he looks to drag the Red Devils back to the top of the football mountain.
United have fallen well behind rivals Liverpool and Manchester City in recent years and have been accused of lacking a plan to bounce back.
Rangnick, the current interim manager, will transition to a consultancy role at the end of the season and will be tasked with using his experience to bring some much-needed order back to the board room at Old Trafford.
However, even before he takes that position, Rangnick revealed that he has already told the United chiefs four things they must do to fix themselves.
Those four points are: improving long-term recruitment and building a squad around the new manager, prioritising physical and aggressive players over technical ones, scout a player's personality before signing and accept that this isn't a short-term job.
“Manchester City and Liverpool…have been built together and recruited over a period of five or six years - all of them under the premise of how the coaches want to play,” Rangnick said. “I told the board this is what has to happen [at United].
“Whenever the new head coach is clear, it has to be: how does he want to play and what kind of players do we need for that? Then we come back to DNA, speed, physicality, tempo. What do we need? This team does not lack technical players, it can do with more physicality.
“It takes right decisions and [clarity over] where you want to go: what kind of players, want kind of manager and then, in every transfer window, try to get the best possible. This is rocket science. It has to be done and, if that happens, it does not necessarily need three or four years. Maybe in two or three transfer windows, then the situation could be different.”
On Rangnick's point of physicality, he pointed to a number of examples in Saturday's draw with Leicester City where United needed to be more aggressive.
“I don’t think we have a lack of character but what was obvious in some parts of the game is we were second best with regards to physicality,” he said.
“It was about one on one duels. We spoke about that counter-attacking moment we had ourselves where they tackled us twice, within two seconds [and went on to score] and the same was true in quite a few other moments. Whenever there was body contact, too often we were second best. That is something we have to get better at for the rest of this season but even more so for next season.
"There were quite a few other moments where I just felt we could have been more dynamic, more physical, more aggressive but we weren’t.
“On a day when we are fluid and in our rhythm we have shown in the past we can outplay other teams but [Saturday] was difficult. Leicester were aggressive and physical in many parts of the game and we had problems with them. It is difficult to change. I do not think it is to do with mindset - it is to do with the DNA of the players.”
Source : 90min