Manchester United have employed a handful of former Manchester City staff members over the last few years, and as things stand, none are implicated in the City fiasco.
When Sir Jim Ratcliffe sat down to speak to Manchester United reporters at the Ineos office in Knightsbridge two years ago, he spoke glowingly of Manchester City and what they had achieved. Ratcliffe mentioned City repeatedly during the one-hour sit-down, praising the club they had built. "If you look at Manchester City, you can see that they've got those elements really, they've got a very sensible structure," he said. "They've got really good people in the structure. They've got a really driven competitive environment, but you know, there's a bit of warmth to it."
Ratcliffe added: "We have a lot to learn from our noisy neighbour and the other neighbour (Liverpool). They are the enemy at the end of the day. There is nothing I would like better than to knock both of them off their perch."
Former City staff hired at Old Trafford
The British billionaire viewed City as the gold standard and hired several of their former staff members to head up the new project at Old Trafford. The appointment of Omar Berrada as CEO was seen as a coup, with the official club statement outlining his arrival signalled the "first step" on the journey to re-establishing United as a "title-winning club."
Shortly before United's announcement of Berrada's appointment, he resigned as chief football operations officer at City Football Group. He moved to Old Trafford with a huge reputation, having risen through the ranks at City after initially working as their commercial director.
Jason Wilcox was the next former City staff member through the door. He joined from Southampton, but had previously spent 11 years at City, where he was academy director before moving to the south coast side. The hires of former City staffers didn't stop there, with Toby Craig appointed as communication director, Sam Ertih as performance director, Stephen Torpey hired as academy director, and Alan Wright named assistant coach for the Under-21s.
No breadcrumbs lead back to Old Trafford
Berrada was the only appointment to have moved directly from City to United. Craig had last been in work at Chelsea, Erith had worked for the New York Rangers and the New York Knicks, Torpey joined from Brentford, while Wright had been in work with a sports agency.
It's important to stress that, as things stand, none of the six are implicated in the City fiasco, and each former City staff member was hired by United on their own merit, but each of them did enhance their CVs by working for such a successful club.
It has now transpired that City's success was a sham, as the football world was rocked last Friday afternoon when it emerged City had been found guilty of all but one of the 115 financial charges they faced. It was rocked again on Monday when the Premier League announced that an independent commission had found City guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of the league's financial rules.
The independent commission found that between 2009/10 and 2017/18, City arranged 'sham' contracts, misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances and breached spending limits, but that is just the tip of the iceberg in one of the biggest sporting stories of all time.
City's tainted success and United's confidence
City's success is now tainted, with the independent commission report outlining that they had overstated sponsorship income by more than £830 million over nine years, a game-changing sum in the transfer market. City will appeal the ruling and continue to insist they are innocent of wrongdoing, but it now seems inevitable they will face sanctions, which could include fines, points deductions and other sporting sanctions.
This case goes to the very top of the football club - its Abu Dhabi ownership - and fans should be careful speculating that staff members, past or present, were involved in breaching financial rules. Berrada, for example, who spent time in different finance-related roles at City. United's CEO has not been subject to any allegations during the process, and he was not asked to give evidence as part of the proceedings.
However, a fair question fans could ask is whether Ratcliffe was right to make so many hires of former City staff members, on the grounds that their employability was enhanced by their association with a successful club? A sceptical United supporter could argue they don't want former City staff members working at Old Trafford because their CVs were strengthened by working for a club that, at the very top, wasn't playing by the rules.
However, while there is no doubt that each of United's former City employees bolstered their credentials through their Etihad stints, they weren't employed solely because they had worked for City, ending that argument. Each of the six staff members are qualified for their respective roles at United. And who knows? They may have ended up working for United even if they had not worked for City earlier in their careers.
The City debacle has opened an extraordinary can of worms, but there is confidence at United that no breadcrumbs lead back to Old Trafford.
