Why Sir Dave Brailsford should be feeling the heat at Manchester United after a string of disasters, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

Folk can make their own minds up on whether Sir Bradley Wiggins is a reliable witness, but he has always been good for a line about Sir Dave Brailsford. They share a complicated history, of course, but one of Wiggins’s remarks a few years back warrants another airing.

‘He’s like the messiah reborn, with a halo around his head,’ Wiggins would say during a speaking tour in 2018, and his sarcasm was brought to the surface by what he added next: ‘I can’t describe him without swearing. Mark Cavendish summed him up when he said, “If you walked in on him and your wife in bed, he’d make you think it was your idea”.’

For a dissident commentary on the man now turning wheels at Manchester United, that was pretty memorable and yet, for me, it remains a distant second in the genre. The best was delivered by a rival team boss in cycling, Jonathan Vaughters, who, long before Brailsford talked his way into football, found a unique way of describing the latter’s habit of landing on his feet whenever his career hit a bump.

‘He has an impressive ability to reach into the toilet and pull out chocolate,’ Vaughters said, and I make no apology for repeating that quote at regular intervals. It’s a cracker.

When I chatted to Vaughters towards the end of 2023, just as Brailsford was introducing his marginal gains spiel to new audiences at Carrington, he half-joked that the observation might go down as his most prescient work in a lifetime of sport.

Sir Bradley Wiggins quipped Brailsford is ‘like the messiah reborn, with a halo around his head’

Brailsford has been involved in Ineos’ sporting misadventures, including backing Erik ten Hag

To see Brailsford posing for selfies with fans at Old Trafford this week rather proved Vaughters’ point – whatever fingerprints Brailsford has smeared across Ineos’ misadventures in the sporting sector, however complicit he might be in the problems, there will be people hanging off his every word.

And no one is more committed to the messaging, more willing to see fairies in the jargon, than Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He continues to hand chocolates to Brailsford, the voice he trusts most in a cabal of advisors spanning his high-investment, low-yield operations in cycling, F1, yachting, rugby and football.

Which takes us back to Wiggins’s thoughts. Because above everything else, Brailsford is one hell of a salesman. We can all have a view on what has gone before, about Jiffy Bag mysteries in cycling and a poor track record once he spread his wings, but there is no denying that Brailsford is a master of saying the right thing to the right person.

If you scan the crowd at any United game, he will be there, hand of the king, sat in that row of thinkers with Omar Berrada, Jason Wilcox and Dan Ashworth. The brains trust. The neuro centre of Ratcliffe’s Manchester United. The whisperers of sweet nothings. The architects. The generals.

Or to brand them another way, they are the wise men who, to varying degrees, were responsible for extending Erik ten Hag’s contract in the summer.

Funnily enough, we haven’t heard much from them in the past week since they caught up with the rest of the watching world, because that isn’t how this game works. Accountability from the directors’ seats? Nah, don’t much fancy that, mate. Leave it to the bibs and cones fella on the touchline – blood on our hands is fine, but we don’t want any dripping from our noses.

Ineos have struggled to deliver success in cycling since becoming involved in the sport

Brailsford has been involved at Nice, another of Ratcliffe’s investments with a low return

Brailsford appeared to tell fans the deal for Amorim was ‘done’ earlier this week

The Ineos sporting director is present at matches alongside the likes of Jason Wilcox, left

Brailsford has proved to be a master of saying the right things to the right person

So far precious little has made its way out, barring the announcements of Ten Hag’s sacking and what Brailsford blurted to one of his admirers in that carpark, when he confirmed the deal to recruit Ruben Amorim was ‘done’.

What we haven’t yet heard are any reflections on those decisions taken a few months back. Ashworth is said to have been in Ten Hag’s corner on that one, even if he hadn’t officially started work when the idea of keeping him was being formulated, and Wilcox is believed to have been less convinced.

But Brailsford is the interesting factor in all this – he has been hovering around the corridors of the club longer than any of them. What he lacks in a specific job title at United, and indeed experience within elite football, is more than compensated by the Svengali-like hold he has over Ratcliffe. So it is doubly relevant that sources suggest Brailsford was firmly in favour of sticking with Ten Hag back in June.

He had been involved in the search for a new manager prior to the end of last season, when United’s campaign offered no hint of a happy ending at Wembley. But Brailsford was also among those who had the wool pulled over his eyes – eyes that are famed for their attention to detail, remember – when Ten Hag’s side somehow got the better of Manchester City in the final.

It is reveals plenty about Brailsford’s standing that he was the one who then administered the handbrake turn. He went to Ibiza to see Ten Hag on his holiday in June and was central to the decisions to not only retain him but extend his £9million-a-year deal by a season. Goodness, they even allowed Ten Hag to retain his veto over transfers, with a further £180m then spent in the summer window on players who have done little to improve an unbalanced, ineffective squad.

For Brailsford, the marginal gains guru, that has aged into a massive gaffe four months on. But while Ten Hag pieces himself back together, Brailsford sails on with no visible dent in his Teflon layer.

Quite what he brings to the party remains open to interpretation and intrigue – those around United point to his work driving the redevelopment of the training ground at Carrington and in the mechanisms that mitigate the risk of injury.

He had the wool pulled over their eyes when Ten Hag led Man United to FA Cup success

Brailsford has been in the corridors at Man United longer than the rest of Ineos’ appointments

Such is his standing, Brailsford was the man to travel to Ibiza to meet with Ten Hag this summer

Despite the decision to keep Ten Hag backfiring, Brailsford seems to carry on unaffected

There is also talk of an innovative new warm-up area in the offing, so maybe we will learn in time about the kind of one-percent growth areas that made him the star turn of British Olympic circles for a decade. Those being the days before the narrative turned and we started to ask about the strange things going on under his nose in cycling.

Such questions never seemed to trouble Ratcliffe. Nor that the biggest decision of his reign so far, the one to keep Ten Hag, folded in on itself so spectacularly after a few months. We might like to ask him about that, or better still, Brailsford.

But as it happens he hasn’t given a press conference or major interview since he started. And that’s a shame, because he’s been involved in rather a lot and at the very least it would be fun to test Wiggins’s theory.

If Brailsford could talk any of us into believing a coherent plan exists at Old Trafford, then we might have to accept he is a genius after all.

Opponents should be free to front up the Haka

Part of the beauty of Joe Marler is his ability to be both nonsensical and smart in the space of a couple of sentences. He managed just that with his assessment of the haka – the England prop now accepts he erred in his suggestion that it should be ‘binned’, but he was spot on in his assertion that opponents should feel freer to front it up.

I can’t think of any pre-match ritual quite as stirring as the haka whenever the All Blacks come to town (even if it did feel a touch misplaced before an America’s Cup press conference last month) and few so very dull as the other side standing back, heads bowed. It’s a challenge laid down and one the All Blacks use to their advantage; throwing a little back in their direction seems only fair.

Joe Marler has admitted he erred by calling for New Zealand’s Haka to be ‘binned’

He, however, was spot on in his assertion that opponents should feel freer to front it up

Grassroots officials take a stand in Cardiff 

Grassroots referees in Cardiff have gone on strike this weekend. The tipping point was a Sunday league match between Elite Eleven FC and Rumney Dragons a week ago in which the referee made a few decisions that were contested and ended when he had his ribs broken by one of the players. No referee, no game – that link should be easy for even the most stupid minds to process.