Ralf Rangnick has told the Manchester
United board they cannot afford to
keep repeating the errors of the past as
he criticised them for buying players
who lack aggression and who do not
have the right DNA to make the club
great again.
United are seventh, 23 points behind
the Premier League leaders Manches-
ter City, and are unlikely to qualify for
the Champions League because of poor
results, such as Saturday’s 1-1 draw
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R Whiteman, St Andrews, FifePaul Hirst against Leicester City. United will fall
seven points adrift of Arsenal, who
have two games in hand, if Mikel Arte-
ta’s side beat Crystal Palace tonight.
Rangnick, the interim manager,
pointed out that United have lacked a
coherent recruitment strategy and
identity, unlike City and Liverpool, who
have won 16 trophies between them in
the past seven years. “Those two teams
have been built together and recruited
over a period of five or six years, all of
them under the premise of how their
coaches want to play,” Rangnick said.
Rangnick seemed aggrieved about
the lack of physicality in his squad. He
dismissed the idea that his players were
not aggressive enough because of their
mental approach to the game. “I do not
think it is to do with mindset, it is to do
with the DNA of players,” he said.
“It is difficult to change a technically
great player into a physical, aggressive
player and we have a lot of people who
are technical players, but the team
could do with more physicality.”
The German seemed perplexed as to
why United had recruited so poorlyover the last few years. “It takes the
right decisions and [deciding] where
you want to go, what kind of players you
want, what kind of manager you want,
and then in every transfer window try
to get the best players possible,” he said.
“This is not rocket science. It does not
necessarily need three or four years,
maybe two or three transfer windows,
then the situation could be different.”
Either Erik ten Hag or Mauricio
Pochettino, both of whom have been
interviewed, is likely to become manag-
er next season.‘United have wrong DNA’
Regulator in
place by 2024
Tom RoddyEnglish football could have an inde-
pendent regulator by 2024 under plans
being outlined by the UK government.
A review of the English game by the
Conservative MP Tracey Crouch,
published last November, stressed the
need for a regulator after consultation
highlighted key failings within the
present system, which is run by the
Football Association, the Premier
League and other bodies.
Nadine Dorries, the culture secre-
tary, intends to introduce legislation
Continued on page 50Rangnick criticises club for buying players who lack aggression
2GM Monday April 4 2022 | the timesSp ort
16 pages of top-class football reports
and analysis of the weekend’s matches
Inside T2The Game
ANDREW REDINGTON/GETTY IMAGESWoods will
make late call
on Masters
John Hopkins Augusta, GeorgiaTiger Woods arrived at Augusta
National Golf Club yesterday and
made his way to the practice ground
without giving any sign of whether
he will compete in the Masters,
which starts on Thursday.
Woods, a five-times winner of the
tournament, including a remarkable
triumph in 2019, wrote on Twitter
yesterday: “I will be heading up to
Augusta to continue my preparation
and practice. It will be a game-time
decision on whether I compete.”
Woods’s inability to make up his
mind about whether he feels fit
enough to tangle with the notoriously
hilly golf course, which is as much a
physical test as a mental one, is
understandable. For once, he is not
deliberately keeping his cards close
to his chest.
In February last year he was
involved in a car crash that left him in
Continued on page 55Look who’s
back at
Augusta
The 86th
Masters
Augusta National, Georgia
Starts Thursday
TV: Sky Sports Golf, 2pm;
live action from 8pmWoods took to
the practice
ground at
Augusta
yesterday