All you need to know about the newest most influential man at Manchester United, Sir Dave Brailsford.
Dave Brailsford has been in attendance for Manchester United’s last two matches, witnessing first-hand the scale of the task ahead at the club.
Brailsford is Sir Jim Ratcliffe‘s key advisor amid Ineos’ investment in the club, and according to The Athletic, he unofficially began work at the club on December 31.
His first tasks upon arrival at Carrington is to examine and observe, while the rest of Ineos’ preferred sporting structure is put into place.
Brailsford arrives with a mass of experience across sport, so let’s take a look at how he works, via his own words, and through those who have worked closely with him in the past.
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Sir Alex Ferguson inspired Sir Dave Brailsford
Let’s start with Sir Dave Brailsford himself, back when he was just Dave, in 2009. He was made a knight in 2012 after masterminding Great Britain’s Olympic cycling success.
Brailsford cited Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson as the inspiration for his success, after meeting the Scotman.
He told The Guardian: “You know something special is happening when Alex Ferguson pops into the Velodrome for a chat. We were very humbled to have him visit us and we had a long chat.
“We share a philosophy. If you win something once you really should be able to keep it going. To just let it all dribble away is really feeble. Everybody can achieve something once – but to do it time and time again is very different. The fact that Fergie drives his team season after season in pursuit of the same goal is phenomenal.”
Sir Alex was at that time on the way to securing a third successive Premier League title. Brailsford ended up getting one over on the Manchester United boss when he was voted as ‘coach of the year’ in late 2012 at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards.
Brailsford is highly regarded
Brailsford has a series of admirers across sports due to his successful and varied career. It really shows the expertise and different skillsets he will be bringing to Manchester United.
He has been consulted by former England and Australia rugby coach Eddie Jones, who sought out his advice. Jones was quoted by Planet Rugby: “I feel embarrassed being at the same table as him. His thought pattern and the way he thinks about preparation and how to take a team forward were absolutely outstanding.”
One of his rivals in the cycling world, Jonathan Vaughters, came up with a strange analogy for Brailsford’s ability to turn a negative situation into a position. He is quoted by The Mail: “He has an impressive ability to reach into the toilet and pull out chocolate.”
Steve Peters is a consultant psychiatrist who has worked with Brailsford through his career. He spoke to Guardian to explain how the Ineos guru goes ‘all-in’ with a project.
He explained: “Dave is the type of person who, when he comes to a river, doesn’t dip his toe in and measure the temperature. He makes a calculated risk, jumps, and if it is deep he just starts swimming.
“I told him early on that he needed to surround himself with like-minded people because that would bring out the best in him, whereas if he surrounded himself with people who keep measuring the temperature of the water and dipping their toes in he was going to get frustrated.”
One of his great admirers is England’s 2003 rugby World Cup winning coach Clive Woodward, who told The Mail: “Challenging, forcing the boundaries — Brailsford is a man after my own heart. He loves attention to detail and will always seek to use home advantage.”
He added: “While others were unwelcoming, he was like a sponge. He would be all over you, asking questions, demanding more. If the answer was ‘no’, he wouldn’t accept it. He knew what I had achieved in sport and wanted to see if he could tap into it.
“You see the gold medals, the lycra and the glamour of cycling, but he created a tough regime, taking no prisoners. In fact, he created the toughest environment I’ve witnessed outside the England rugby set-up — for men and women.”
Despite being results-orientated, Brailsford’s approach is also people focused. Peter Keen, his predecessor at British Cycling, told BBC Sport: “His man management skills are incredible. He gets people.”
Brailsford was hired by Ineos in 2021, but last year, he was invited by Newcastle United to give a talk to their players on their pre-season tour of Portugal.
Manager Eddie Howe told their club website: “I have been aware of Sir Dave’s approach and his incredible achievements at the very elite level of sport for a long time, and I was delighted to finally meet him.
“He has overseen so much success in specific disciplines, but his principles are transferrable to any competitive sporting environment. It was great for him to spend some time with the group, to share his insights and to stimulate thought and discussion as we approach the new season.”
He was also praised by Newcastle’s highly-regarded sporting director Dan Ashworth, who added: “I’ve known Sir Dave for a number of years, working across various different sports and he is without doubt the best in world sport at creating high-performance culture and turning that into winning.”
Brailsford has been making his presence felt at French side Nice. Current boss Francesco Farioli explained how detailed the recruitment process was.
Farioli told The Telegraph: “At the end of the season, when they changed coach, I had my first interview with the sporting director Florent Ghisolfi and Dave (Brailsford).
“It was quite a long interview, like five hours or something. It was a really good introduction.”
Current Luton star Ross Barkley signed for Nice last season, and he also spoke highly of Brailsford’s role. He told Talksport: “They presented me with a project over multiple years. It is a club that wants to go far, that wants to be a big club at a European level.
“I managed to speak with Dave Brailsford, who showed me the growth project at the club. Jim Ratcliffe also convinced me to come here to help the team progress.”
These were comments echoed by Kasper Schmeichel, who told Sky Sports last year that Manchester United fans should be encouraged by a possible Ineos takeover.
He said: “One of the biggest reasons that I joined Nice was because of Ineos and because of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford, their vision and how they want to evolve their sports. Because they’ve been successful, not just in business, but in every other sporting venture they’ve thrown their investment at.
“He has people like Dave Brailsford working for him, who again, are present and I think that’s the main thing with any club I’ve played at, look at Leicester, for example, the owners are present and there is not a divide.”
What is ‘marginal gains’
One phrase you may hear a lot connected with Manchester United and Sir Dave Brailsford is his ‘marginal gains’ theory which underpinned his and Britain’s successful medal haul at London 2012.
These are minor tweaks to an athlete or team’s performance, which added up, can make a huge difference.
Brailsford was quoted by British Cycling: “If you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by one percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
There is a lot, across the board, on and off the pitch, which is in need of a big improvement across Manchester United.
He added, via the Harvard Business Review: “We had three pillars to our approach, which we called “the podium principles.”
“The first one was strategy. The second was human performance; we weren’t even thinking of cycling, but more about behavioral psychology and how to create an environment for optimum performance. The third principle was continuous improvement.”
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