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Exclusive: Manchester United consider Darren Fletcher for new role as part of revamped recruitment strategy
The former Manchester United midfielder Darren Fletcher is under consideration for a role in the club’s revamped recruitment strategy, with changes expected to come in the summer.
The 35-year-old is out of contract at Stoke City at the end of the season, and would potentially work alongside Mike Phelan, with responsibility for identifying talent and helping to organise the club’s considerable scouting department. The club’s new structure under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is being discussed with those who have played at United in the past given special consideration.
The appointment of Solskjaer and Phelan has seen United return to familiar faces and continued their policy of encouraging former players to take leading roles – following a model pursued with some success by clubs like Ajax and Barcelona. Nicky Butt is the academy director, and Michael Carrick is one of Solskjaer’s assistants. The Under-18s manager Neil Ryan is son of Jim, who worked in a number of roles under Sir Alex Ferguson.
United have a preference for as many key staff roles on the football side to be fulfilled by those who they feel understand the club and its values. For that they are looking at – among external candidates - those who had success in the Ferguson years and are coming to the end of their playing days now.
Fletcher has been suggested as a potential successor to Alex McLeish as the manager of the Scotland team, having begun his coaching badges when he was out the game with ulcerative colitis, the illness that affected him most profoundly during the last two years of Ferguson’s time in charge.
Fletcher has developed a career in the media over the last year, in particular with the BBC. He told BBC Five Live in December, after the departure of Jose Mourinho, that there had been “mismanagement from the top level” since the departure of Ferguson in 2013. “There’s a real concern that you could have two seasons of rebuilding again,” he said at the time.
The club declined to comment on the direction that United were going to take in the future. In the past executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward has worked with scouts, the player analysis team and director Matt Judge to secure transfer targets, in consultation with the manager of the time.
As a member of the club’s academy, Fletcher was due to make his debut as a 16-year-old in May 2000 but was prevented from doing so by Premier League regulations of the time governing schoolboy contracts. He eventually did so in September 2003 and played for the club until January 2015 when he left for West Bromwich Albion having failed to get game-time under Louis Van Gaal.
He won five Premier League titles under Ferguson, and the 2008 Champions League. He is the third most capped Scotland international of all time with 80, behind Kenny Dalglish and Jim Leighton.