The inside story of how Manchester United's transfer window descended into chaos

The recruitment hierarchy at Manchester United is a vast organisation, often confusing to outsiders, and by Sunday morning none at the club were in any doubt that they had to sign some new players - and the sooner, the better.

The club had been stuck in a futile summer-long chase for Frenkie de Jong; had a fee agreed with Juventus for Adrien Rabiot but no agreement on personal terms; and the walls were closing in. The performance in the 4-0 defeat to Brentford was being described as the worst in the club’s history since relegation in 1974. United were bottom of the Premier League for the first time in 30 years. The new manager Erik ten Hag questioned his players’ “hunger” and then cancelled their day off for a punishment running session.

As ever in United’s recent history, the club needed to do something and this week more than any other. The team was a shambles and the supporters enraged, with a potentially terrible evening looming at Old Trafford the following Monday against Liverpool. From De Jong to Rabiot to Casemiro, the club switched horses. They alighted on paying up to €70 million (£60m) for Real Madrid’s Brazilian who turned 30 in February. One of the greatest defensive midfielders in the game but with a price to match.

It must have felt like Christmas at Real Madrid who have already invested heavily in Casemiro’s successors, Aurélien Tchouaméni, 22, and Eduardo Camavinga, 19. Real’s finances dictate that they have to sell a player every summer. Last week in Madrid all the pressure was on Marco Asensio, in the last year of his contract, to leave for a fee or sign a new deal. The Casemiro deal fell out of the sky for a grateful Real.

Yet was this signing – a vast investment in an established world star - really where United’s recruitment staff expected to be 13 days from the transfer window closing?

Earlier this year when United were enquiring about the Uruguayan striker Darwin Nunez, who eventually became Liverpool’s marquee summer signing, the player’s representatives were surprised by the range of different people who called from United. They included Richard Arnold, the new chief executive and others close to Ten Hag. In the end the conversation fizzled out and Nunez went to Anfield.

Arnold has replaced Ed Woodward, the all-action former CEO who wanted to be involved in every deal and every communication with the Glazers, the owners in Florida. Arnold was keener to delegate football business but appears still to have significant involvement. Also departed is Matt Judge, the club’s chief negotiator who would finalise the details in deals once his boss had mapped out the big numbers.

In their place the recruitment department has changed again. In has come Tom Keane, the brother of England international Michael, at Everton, and Will, of Wigan Athletic - both of them former United academy boys. A solicitor, Tom Keane previously worked as part of the New Era agency, co-owned by the former United great Rio Ferdinand, a trenchant critic of the club in recent years.

There are many others too. John Murtough is also the public face of the club’s recruitment, a de facto sporting director but also a man who has to listen to many different views. He previously worked primarily in academy recruitment. There is Darren Fletcher, the former United midfielder, who is new to the job of technical director and last season often sat among the coaching staff alongside Ralf Rangnick.

Murtough and Fletcher are understood to have championed a move for Pau Torres, the Villarreal and Spain centre-back, this summer. Their new manager Ten Hag favoured a deal for his former Ajax player Lisandro Martinez. Ten Hag’s agent Kees Vos has a powerful client list too, and his agency has a vast array of clients, including Martinez; PSV Eindhoven’s Cody Gakpo and Chelsea’s Hakim Ziyech.

In recent months the club have appointed a deputy director of football, Andy O’Boyle, who arrived from the Premier League where he was head of elite performance. Before that O’Boyle, a sports scientist, had worked as a fitness coach at Liverpool. Now he too is understood to have been drawn into the recruitment web, acting as another collator of information and discussing players who may arrive or depart.

In the background are a number of others – including the player negotiations manager Sam Barnett, who chiefly handles the deals for younger players and is also involved in the “transaction team” handling contracts and agents’ fees. Also influential is the head of recruitment, Steve Brown, and director of data science, Dominic Jordan. The technical chief scout Mick Court sits at the head of a substantial scouting department that was itself overhauled in April with the departure of Jim Lawlor and Marcel Bout. At a more junior level they have a football strategy manager, Chris Chiang, whose key focus is improvements to the training ground.

Currently, however, all efforts are focused upon recruitment and who might reasonably be added to improve performance in the short to long term.

Among their peers, United’s labyrinthine structure has become a source of wonder. Who is in charge? And who should one speak to in order to get a deal done? Communication is not always straightforward and in the poker game of transfer deals it is hard for outsiders to ascertain who has the authority to push a proposal through. For the second summer in succession the club have gone from target to target, identifying different styles of player for the same position and then finally alighted – as they did last year – on a very expensive name in his thirties.

Elsewhere they have been forced to look at those who are available. The veteran Israeli agent Pini Zahavi has brokered the move for Yannick Carrasco, the Belgian international at Atletico Madrid, 20 years after he took Ferdinand to United as then the most expensive player in British transfer history.

The recent drama has been played out against the backdrop of the strongest suggestions yet that the club, or at least a part of it, will be sold by the six Glazer siblings who own the controlling Class B shares in United.

That is at least one factor that the besieged United recruitment department can do nothing about. They are working to the Glazers' orders, and more specifically Joel, until they hear differently. It is Joel Glazer who is the most committed to the family’s United asset, and who has the largest share of voting equity. It is him who signs off all big decisions which – some say – is why so many announcements are made on Florida time.

There will surely be more signings after what is planned to be Casemiro’s grand arrival in the next few days, although how they fit whatever was the plan for United at the start of the summer – only the recruitment department will know.