Man Utd and Ratcliffe to turn to 'Fergie of cycling' and "no d*******s" policy
Blazing saddles guru Sir Dave Brailsford is the Fergie of cycling who plotted seven Yellow Jersey triumphs in eight years on the Tour de France.
Like the empire Sir Alex Ferguson built, Manchester United's prospective new director of elite performance operates by a code of core principles - notably no divas, no drama queens or, in All Blacks rugby parlance, no d********. And according to Geraint Thomas - the 2018 BBC Sports Personality of the Year who won Le Tour five years ago with Team Sky on Brailsford's watch - no splattering the walls of your hotel room with pulped banana in a food fight.
In the headmaster's study, Brailsford can make a pencil twirling between his fingers look like a harpoon. More of that later. But in the week United buried their favourite son, a reset of the values Sir Bobby Charlton enshrined at Old Trafford will resonate with Brailsford when he becomes a key lieutenant of co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe's £1.4billion investment.
In short, Brailsford is a winner. Just ask Sir Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Thomas, the Brits who rolled up the Champs Elysees in triumph as executors of his dream to win cycling's blue riband race. His proudest moment was seeing Wiggins ring the bell to mark the opening of the London 2012 Olympics in a yellow jersey, five days after Britain's first-ever win on the Tour de France after 109 years of tootling around on Penny Farthings or Raleigh Choppers.
Now 59, it was a crowning glory for Brailsford built on an invincible team ethic and meticulous planning. Speaking on the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club podcast, he gave a revealing insight into the synergy which turned Team Sky into such a formidable outfit.
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At a club rocked by Cristiano Ronaldo's monumental hissy-fit 12 months ago, and tied in knots by Mason Greenwood's brush with the law, if Brailsford's philosophy doesn't ring any bells, there is nobody home in the belfry. He said: “You've got to have values in a team, to build a team you need an identity. You need a purpose to go into battle together, it has to be aligned. People talk about it and stick it on the wall, but to make it real, to build that into a team and feel that purpose is massively important. It only takes one bad apple in the group and it can ruin the whole dynamic.
"Ideally you don't want people to be robots, and you want mavericks to be their authentic self, but if they are destructive, self-centred or too damaging in a team environment, get them out. In a national team, you have have work with the cards you've been dealt, but in a professional team where you can trade, recruit, let people go and bring people in, it's a different thing.
"In the end, I prefer an approach where I try to coach, support, mentor and guide people back on the rails and give them an opportunity. But there's no doubt – if there's somebody who is really damaging to the group, do you want a team or a group of individuals?"
Spanning two decades, Brailsford was British Cycling's performance director, based at the national velodrome - which became known as the 'Medal Factory' - across the road from Manchester City's Etihad stadium. His success was not without controversy, as grandstanding MPs questioned the legitimacy of his famous "marginal gains" with Team Sky before it morphed into INEOS Grenadiers.
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But his imminent appointment at the opposite end of the Mancunian Way will be his biggest challenge yet. In the 10 years since Fergie retired, United have fallen a long way from the standards he set - and Brailsford knows there will be no quick fix when his appointment to overhaul training methods, nutrition, fitness programmes and even players' sleep patterns is ratified.
He warned: "If you are going to stay in a high-performance sport, and you're on a treadmill where you need to go at a certain pace, unless you are willing to go at that pace you are going to get thrown off the back of the treadmill. You are going to lose one day in sport, and it didn't do us any harm for someone else to win the Tour and for us to become the challengers instead of the dominant force. The standard is still going up and the better it gets, the harder it is to get better.”
Thomas has worked with Brailsford for 20 years and found out on his first encounter with the "big boss" that he's no pencil-pusher. "At the junior world championships in Moscow in 2003, (team-mate) Matt Brammeier hid a banana in my pillowcase and we basically had a banana fight, with bits of banana ending up on the walls.
"We were going to clean it up after breakfast the following morning, but when we got back to our room there were three or four massive Russian women going nuts because the banana had gone brown and they thought it was poo on the wall. We got called into a meeting with Dave, and he was sat behind a table twirling a pencil so hard between his fingers I thought it was going to snap."
At least Brailsford also has a sense of fun himself. He once finished a squad night out swimming backstroke, still fully-clothed, in the pond in front of the Newport velodrome. Ratcliffe's first appointment at United may turn out to be their biggest stroke of luck for ages.
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