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Manchester United have made some incredible signings for their academy this summer, with as much of a focus on their youth recruits as there is on their senior transfers.
The highlights of this recruitment drive have got to be Chido Obi-Martin from Arsenal and Sekou Kone from Mali side Guidars.
However, while the academy’s recruitment has been a clear priority for the club, unfortunately it’s not been the same for the club’s coverage of the academy.
Last season the Under-21s team had only eight of their 24 matches televised on MUTV, with the treble winning Under-18s side celebrating their Premier League North title in an non-broadcasted match.
This season unfortunately appears to be on the same track if not worse.
Whilst last year the club used their their main Twitter channel to reveal line-ups and score updates, this year hasn’t received anything similar.
Across the Under-18s and Under-21s teams, four matches have been played, yet no matches have been broadcast so far, with three more this week, unfortunately none feature in the MUTV schedule.
In a confusing state of affairs, the club’s official account posted on X that one of the games would be broadcast live on MUTV, however this never came through, suggesting that even the club staff don’t known what MUTV is or isn’t showing.
So far, the only way of seeing this weekend’s Under-18s match against rivals Manchester City is to watch it through Manchester City’s CITY+.
Further to this, the United website has a highlights section for the academy, yet no footage has been released of the current season. But it’s not just the highlights section that is missing things, the Under-18s page on the official app and website is missing half the squad and their first year scholars.
To put this into perspective, other clubs like Arsenal have a dedicated social media team for their academy. This team provide match reports and highlights for their Under-18s and Under-21s squads.
Arsenal even held pre-season matches for fans to attend to seen the youth recruits in action, whilst United’s games were all played behind closed doors, with no reports coming from them.
The Peoples Person have reported that in an attempt to understand the lack of coverage, the club have blamed licencing restrictions which haven’t actually applied to the untelevised games, as well as suggesting a priority on the first team pre-season coverage.
However, journalist Steven Railston has taken to X to say: “Unfortunately, I think it’s due to recent job losses at the club.”
Earlier in the summer it was revealed that United were cutting 250 employees from the club in an effort to recoup funds for the first team squad, generating tens of millions of pounds.
If the lack of covered of the academy is indeed down to the redundancies Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been making, then it could well have an adverse effect of the large number of fans subscribing to MUTV.
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