Manchester United are reported to have eyes on Southampton director of football Jason Wilcox as the behind the scenes shakeup at Old Trafford continues.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s 25% buy-in and takeover of football operations has already influenced the appointment of incoming chief executive Omar Berrada and is also seeing the club target Newcastle United sporting director Dan Ashworth.

The Athletic reports that United are now looking to make Wilcox a “key figure” in the new sporting hierarchy too. The idea is that he would work under a sporting director, expected to be Ashworth.

Wilcox, a 1995 Premier League winner with Blackburn Rovers during a fruitful playing career of his own, is said to be aware of the interest. United are believed to be working on a deal to appoint him, however, no approach to Southampton has been made as of yet.

The 52-year-old retired winger has spent most of his post-playing career at Manchester City. Having initially been hired as an academy coach in 2012, he later became Under-18s manager and was eventually promoted to the role of academy director in 2017.

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Wilcox left the Etihad Campus at the start of 2023 in order to take a role at senior level at Southampton, although it is said that City had made an offer for him to stay.

His time overseeing City’s academy coincided with the likes of Phil Foden, Rico Lewis and Cole Palmer making the permanent step up into the first-team squad. All three are England internationals.

Now, he could be another coup for the new United structure after already poaching Omar Berrada, who was the man in charge of football operations at parent company City Football Group and had played a huge part in the club’s growing success since he first arrived from Barcelona in 2011.