Explained: How transfers work for United Women

Johnson’s appearance behind the mic follows hot on the heels of Jason Wilcox featuring in episode one to reveal details of the men’s process.

As Matt explains to host Helen Evans, commentator Liam Bradford and former United defender Phil Jones, the women’s set-up replicates the same data-led procedures.

“The way we do transfers is exactly the same as men’s team,” says Johnson. “We go through the same processes that the club has, we go through the same director of negotiations in Matt Hargreaves. Everything is joined up and it is 100 per cent the same.”

Asked to discuss the signing of Jess Park from Manchester City, which saw Grace Clinton go the other way, Johnson says the deal was a result of effective profiling and planning. “What’s important is that we understand what kind of team we want to be.

“And when you understand that you can then fit the kind of profile of players who will make that team more effective. We’ve always identified Jess Park as a player that has the profile, and Jason [Wilcox] talked about how the profiling of players is really important when you are bringing them in, with the right personality and character.

“Jess always fitted that but, obviously, with the red-and-blue rivalry, moving players between the two teams is extremely difficult, stroke impossible. But what we are doing now is renegotiating contracts a lot sooner because we want to retain our best players.

“Unfortunately, Grace wanted to move on... then it allowed us to [think], ‘actually we don’t want to lose Grace but she wants to move on, let’s learn from the past’.

“A lot of players move on, but it also gives us leverage to go back to Manchester City and go, ‘there’s a player here that we think will suit our profile, can we do a deal here?’

"And that’s how it came around really, in terms of understanding what we want to get out of the deal that helps Manchester United.”

The arrival of Park marked a successful summer of recruitment following the earlier signings of Fridolina Rolfo from Barcelona and Julia Zigiotti Olme from Bayern Munich. It was also a very deliberate change in strategy, as Johnson explains on the podcast.

“It’s a really important balance [of youth and experience] within the squad. What we did 12 months ago, we moved on a lot of older players and we brought in a lot of younger players. People like Anna Sandberg came in 12 months ago who was only 20 years old, we got Simi Awujo at a similar age. So, last year, we brought in five or six really young players who we knew had potential and could grow.

“We felt this year, going into the Champions League and having performed so well last year, we needed to bring in players with a little bit more experience but also knowledge of playing in big environments. If you look at Jess with the Lionesses and Man City, having played in the Champions League, she brought that as well as the qualities and profile we were looking at.

"Julia has played with Bayern Munich in the Champions League and made over 50 appearances for Sweden, and the same for Fridolina. She has been in the Champions League since she was a teenager, is one of the most-capped players in the Champions League and has won it both with German clubs and Spanish clubs.

“It just gives our young players the chance to look up and know there are players in the changing room who have won it, they know how to win it, they know how to compete in it, and that was really important in our recruitment this year.”

Of course, any United side is underpinned by homegrown talent and Hargreaves is understandably proud of a unique statistic behind our successful women’s team.

“It is really important and that is part of the Manchester United DNA. As we are one big family club, it is important that we adopt that.

“We are really proud of the fact that, since the women’s team was reintroduced back in 2018, we have always had a homegrown youth-team player, not only in our matchday squad like the men’s team, but within our starting XI. A lot of those appearances are by people like Ella Toone, Millie Turner, Gabby George and Katie Zelem in the past.

“We’ve had some really good youth players who are integral to our first-team squad.”