Manchester United appoint Brentford’s Manek as Director of Football Operations
Written by
Ian Westbrook
October 13, 2025
Manchester United are to continue the rebuild of their leadership team by appointing Brentford’s Chief Operating Officer Ameesh Manek as their Director of Football Operations.
Manek will effectively be in charge of United’s training ground at Carrington and will take up the role next year once he has served his long notice period with the Bees.
He will be the second staff member to move between the clubs after Brentford’s Academy Director Stephen Torpey was appointed into the equivalent role at Old Trafford in August.
Manek joined the Bees as Business Operations Director in January 2022, before being promoted in the summer of 2024.
One of his first jobs was to relaunch the club’s Academy, which had closed in 2016 but had to be reopened under Premier League rules once Brentford had been promoted to the top flight. Manek oversaw its formation and made sure the club was compliant before the appointment of Torpey as Academy Director in October 2023.
He also spent five years at Arsenal – three as Head of Academy Football Operations and two as Head of First Team Football Operations. Among his other jobs, he spent almost eight years working for Barclays Bank and was an Independent Board Director for Basketball England for just over two years.
Raft of changes at both clubs
As well as running Carrington, Manek will be in charge of travel, kit and logistics, player support, football culture and development, team operations, negotiations and women’s football at United.
He will report to Director of Football Jason Wilcox, another of several appointments made by the club this year. Others include Michael Sansoni as Director of Data, Imtiaz Ahmed as Head of Sports Medicine, Ben Parker as Head of Performance Analysis and Michael Farrell as Head of Culture.
Chief Operating Officer Collette Roche will continue to lead football operations at United until Manek arrives.
While there have been a raft of changes at Old Trafford, there have also been plenty at Brentford.
The departures of Manek and Torpey follow a summer in which Head Coach Thomas Frank and several members of his staff moved to Tottenham Hotspur and four first-team players also left.
Keith Andrews replaced Frank and appointed his own coaching team, although one of them – Martin Drury – subsequently left the club.
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