Manchester United set to confirm Richard Arnold as new boss

Manchester United is set to reveal Richard Arnold as its new chief executive.

Mr Arnold, currently the group managing director, will effectively replace Ed Woodward, who has held the title of executive vice-chairman since 2012.

According to Sky News, the Premier League club could announce to the New York Stock Exchange within days – and possibly as early as Monday afternoon – that Mr Arnold will take over its executive leadership in the New Year.

The current United chief announced he’d be leaving the club in April, just days after their plan to join a new European Super League collapsed amid huge uproar from football fans globally.

Mr Woodward is expected to remain at Manchester United in a consultancy role for a number of months, they added.

A former executive at InterVoice, a Nasdaq-listed technology company, Arnold was previously United’s commercial director and has worked on many groundbreaking commercial deals that kept the cash flowing for United.

He oversaw the signing of a number of lucrative sponsorship contracts, including a world record seven-year $600m kit sponsor deal with General Motors/Chevrolet (2014), and a $1.3bn sports equipment deal with Adidas over 10 years (2015), the most valuable in sporting history at the time.

Arnold will become the first person to hold the CEO title at Old Trafford since David Gill stepped down in 2013.

The appointment marks another significant change at United, who sacked manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in November and appointed Ralf Rangnick as his replacement on an interim basis until the end of the season.

Rangnick will then also move into a consultancy role at United.