Ole was the one who wanted Lukaku to go no matter what and defended his decision several times. As for replacing him, as I said his fourth target in summer was a striker, as going per his quotes and that's on Woodward, but that's not what I'm blaming him for, I'm blaming him for letting go of Herrera and Fellaini and prioritizing the defense over them. That was his own choice and he has to be responsible for it imo. All his talk post the summer was that we couldn't get our right target in the attack, nothing about the midfield.
As for Maguire, I liked and wanted him, however for 80m he hasn't done anything outstanding and had only been a marginal upgrade over Smalling in terms of ball control. For 80m I expected more than being decent but not outstanding. Considering the state of both midfield and defense entering summer market, I wonder what would have happened all things cobsidered if we delayed Maguire signing one more season, or even to Jan, entered this one with Smalling and focused the budget on at least 1 midfielder. It's not like any other club was interested in Maguire anyway and City backed off from the deal for thinking he's overpriced.
But as I said it was Ole's choice at the end to prioritize defense over midfield and decided to put the majority of our budget into CB. Whether the outcome is positive or negative he should take responsibility for it. Woodward might be responsible for us not getting an attacker by the end of the market but Ole wasn't blameless either.
I didn’t see Ole being desperate to get rid of Lukaku, what I saw was that Lukaku was desperate to suck off Conte again. Ole wouldn’t have wanted a player that wasn’t committed and rightly so, this is Lukaku we are talking about not Van Persie.
Maguire was always going to cost that amount and with big signings you have to strike while the opportunity is there. Most managers would have wanted to get that one over the line rather than risk waiting until the next window.
Also who’s to know who Ole prioritised?
For all we know he may have wanted Dybala and Sancho... except every deal is different and your not guaranteed any of them.
At this point United must make the
right signings, I’m willing to wait and get three players per window of the exact profile we need rather than spunk tens of millions on more Freds and Lukaku’s.
I’m also sure he would have liked to sign at least one midfielder. However letting Fellaini go was a must and signalled us moving away from that plan B lump the ball to Afro man nonsense.
Herrera wanted crazy money, his age and performances didn’t warrant it - again a changing in approach from us throwing money at average players.
These changes, whilst they don’t get fans on the edge of their seat, are small but fundamental changes away from the truly abysmal recruitment strategy we’ve had post SAF.
You can choose not to see it and throw another manager at it who will no doubt want their own players and the cycle continues.
To some extent I’m interested in off the pitch changes as much as on field performances. Crazy idea eh?