I'm confident Van Gaal and Woodward agreed some time ago that Van Gaal would leave "by mutual consent" at the end of the season, whatever happens. That allows him to walk away with his head held high, while we can replace him with Mourinho, or another candidate, whether we turned our season around or not. The way I see it, this season has been a failure whether we qualify for the CL next season or not, and Van Gaal must know that. This season might have been acceptable last season, but this season we needed evidence of progress, and we have not seen that. We are nowhere near being ready to challenge for the PL next season, and this too, I suspect, Van Gaal (and Woodward) know perfectly well. I think it would have been easy for Woodward and Van Gaal to reach a compromise on that score: stick by him now (we apparently never had an option that was clearly better than this anyway, or else I think Mourinho would already be here) in return for leaving quietly at the time when it was most convenient for his replacement to come in.
On this pre contract I really dont see what all the fuss is about, like Woodward is some sort of idiot for spending money on an asset he may never buy. People need to try and get their heads around the fact that we bought an option, not a manager, and there is really nothing that unusual about that, certainly not outside football. People acknowledge Mourinho is a very special manager, whether you like him, or want him at the club, or not. So it shouldnt be hard to see why having an option on him makes sense - people have recognised what a disaster it would be if he grew tired of waiting and walked away, this prevents that from happening. What it does show is that the talk of our ambivalence towards him is not just hollow paper-talk, if we are spending that kind of money on an option it means there is still some doubt whether we will take him on. To tie this back to the first para, I dont think that indecision relates to whether or not we keep Van Gaal, but whether anyone opposing his appointment can come up with a better suggestion. Maybe people have been working on Pochettino or some other less obvious candidate in the background.
This is a leap, obviously: looking at the facts, it is just as likely that we are considering keeping Van Gaal (if he achieves some benchmark), but I refuse to believe the club has so little ambition, or so much baseless faith, as to trust a manager who has made so little progress in 2 years. I think we were happy to hedge our bets with the option on Mourinho because ultimately we felt reasonably sure we would go that route anyway, so it wouldnt end up costing much (or anything, depending on the precise nature of the contract), but it allowed certain people to work on another option which, if it materialised, would also be good for the club. In the context of what the club would be spending on any half decent player, a few million on an option for Mourinho is great value IMO. Woodward has not been perfect by any means, in some ways his performance has been worryingly incoherent, but I have no criticism about this deal if it was necessary to keep certain people onside or if there is a realistic chance of finding an even better (or arguably better) alternative.
