The evidence is pointing towards Solskjaer and the likes of Fergie, Ferdinand and Bruno would only get involved after Solskjaer had made it clear to the board that he wanted Ronaldo.
Below is a excerpt from The Athletic which clearly points to Solskjaer being the one who got the ball rolling as far as the Ronaldo signing is concerned. And once that was established with the board, it was Woodward's role to then sell the idea to Joel Glazer.
Whitwell/Crafton: "Solskjaer placed a call to chief executive Ed Woodward with one aim — he wanted to know if United could do the deal instead. It was a quick conversation. Woodward agreed instantly and set about negotiating with Ronaldo’s Italian club, Juventus."
https://theathletic.com/2794203/202...n-to-manchester-united-how-the-deal-was-done/
Jonathan Northcroft in his 'The Times' column went on to say that Solskjaer ignored the advice of his coaching staff to sign Ronaldo because he believed Ronaldo's goals would make up for his off the ball deficiencies.
Well, of course it’s difficult to know what to believe. Whitwell and Norcroft usually don’t base their speculation on nothing, then again, it’s hard to tell sometimes when they have a good source or when they or their sources are second guessing. Being from Norway, a friend of someone I know talks to Ole and asked him point blank about wether he had wanted the Ronaldo move. The answer he said was a clear no - that he accepted it but didn’t want it.
I don’t really expect anyone to believe ‘ITK’-stuff like this, and there are room for misunderstandings in this story too, just as even solid journalists often get quite a few details wrong even if they get the big picture and main themes quite well.
What makes sense to me about the version in the info I have, is that we know that Solskjær had ambitions of getting United to play with higher press. He said so in his early interviews, he did it with Molde, and we saw him start with it several times only to retract when the players lost too many lose goals. Solskjær learnt a lot about low defending and direct attacks under Egil Drillo Olsen, Ferguson and Queiroz, and it may be his strongest suit as a coach, but he was inspired by Meulensteen, Guardiola and Klopp early on to defend higher up and create overloads, and he implemented featurea of this quite successfully with Utd reserves and Molde. This was also alligned with McKenna’s and Carrick’s ideas, and getting Varane and Sancho seemed like maybe the crucial pieces of a puzzle to be able to stand high and create overloads. I’m in no doubt that was the strategy for the new season last year as well, for taking the final step from finalist and second place to real challengers. I think the implosion was mainly the result of how it didn’t work well enough, and the players reactions when there were setbacks. I don’t think Ronaldo was the main reason. But it would be clear to Ole that Ronaldo was not the player needed to make this kind of transition. In fact, he could have been very useful against Villarreal in the final a few months before, stylistically, but not with the way we lined up against Leeds and Southampton in last season’s openers.
The second thing is that Solskjær knew Ronaldo from close up. He would know, perhaps better than anyone, that Ronaldo was the most opposite personality of himself thinkable. He knew how to get the most out of Ighalo and a 36 year old Cavani, but he would also know very well that Ronaldo was not a good candidate for such a role. To me it makes very little sense that Solskjær would want Ronaldo in at huge wages at that point in time. Ferguson probably would, Woodward certainly would, Joel Glazer certainly would, but Solskjær, I find that unlikely.
