Actually if it were indeed the case that there are some politics at play, then it wouldn't be very silly at all and it'd be exactly the opposite of Ole putting his ego above the benefits of the club since the effects he'd be trying to counter would be the effects that brought in Pogba, etc and wrecked the dressing room culture to the point where he has to play politics to fix it. This would be another example of Ole's good man management.
Since your post is largely just what
@Nicolarra90 already said (
@Nicolarra90 included something that stood out from the run-of-the-mill dvB post), I'll chuck in some of the stuff implied in the "(a bit more complicated that just that, of course)" part.
First, try to do your best to never lose sight of Woodblight's personality. TL
R, when a narcissist like Woodward starts 'losing status' it ain't pretty. See Donald Trump. Same exact thing.
1. He will have been miffed/lost face with the Bruno transfer. He'll be hyper-aware of the whole '
what if we'd gotten Bruno in the summer' dynamic. Sadly, it won't be because of the '
we might have been fifteen points better off' side of that dynamic. It'll be the '
#%$^, they made ME, EDWARD WOODWARD, THE SAVIOR OF THIS CLUB, LOOK BAD' side. When people like him are in positions like that, they will be out to try and show people up. They often *appear* to turn to spite, even deliberate sabotage. But this is almost overwhelmingly always actually an artifact of the next point.
2. The "Real Madrid" transfer falling through. To Blubwad - again, due to the narcissism - this was a chance 'to look like he's on Madrid's level'. Narcissists sort of 'lunge' to try and seem part of a group they're not in. Woodplop has a looooooooooooooong history of this type of behavior. Rooney-textgate is a textbook example. Literally a textbook example. You put it in a textbook and one million out of one million psychiatrists (good ones who know what they're doing) will go '
Yes, that's a pretty good example for the general public'.
3. There was a lot of talk about his 'incompetency' around that time. He had to do something. He's got the Sancho thing on the front-burner. The market's virtually frozen because Covid's happening. Internally, the Bruno transfer has made him look bad - particularly possibly to the Glazers, who just might be starting to get tired of the vitriol coming their way via him - and Ole and his team are doing in nine months what he hasn't been able to do in years. On top of all of this, he still has his innate need to splash on that 80m player, show everyone he's the big bad boss of MAnnnncheester United.
4. In this climate, Van der Sar offers him this 'Real Madrid' player for 36.8m.
5. Ole and the footballing people are on the fence; they wouldn't mind an extra warm body, but they also don't need one. Woodmire sees this as 'the united front against him' growing stronger. He *knows* they whisper behind his back and conspire. Pressure on all sides (pressure of his own creating). How dare they not immediately kiss his feet in gratitude for bringing them such a player. He must lay down the law.
That's actually still all the simple stuff. Many, many, many posters with intelligent track records have pointed out this possibility without bothering to list the obvious specifics.
Here's the fun part. Where it gets
complicated is this:
Ole could have not really wanted this, but also been not totally opposed to getting an extra body in, and in the end chosen not to veto it due to politics, because he knew he could simultaneously have his cake and eat it, too, sort of. Again, and this might be hard for one (
and that's not one's fault), one has to realize how narcissistic Woodpeep is.
If worst came to worst, he could both send a message to Woodfart ("
This is what I'll do if you keep trying to force yourself into the footballing side - See? We're doing well without the player you forced through. We know what we're doing, now let us do our jobs. I won't say anything in public. You can still take all the credit later.")
and manage the player as best he could while he sent that message. Crazy how the 'complicated part' boils down into two sentences while the underlying 'simple' stuff can take ten pages. That be like how it do.
It's great that you have your own opinion. (It absolutely could be as simple as the staff thinking he'd do better after some re-training. The Nani-renaissance happened after he was 'out of the team' for a lengthy spell which the staff almost certainly spent working intensively on the timing of his decision-making, trying to get him to stop waiting for 'the perfect time'.)
That being said, there can be deeper issues at work than one might realize and it's not a bad thing to be aware of and contemplate them -
especially when there are elements present like Woodward with lengthy track records for just such organizationally-disruptive behavior.
The great part of
@Nicolarra90's post was that he/she pointed out
something specific that a good man-manager might say to someone in vdB's position to keep them motivated and trusting.
