Ed Woodward 2019 - Until all Arctic ice melts edition

SteveJ said:
Besides, Woodward isn't a 'football man'; so his view on the brilliance (or otherwise) of football folk isn't worth that much.
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Do you think Peter Moore of Liverpool is a "football man"? He is a computer-game guy who is mostly known for advocating multi-player online mode very early.
If Woodward goes he is being replaced by a corporate guy from the US that the Glazers have experience with and trust for themselves and themselves only.
 
SteveJ said:
Besides, Woodward isn't a 'football man'; so his view on the brilliance or otherwise of football folk isn't worth that much.
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Yep. I was literally about to edit my post to make that point. The fact he can talk about how brilliant our recruitment is shows that he has too much involvement in the football side. The only time he could talk about how brilliant our recruitment is if our players were objectively good, i.e. they were winning trophies.

Johan07 said:
Do you think Peter Moore of Liverpool is a "football man"? He is a computer-game guy who is mostly known for advocating multi-player online mode very early.
If Woodward goes he is being replaced by a corporate guy from the US that the Glazers have experience with and trust for themselves and themselves only.
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The trajectories of each club since their respective appointments speaks for itself mate.

I'd love for the Glazers to appoint some guy they poached from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers if he leads us to lifting the Champions League and running away with the league title.
 
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Scotty McT said:
Yep. I was literally about to edit my post to make that point. The fact he can talk about how brilliant our recruitment is shows that he has too much involvement in the football side. The only time he could talk about how brilliant our recruitment is if our players were objectively good, i.e. they were winning trophies.
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It's even weaker if by 'brilliant' he meant they are hard-working & friendly people, rather than actually describing their talent.
 
Johan07 said:
Do you think Peter Moore of Liverpool is a "football man"? He is a computer-game guy who is mostly known for advocating multi-player online mode very early.
If Woodward goes he is being replaced by a corporate guy from the US that the Glazers have experience with and trust for themselves and themselves only.
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Mike Gordon is not a "football man" per se, but that didn't prevent him from doing a lot of research on Jurgen Klopp to determine if he was a good fit in an analytical and football sense. This due diligence process is something that you would undergo in the investment business before taking a big position. And Michael Edwards has been brilliant as a sporting director.

So who are the equivalent of these three at United?
 
does anyone know if and when there will be a glazers/Woodward protest outside old Trafford before the pool game?
MUST mentioned it in an email, I'd like to join in if it happens.
 
The Irish Connection said:
does anyone know if and when there will be a glazers/Woodward protest outside old Trafford before the pool game?
MUST mentioned it in an email, I'd like to join in if it happens.
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I have been curious as to why there isn't any form of proper protest against the Glazers at this stage.
 
SteveJ said:
It's even weaker if by 'brilliant' he meant they are hard-working & friendly people, rather than actually describing their talent.
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Reminds me of Sunderland Till I Die when a fan was giving Chris Coleman some stick and he responded with something like: "How dare you? I'm a father of five."
 
Johan07 said:
Well, yes, but Van der Sar was appointed CEO of a club that has had it structure set in place for I dont know how many years.
We are trying to change our structure; slowly admittingly.
To appoint him would be as much of a punt as employing a DoF or a new manager.
He also has no previous experience financially and a lot of Woodwards work nowadays is connected to the listing on NYSE. The legislation and rules on there are wickedly difficult; combined with our holding company being registered in the Cayman Islands. This is what people dont get: that part is the major part of what a CEO does and why all top PL-clubs even if they are not listed are run by "accountants".
Ajax are also listed, but on a much smaller marketplace and with a completely different ownership structure.
And respectfully (not to you personally, but in general): we will never ever appoint a CEO that is not "the Glazers puppet". It is kinda in the CEOs job description to be just that.
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I think you are overestimating the importance of Woodward/Accountants a bit. At United we have at least 3 CAs on our books; Woodward, Arnold and Bates. Obviously the Company Secretary is responsible for compliance issues with NYSE and other regulators. I think we have too many finance people at executive level at the expense of a true football man, between Woodward, Arnold and Judge we should get rid of one and bring in a true football man with some corporate background to provide objectivity.

There are about two or three scenarios where I think the club suffered from lacking someone who can look at things from a purely football perspective and help out the decision makers-
1. when we hired LVG I think we gave him too much power which he used to gut the squad and replace them with worse versions.
2. when Mourinho wanted a central defender and the suits thought otherwise. That decision ended up costing us our CL place and a world class manager.
3. when the decision to make Ole permanent was made. I think we needed an adult in the room to advice the board to wait until the end of the season.
 
You know, brilliant footballing managers have failed at a footballing task before. Brilliant businessmen have completely screwed the pooch with a product before.

Is there not a lot of room for the possibility that Woodward is not lying, yet they are failing anyway for whatever reason?
 
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When should the fans should stand up and make a statement and protest against these lot? When we are officially in relegation battle?
Just like everything else at this club, negativity into the fans too.
 
bond19821982 said:
And hows that on Ed ? You said Ed didn't support them and now you are changing your narrative . He has consistently spent lot of money for managers.

Not his problem that they chose to spent on wrong players.
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No change of narrative. I said he has not supported them ENOUGH.

For the reasons stated in my previous post. Which are problems created by your mate "Ed".

It's not rocket science. In fact I'd go as far as to say it's bloody obvious!
 
Footballers aren't that strictly differentiated, so it's nonsensical to talk about possession based footballers versus anti possession players, that's not a thing and never has been. Some players may be a better fit in a particular role for a particular setup but that's about it, otherwise footballers are tactically flexible, only their physical attributes can sometimes be an issue.
 
JPRouve said:
Footballers aren't that strictly differentiated, so it's nonsensical to talk about possession based footballers versus anti possession players, that's not a thing and never has been. Some players may be a better fit in a particular role for a particular setup but that's about it, otherwise footballers are tactically flexible, only their physical attributes can sometimes be an issue.
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The movement, triangles and positioning are coachable to an ok level over a relative short amount of time. The players ability to receive and play accurate passes takes longer to improve.

There is a continuum when evaluating what type of football players are best suited to. Mata is a good example of a player clearly more suited to a possessionbased style, given that his physicality renders him useless when the team is not in possession. Lingard is best without due to his limited ability with the ball when under pressure. Ideally one would not have players that are clearly better in one and very unproductive in the other, unless the team aims to be extremely possessionbased or "antipossession" thus needing specialists.

Our team have a mix of a few players that got the technical ability (relative to their position) to play possessionbased and there rest having abilities not suited to play possessionbased at EPL level. Makes it difficult to find a tactical approach that gets the best out of most of the players, or coach the team to play more possessionbased football. If one were to categorize the players in the team based on their suitability to play possession, antipossession(low block, counter attacking) or both then i think this is a fair categorisation.:

Possessionbased: Lindelof, Mata, Gomes, Pereira.
Antipossession: Young, Shaw, AWB, Bailly, DDG, McTominay, Lingard, James, Rashford, Fred.
Both: Maguire, Tuanzebe, PP(If not played as a midfield duo. Stop it.), Martial

Ideally you would have most of the players in your squad able to play/function in the two extreme paradigms in football, we do not. We have an extremely unbalanced squad relative full of so called "specialist". It would be fine playing Rashford and AWB with 9 players able to play possessionbased football, but it is not ok to play possessionbased specialists like Mata in a team unable to keep possession. Makes him a big liability. It is difficult to break down balanced defenses when most of your team is full of counter attacking specialists like we have seen our team struggle more than usual without PP and Martial.
 
Fosu-Mens said:
The movement, triangles and positioning are coachable to an ok level over a relative short amount of time. The players ability to receive and play accurate passes takes longer to improve.

There is a continuum when evaluating what type of football players are best suited to. Mata is a good example of a player clearly more suited to a possessionbased style, given that his physicality renders him useless when the team is not in possession. Lingard is best without due to his limited ability with the ball when under pressure. Ideally one would not have players that are clearly better in one and very unproductive in the other, unless the team aims to be extremely possessionbased or "antipossession" thus needing specialists.

Our team have a mix of a few players that got the technical ability (relative to their position) to play possessionbased and there rest having abilities not suited to play possessionbased at EPL level. Makes it difficult to find a tactical approach that gets the best out of most of the players, or coach the team to play more possessionbased football. If one were to categorize the players in the team based on their suitability to play possession, antipossession(low block, counter attacking) or both then i think this is a fair categorisation.:

Possessionbased: Lindelof, Mata, Gomes, Pereira.
Antipossession: Young, Shaw, AWB, Bailly, DDG, McTominay, Lingard, James, Rashford, Fred.
Both: Maguire, Tuanzebe, PP(If not played as a midfield duo. Stop it.), Martial

Ideally you would have most of the players in your squad able to play/function in the two extreme paradigms in football, we do not. We have an extremely unbalanced squad relative full of so called "specialist". It would be fine playing Rashford and AWB with 9 players able to play possessionbased football, but it is not ok to play possessionbased specialists like Mata in a team unable to keep possession. Makes him a big liability. It is difficult to break down balanced defenses when most of your team is full of counter attacking specialists like we have seen our team struggle more than usual without PP and Martial.
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You see there is a massive problem here. Your good example, Mata, had his best years in two low blocks counter attacking teams with Valencia and Chelsea. Your good example of possession based style player is a player not developed in it.
 
JPRouve said:
You see there is a massive problem here. Your good example, Mata, had his best years in two low blocks counter attacking teams with Valencia and Chelsea. Your good example of possession based style player is a player not developed in it.
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There is a big difference in mobility when comparing Mata for us the last 3 years to Mata at Valencia or his first years at Chelsea. There is also a difference between low block teams but the players have the technical ability to pass the ball, and us. And playing in a low block team mitigated Matas lack of mobility given that there was little space for the opposition to take advantage of playing against Mata.

I'm not disagreeing with your point that most players are flexible when it comes to how to play and can adapt to different systems over a relative short amount of time, but their technical ability can also be a limitation (in addition to they physical ability and their "mental" abilities which is difficult to gauge). And a team can function while having a 1-3 "specialist" suited to a different type of football and operating in a specific role as you mention, but not when they are played in roles they do not function in or when many of the other players on the team are so far below technically that the "technical specialist" operates more or less in a vacuum.

I was trying to generalize, since taking a holistic approach when discussing how a team can be influenced by the different type of players in different roles when playing a certain type of football is, well, comprehensive.
 
Fosu-Mens said:
There is a big difference in mobility when comparing Mata for us the last 3 years to Mata at Valencia or his first years at Chelsea. There is also a difference between low block teams but the players have the technical ability to pass the ball, and us. And playing in a low block team mitigated Matas lack of mobility given that there was little space for the opposition to take advantage of playing against Mata.

I'm not disagreeing with your point that most players are flexible when it comes to how to play and can adapt to different systems over a relative short amount of time, but their technical ability can also be a limitation (in addition to they physical ability and their "mental" abilities which is difficult to gauge). And a team can function while having a 1-3 "specialist" suited to a different type of football and operating in a specific role as you mention, but not when they are played in roles they do not function in or when many of the other players on the team are so far below technically that the "technical specialist" operates more or less in a vacuum.

I was trying to generalize, since taking a holistic approach when discussing how a team can be influenced by the different type of players in different roles when playing a certain type of football is, well, comprehensive.
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But the distinction that you are making isn't possession vs anti possession which is the point that I made, when it comes to possession of the ball players are flexible and you will rarely have to get rid of players because of the amount of possession that you prefer. Also it's worth mentioning that LVG didn't sign players particularly marked by possession football, most of his signings played and thrived in counter attacking setups.
 
JPRouve said:
But the distinction that you are making isn't possession vs anti possession which is the point that I made, when it comes to possession of the ball players are flexible and you will rarely have to get rid of players because of the amount of possession that you prefer. Also it's worth mentioning that LVG didn't sign players particularly marked by possession football, most of his signings played and thrived in counter attacking setups.
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My point, however badly worded, was that a player and a team can be flexible within a range of a "Possession <---> antipossession" continuum, but the range is dependent on the players abilities (physical, mental, technical) and the teams mutual understanding (cohesion), which are variables that can change over time through coaching.

You could get a team with Rashford, Shaw, Smalling, AWB, DDG, MCTom, Fred and Lingard to play some sort of possessionbased football. E.g LVGs safe possession, but you would struggle to make them play a more fast paced and technical demanding style of possession like City do. If you replace Sterling and Walker with Rashford and AWB, there would be little difference in how City could have played, but if you replaced Laporte, David Silva and more with less technical able players you would struggle. And subsequently you would struggle to play "antipossession" if your team was full of players similar to Mata, but not if you had 1 or 2 like Mata.
 
Fosu-Mens said:
My point, however badly worded, was that a player and a team can be flexible within a range of a "Possession <---> antipossession" continuum, but the range is dependent on the players abilities (physical, mental, technical) and the teams mutual understanding (cohesion), which are variables that can change over time through coaching.

You could get a team with Rashford, Shaw, Smalling, AWB, DDG, MCTom, Fred and Lingard to play some sort of possessionbased football. E.g LVGs safe possession, but you would struggle to make them play a more fast paced and technical demanding style of possession like City do. If you replace Sterling and Walker with Rashford and AWB, there would be little difference in how City could have played, but if you replaced Laporte, David Silva and more with less technical able players you would struggle. And subsequently you would struggle to play "antipossession" if your team was full of players similar to Mata, but not if you had 1 or 2 like Mata.
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But your first sentence says everything, there isn't such a thing as possession/anti possession players, because as you inferred it's a range and not two isolated boxes. And in reality you will rarely have players that are greatly marked, whether it is physically, tactically or technically most will be close to average. You only have a point if you go into extremes and even then it wouldn't be about possession vs anti possession because you couldn't do anything with a team full of Matas or the equivalent that one would have for "anti possession". Whatever you do, you need a mix of players and you need to add specific qualities to certain roles but collectively players can play all sorts of tactics.
 
JPRouve said:
But your first sentence says everything, there isn't such a thing as possession/anti possession players, because as you inferred it's a range and not two isolated boxes. And in reality you will rarely have players that are greatly marked, whether it is physically, tactically or technically most will be close to average. You only have a point if you go into extremes and even then it wouldn't be about possession vs anti possession because you couldn't do anything with a team full of Matas or the equivalent that one would have for "anti possession". Whatever you do, you need a mix of players and you need to add specific qualities to certain roles but collectively players can play all sorts of tactics.
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What I tried to argue was that some players would perform better in one system compared to another, based on their own abilities, not that players can be categorized purely as one type of player or another.
 
Fosu-Mens said:
What I tried to argue was that some players would perform better in one system compared to another, based on their own abilities, not that players can be categorized purely as one type of player or another.
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So you argued something that I said in the post that you initially quoted when I said that some players may be a better fit.:)
 
JPRouve said:
So you argued something that I said in the post that you initially quoted when I said that some players may be a better fit.:)
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And that our team is full of players that are more suited to playing "antipossession" football than playing possessionbased, and that ideally one would have a main core of players with abilities making them able to function in both extremes, with some specialist added in.
 
Johan07 said:
So basically "brilliant" means worthless and this should be easy to read "between the lines"? That makes complete sense.
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Well done on parody posting. You’ve done an amazing job. Most people just blew past that corporate lawyer bit.
 
shahzadi said:
I wouldn't fire him, that would be another mistake. I would just take him as far as I can from footballing matters. It is about time the structure needs to be built. An actual board consists of former players and experts who can first identify the direction of the club and then appoint the manager accordingly.

If they make any effort of hiring another manager without footballing brains, it will be an even bigger disaster.
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I would not fire him either maybe just shoot him a thousand times with a potato gun.
 
Fosu-Mens said:
Our team have a mix of a few players that got the technical ability (relative to their position) to play possessionbased and there rest having abilities not suited to play possessionbased at EPL level. Makes it difficult to find a tactical approach that gets the best out of most of the players, or coach the team to play more possessionbased football. If one were to categorize the players in the team based on their suitability to play possession, antipossession(low block, counter attacking) or both then i think this is a fair categorisation.:

Possessionbased: Lindelof, Mata, Gomes, Pereira.
Antipossession: Young, Shaw, AWB, Bailly, DDG, McTominay, Lingard, James, Rashford, Fred.
Both: Maguire, Tuanzebe, PP(If not played as a midfield duo. Stop it.), Martial
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Harsh on Shaw. From a technical viewpoint he's one of the most suited to possession based football, as he's got one of the best first touches in the squad and is also one of the better and sharper passers. His problem is positioning and movement as he doesn't get forward enough to actually utilise those abilities properly (plus the injuries of course).
 


What is that, an interview? He is coming out in force to defend his reign at the club. I bet he talked recently far more than the 6 last years combined.
 
el3mel said:


What is that, an interview? He is coming out in force to defend his reign at the club. I bet he talked recently far more than the 6 last years combined.
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He is not defending himself. The information from the club that has been published now is an objective description about the recruitment system.
Its far overdue. There is a lot of good posters on here who has tried to describe just whats in the Mail-article and been shot down as Glazer-shills.
Woodward himself has also shot himself in the foot by in principle not doing any interviews except the investor briefings since he turned CEO. Even if Gill did not either tbf.
Its made it easy to villify him for ABU-media.
With todays media coverage he needs to speak out more often so that conspiracy theories like here on the Caf dont spiral out of control. Its a good thing that the club releases/leaks real factual information. And it means more information for us fans. Again: good thing.
Even if I am sure it kills a lot of posters inside here who had convinced themselves that the reality was different.
 
What do you call a man with 3 planks of wood in his head?

.....Edward Woodward
 
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Fluctuation0161 said:
No change of narrative. I said he has not supported them ENOUGH.

For the reasons stated in my previous post. Which are problems created by your mate "Ed".

It's not rocket science. In fact I'd go as far as to say it's bloody obvious!
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Define "enough" - I just quoted the numbers he spent on managers players. What else is he supposed to do ? Apart from the state owned clubs, how many has actually spent that much ?

It's not his mistake managers chose to spend it on wrong players or they couldn't make it here. I can give 3 other mistakes of Ed but "not supporting" is not one of them.
 
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