Man, this guy can't catch a break... He just can't win in the eyes of some people.
Ed Woodward 2019 - Until all Arctic ice melts edition
- Thread starter fallengt
- Start date
Needs to sign Dybala, Bruno, Mandzukic and 2 more players else he's no good. 
Also needs to get rid of Sanchez, Darmian, Rojo, Jones and Fred in the same process.
Also needs to get rid of Sanchez, Darmian, Rojo, Jones and Fred in the same process.If he gets us a few more signings in before the end of the window, I think that some people might be willing to cut him some slack. Yet I can see how some people dislike him due to the shiteshow we have had to put with for the last few years. I'm happy with the Maguire signing although he should have been signed at the beginning of the window. It will still take some time for Woody to get me on his side.
Well, and this is just a scenario off the top of my head, maybe they wanted to give the current defence one more season to see if it would work out. To see if Smalling, Bailly or Jones could perform next to Lindelöf, or just in general to see if a quality pairing could me made out of the defenders we had. It's obvious now the answer is no, so splash the cash. Or maybe some personal reasons behind the scenes (we know Jose and Woodward didn't exactly see eye to eye) petty as they may be. Or maybe last season there were higher priority targets for the money that didn't end up coming off after all. Ultimately we will never know.
I'm not defending Woodward, I want him focusing on selling exclusive crisp partnerships and someone competent in charge of the footballing side. But there could be reasons why we didn't get Maguire last summer.
Have you watched us for the past 6 years?
We went from Prem contenders every single season from 2006 to 2013 to top 4 contenders(+ multiple seasons not finishing in the top 4).
All under his reign.
He deserves ZERO breaks.
Quite the argument you put forth, I think I'll pass!
As you asked for the figures again, here you go.
https://talksport.com/football/404392/manchester-united-transfer-news-leicester-city-harry-maguire/
https://www.joe.co.uk/football/manchester-united-leicester-city-harry-maguire-192020
So that’s easy, 5 swapsNeeds to sign Dybala, Bruno, Mandzukic and 2 more players else he's no good.
Needs to sign Dybala, Bruno, Mandzukic and 2 more players else he's no good.
Surely we are not writing him off after a poor opening debut season in a completely new league and new environment.
A bit like Victor Lindelof. Started poorly in his first season and many folk on here were desperately wanting him punted. Now he is easily one of our best defenders and most likely will be Maguire’s CB partner this season. Also Vidic & Evra started off very badly and look what happened once they adjusted themselves to the league and new environment. Both became not just fan favourites but also captained the club.
Take nothing away, if he doesn’t perform this season, then it’s fair to say it hasn’t worked out and best for all parties to move on.
The rest of the players on that list you want out, I agree with.
This all seems baseless, where do you get your in-depth knowledge of the man from?
I'm not necessarily defending Woodward here (especially given Evra's interview regarding how United signed his contract extension and the 'director of football' comments), but Ferguson's departure was far more influential than Woodward's appointment to the board of directors in terms of our recent fortunes. After all, he came on to the board in 2012 and we won the league in 2013. If he'd been a board member from 1993 - 2013 he'd be hailed as a visionary genius.
Our recent scattergun approach to transfers and short term investments are certainly down to him and the rest of the board, though - I'll be delighted when (if ever?) we have a competent board in charge.
You're absolutely right about SAFs retirement having a immense impact on the club. Knowing his influence on the club the board should have prepared for his departure, by setting up a competent structure for transition. They didn't, last 6 years are essentially a result of that.
to be fair, we are a long way behind some of our rivals and have not brought in a single world-class player yet this window. Even Arsenal have out out-performed us in the window so far
Any transition preparation would have to be led and administered by the CEO. And yet to appointed a banker with zero general management experience or idea on how to run a football club.
Gill should never have been allowed to retire at the same time as SAF.
How so ? If Pepe was such a superstar signing everyone claims to be, why did Bayern reject him ?
Thats not him though. He has been consistently supporting the manager every year . He is actually a managers dream. It's unfortunate that we didn't get to see him with Klopp or Poch.
No he shouldn't but it happened, a smart CEO entering a situation like that would have appointed people with experience and knowledge to run the footballing side. It's a billion pound company, not the local pizza store.
That is just a pointless question. Obviously I have no in depth knowledge of the man. It is just my opinion. Only in the first part part am I talking about how I think Woody thinks about him self so it seems as if you are just taking my first point and saying my whole post is 'baseless' based on this and I gave reasons.
It was obvious we needed a new defender last year and we didn't get one, we need a new right winger, he hasn't got one, we haven't replaced Herrera so I think he thinks one is not needed.
My second point is irrelevant to what you have said as I am giving my opinion that I think we should have done our transfer business earlier in the window.
My third point also seems irrelevant to what you say as I am giving my opinion that I think he has been terrible in the market the last few years and that a DoF needs to be brought in to help him. If he had hired a DoF sooner I don't think we would be in this mess.
Please explain why it 'all' seems baseless?
We got Alexis Sanchez on huge wages and fees to replace our current RW Mkhitaryan, it's not Ed's fault he was never used on the RW. As for defenders, given that we bought 2 prior which Jose discarded very early, it's fair to say trust was evaporated on that front. Jose never rated Herrera and didn't play him much once Matic arrived, or make it a priority to keep him. Thus he was deemed surplus and allowed to leave. On the other hand, someone like Fellaini was used far too often, and his extension was fought for by Mourinho. By the time Ole arrived, it was too late to keep Herrera. I'm sure we'll replace him though, it just remains to be seen whether it's this window or the next.
I agree with you, I too wish everything was completed before pre-season. However, it doesn't always work out that way for various reasons, and speculating as to why is pointless, especially when such speculation is eventually taken as truth with little proof to back it up.
Since his tenure began, he's backed managers with huge funds and generally gotten them the players they wanted, whatever the cost. I think this idea that he's been somehow terrible because the buys didn't work out doesn't make sense. The one thing a DOF might help with is appointing new managers with a view towards continuity, however, if a DOF is poor he too is sacked just like a manager, so there's no guarantee there. For reference look at Steve Walsh at Everton. Successful at Leicester, poor at Everton, sacked. No guarantees there at all.
Alright maybe 'all' is hyperbolic, as I do agree with a lot of what you're saying. I just take issue with speculations being taken as fact. For instance, Woodward has almost always deferred to his manager for signings, retentions, departures, style of play, etc. That doesn't sound like a man who values his own knowledge above his managers'. Those are the kind of statements that serve to vilify a man we really don't know much about, probably unfairly. I just think is it seems like spreading gossip as absolute fact, which I've never been a fan of personally.
I do agree with quite a few of your points, it's just the speculative parts I disagreed with.
That's the keyword, though.
If you no longer trust the manager's judgment, you fire him. If you do trust him, you back him as long as this is financially responsible. This is generally true - but it's absolutely categorically true if the manager is José Mourinho. A random bloke on the street could have enlightened Woodward on that point.
Ed hires and fires the manager. He also brings in the talent. In the 26 years SAF was in charge he spent $550 Million. In the 6 years since $968 Million has been spent by ed. And we are by far a way weaker team than 2013. Scatter gun approach.
Many things tend to get swept under the rug or forgotten.
Supposedly, Moyes was shocked by certain aspects of how the club operated, and set out modernizing them. And it was a big call by Ed to call time on that six year contract when it became apparent that Moyes wasn’t just treading water, he was drowning. So the rebuilding project was abandoned, to stop the bleeding.
Van Gaal was heavily backed - we built a new training pitch and bought all sorts of players that can only primarily be described as “Van Gaal signings”. That stalled out, and we didn’t appear to be progressing, but treading water.
So, we took a gamble on a “sure thing” in Mourinho, and while he spoke a good game at the beginning he reverted to form quickly - I think the club learned from LvG and wanted to balance Mourinho’s wishlist with the scouting teams. The result: Mourinho pretty much relied on “his signings” like Matic, Ibra, etc week in, week out and chopped and changed the rest so often that the team was disjointed and could never gel. He either refused to play players he didn’t personally select that were bought under his reign, and dropped them or publicly called them out after a bad performance. Finally, he threw his toys out the pram last summer because he couldn’t force through more of “his signings”, most likely because the club noticed he utterly fails to develop or integrate players he hasn’t personally identified, and everyone he wants are short term stop gap signings that will bite us in ass later. Ed should’ve backed Mourinho last summer? Ed should have f*cking sacked Jose last summer, but the train had already left the station by that point.
It isn’t cited often enough, but I read that Solskjaer was shocked that the Sports Science department had been all but effectively dismantled under Mourinho, and immediately set about rebuilding that.
I think most people simply want to reduce the issues that the club has faced to:
1) Woodward
2) Transfers, or more simply, transfer budgets
and simply ignore everything else.
I think Ed has made some mistakes. I hope he knows he’s made some as well. There’s this hindsight is 20/20 crowd that thinks: Should have got Guardiola, Klopp or Pochettino - when if you look back on it - Mourinho was the first name on many lists when we hired Moyes, Van Gaal and Mourinho.
With them right infrastructure in place our scouting can identify top talents before they become expensive stars, and identify the right stars to buy to balance the team and take it to the next level. With the right manager and coaching staff we can develop a playing style, tactics, and players and if they are in place long enough, a long term plan and the spine of a team that can built upon. With the right academy structure we can bring through kids so we don’t have to consistently pay £50 million pounds every time we need to fill a position on the team. With the right sports science, medical, and fitness staff we can keep our players healthy and gain a competitive advantage over our rivals. Finally, we need the commercial side to try to keep up with the other super clubs and the nouveau riche clubs.
But some folks don’t want to see that. It’s just Woodward is both incompetent and evil, he has no ambition for the club to challenge for major trophies, we should have spent more, we should’ve hired Klopp or Guardiola, and we’re really jealous of every good player that gets signed by our rivals. Hindsight is pretty nifty, but it doesn’t mean you’re very clever.
I think he’s made mistakes, and I don’t defend those mistakes, but this simplistic binary logic that some are using to get so wound up about Woodward should alarm the critical thinkers on here. SAF leaving was a far bigger issue than anyone expected and 4 managers later hopefully Ed’s learned some lessons.
Last edited:
Aye, Woodward and the management definitely made a mistake extending Mourinho's contract. IMO even hiring him was a mistake.
Last edited:
Cheers, this pretty much sums up my problem with a lot of posts about Woodward et al. It's all just so binary with very little actual thought or analysis put into it. Good post.
What I was on about regarding a right winger was that needed one now and didn't get one. I agree that Alexis should should have been played on the right or I don't think there was any point in buying him. Regarding your point in bold I think that is a fair point but I think if Woody didn't have any trust in Jose he should have sacked him.
I think Jose made a mistake with Herrera and I wouldn't have signed Matic and will be glad when he hopefully goes at the end of his contract at the end of the season, I would have gone for Fabinho. Regarding Fellaini I don't think it was right to give him the new contract.
With regards to your second point in bold I think we should have replaced him now, I think waiting until next window will be too long, as if we get a bad injury to McTominay then we are screwed. as I dont believe Fred and Perreira are up to the job and I believe by not getting in a new midfielder now has left us severely lacking in that department.
I agree that Woody has backed his managers but a lot of that money has been wasted. I think the DoF should have been hired a long time ago before LVG and then like you said we would have had continuity and a lot of that money wouldn't have been wasted. If Woody brings in a bad DoF, then that's on him. I think he has had enough time to bring a decent DoF although I don't know how long these things take.
Do you think Ole wanted to retain all the players he has? I think he would have liked to see a few more depart. I think we find it so hard to get rid of players as Woody has gave them such high contracts that other clubs are unwilling to pay and we are stuck with them. It will be hard to get rid of them as they will be unwilling to take a pay-cut unless they desperately want first team football elsewhere. I don't think he should have given such long contracts to Jones and Smalling and I don't think Rojo deserved his contract either.
On the contrary, absolute rubbish post. Most people identify the problem as the owners, with slabface puppet running around trying to do their bidding. Making a list of managers and saying what you don't like about them, based on feck all is not analysis. This has been played to death. These longish posts defending or muddying the waters always show up, don't they? 'Ed has made mistakes...?' Oh, really?
Last edited:
Look at it this way. He refused to buy a defender last season including Harry Maguire for £70m. That decision was the beginning of the end for Mourinho. He lost the plot in the summer because he knew we couldn’t compete with City.
He sacked Mourinho paying him £25m in compensation and a summer later pays £15m more than what we could have bought Maguire for last season. That was all caused because Mourinho didn’t get a defender. This summer suddenly we have realised that Mourinho was correct and bought two first team defenders. Even if you didn’t like Jose I’d take his advice on how to strengthen a team over an accountant.
Ed’s decision making is just very poor and ends up costing the club more pretty much every time.
Add in the Fellaini buy. Add in Herrera. Add in treatment of Evra. And of LVG. (I need to stop now, I am upsetting myself). Paul Ince is right.
He treated Mourinho way better than he deserved. Ignoring the fact that Maguire was unlikely to be available at any price last summer, Mourinho already signed 2 centrebacks in his first two years, centerbacks that he ended up ignoring and not playing. Can you blame Woodward for not wanting to buy another?
Mourinho was trash on the transfer market, he fell out with every player he bought. Not to mention that he spent almost 400m and was constantly complaining about the quality of his players.
The only mistake Woodward did with Mourinho was to give him a new contract.
Ed has countless issues, but when it comes to transfers he's better than most. He signed top players like Pogba, Di Maria, Falcao, Ibrahimovic and now Dybala without CL football and many other good players, our transfers are not the issue here.
But, as I said, moaners gonna moan. He doesn't spend much - people moan, he spends too much - people moan, he spends a lot of time trying to get the main target - people moan, he gives up fast on the main target and signs 2nd or 3rd choice instead, to have them in time for pre-season - people moan.
He just can't win.
Our transfer strategy is 100% the reason we are where we are. We have been very poor in both identifying players and how much they cost. If we had better quality players we wouldn’t be in this mess. Even if Klopp or Guardiola were in charge of this group of players they wouldn’t win the league. Can I blame Woodward for that?
I certainly can’t blame Woodward for identifying the wrong players. Thats down to the manager and scouts. Can I blame him for overpaying? Partly but a lot of that is to do with the inflation of the market and the size of the club. Agents and selling clubs know they can get every last pound out of a deal.
My issue with him is his reactionary decisions rather than being proactive. And there is a ridiculous time taken to get transfers done. We have paid the full asking price for Maguire yet it’s completed a week before the season starts and now he’s had no preseason with us. What was the point in delaying it then?
I'm a Mourinho fans. But no way buying duds is down to a marketing executive. Without a dof the manager is in charge on identifying which player to buy. People making it seems as if ed is playing fm
I don't even think that they were duds. Our biggest problem is that almost none of them developed farther after we signed them, they all stagnate or regress after the first year. This applies to our current players too, not only our new signings.
I dunno if it's bad coaching or maybe Carrington is not up to standards these days, but I believe that our failure to improve our players is the main reasons why we are in this mess.
Pretty much this. He's the only constant in our failure that can't be fired.
If you go back a few pages on this thread you still see accusations pop up which should have been long debunked, that's the problem. Makes for a frustrating read when you're having to defend the management against baseless stuff instead of actually analyzing what they did wrong.
The funny thing is before the start of the window I was expecting Felix, De ligt, Rabiot, AWB and Sancho. Getting rid of Mata, Jones, Rojo, Lukaku and Sanchez. Jesus, how naive was I?
Yeah that’s pretty naive to be honest.
If we get James, AWB, Maguire, Dybala and Mandzukic and shift Lukaku I’m not going to call it a bad window.
I do think though that once Maguire is in, we are going to look to move on a couple of centre backs. Hopefully Jones and Rojo. Absolute madness to keep 7 on the books even if one is long term injured.
Very naive. That would have been around 250m net spend (without counting Maguire, which would have put the number to around 330m).
I would say it would be a pretty good window, but I think if we were in the CL, there is a decent chance we would have got Sancho and De ligt (money). Rabiot seems a mystery and Felix it seems we were never in for.
Good window again by Woodward if he gets Dybala Mandzukic and a midfielder over the line. I also expect two departures excluding Lukaku.
Given we don’t have a proven elite manager and can’t offer CL football this season, surely if we can get in the above its an excellent window? How could it realistically be bettered?
We’d have improved quite a few positions as well as added some much needed experience, which can be further built upon next summer?
Next summer I’d hope for 2 statement signings in CM and RW and then the squad is pretty much set for a few years of light tinkering.