The lack of investment last 2 transfer windows tells me all I need to know about our owners and Woodward's incompetence/ lack of footballing knowledge or calibre.
Ed Woodward - Same medicine for the patient, no new structure?
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Okay.
I would suggest it tells you what you want to know about it. The people in charge have been in place for years. They have shown that they will spend, so if you have made these decisions based on the last two windows, it’s because you want to. Firstly, any balanced individual would have known that there would not be huge investment in the last window. For a start, even under normal circumstances, it was a January window where top players are not available and then where we had an interim manager, so if that told you anything it is because you wanted to be told.
As for last summer, if one summer of minimal investment is the basis of you deciding our board are incompetent then you have obviously forgotten all the other summers and are now simply throwing your toys out of your pram. If I asked you to go into further detail as to exactly how it showed Woodward’s supposed incompetence, you would struggle.
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Woodward appointed three experienced managers with completely different ideas about how to play. All three of them turned out to be mistakes. Now he appointed (prematurely) the stand-in, that he would have never ever considered 4 month ago. His record in the transfer market is horrendous. These are the players he signed: Mata, Fellaini, Shaw, Herrera, Rojo, Blind, Ibra, Martial, Pogba, Bailly, Lukaku, Matic, Lindelöf, Fred, Dalot, Falcao, Schneiderlin, Depay, Darmian, Schweinsteiger, Mkhitaryan, Sanchez, Di Maria. Either he is directly responsible for these transfers or he is just blindly accepting the judgement of the manager, which is equally bad. In the end of the day the buck stops with him. Its very hard to see how any competent DoF/exec would have made worse decisions.
Firstly, we've had the same owners since 2005. The only significant investment came after 2013. Too little too late. These are the same owners who sold Ronaldo for £80 million and replaced with Valencia. Using the profit to clear their debt.
We only spend the money when we don't achieve top 4. That seems to be Woodward's/ Glazer strategy since 2013. Even then, when we do spend, the focus seems to be on how marketable the playe is rather than character or contribution to the team. See Pogba and Sanchez, compare with the board not signing Perisic.
The lack of investment has been over a long period. It only became apparent after Fergie left. When we needed significant investment.
Extending Mourinhos contract then not backing him is yet another sign of Woodward incompetence.
In short, if you can't see our owners and Woodward's incompetence with football matters then you must have blinkers on.
Well he literally did consider him 4 months ago! I imagine it is you who would have never considered him.
I will repeat, again, that it is the most ridiculous thing to blame the exec for the lack of success of players on the football pitch. Yea, he ‘blindly accepted’ to buy Di Maria, Falcao, Bastian, Pogba, Sanchez, Falcao, Mata and Ibrahimovic. What a stupid man!
Let me summarise. Nothing will change if we get a DoF. Absolutely nothing. Well, things may actually get better, but that will be because of duties being taken from the manager, not from Ed Woodward. Perhaps a DoF would do a better job of identifying players and structuring a team than the managers have been doing. Unless, again, your claim is that this has been Woodward’s job.
Well this thread is about Edward Woodward, so I’m not interested in what happened pre-13.
I’m also not interested in a retrospective baseless criticism that of the players we do sign, it is because they are popular. We have signed Matic, Lindelöf, Bailly, Darmian, Blind, Herrera under Woodward, yet you have a problem with him signing top players because they also happen to be popular. You would rather we go for Perisic calibre players over Sanchez to prove some sort of point perhaps.
Your arguments, like many others, about Ed Woodward sound baseless to me, and are just the ramblings of an emotional fan who needs someone to blame. If I asked you to break down Ed’s main daily duties you would probably struggle!
Seem? Which player was seemingly signed for marketing reasons?
The really good ones.
Woodward makes the decision on which managers to sign, which transfers to sanction and whether the club should get a DoF, therefore yes it is his responsibility if the club fails because of the managers, players and lack of DoF.
What you need to understand is that it isn't ONE decision people are blaming Woodward for. It is 6 YEARS of bad decisions. A pattern has emerged which is continuing despite 4 managerial changes and lots of player / staff turnover. Who is the common denominator?
Some of the hate he gets is OTT, football is part pantomime, and he is a villain. Doesn't mean there isn't valid criticism of his tenure.
1) He was at the club before 2013 and helped the Glazers takeover United.
2) That's one of the reasons you are struggling to understand.
3) So would Ed.
I dont trust Ed and people should not dismiss LVG and Jose's opinions so quickly due to not liking them. I keep hearing that he's backed the managers with so much money and how financially astute he is.
Why did he give Jose Mourinho a new contract and then proceed to undermine him in a way that could easily be proven as an attempted constructive dismissal? Only to then sack him half way through what should have been his last year of a 3 year contract signed in 2016?
Why did he insist on having LVG sign a 3 year deal when the man only wanted 2 and then proceed to sack him after 2 seasons which resulted in him paying out an extra year of salary?
These 2 managers have won the league at every club other than United. It's time to accept that the problem may not be the manager.
For the sake of £5m in 2017 because of his age, he messed up the Perisic deal and then proceeded to sign Sanchez 6 months later (who is older than Perisic).
The man has let De Gea's contract run down so catastrophically, which would be forgivable if it wasn't the first time with this particular player. The man is a power hungry megalomaniac who is only in his position due to cronyism.
He tries to position us as the biggest club in the world yet penny pinches in God knows how many ways possible. Then he goes and mouths off about on-pitch success not being too important.
I'd rather a structure like Juventus, Bayern, Barcelona, Ajax (that was pioneered by Liverpool in a way). Why arent we looking at Vidic, Rio, Dwight Yorke or even Schmeichel as a DOF?
Why did he give Jose Mourinho a new contract and then proceed to undermine him in a way that could easily be proven as an attempted constructive dismissal? Only to then sack him half way through what should have been his last year of a 3 year contract signed in 2016?
Why did he insist on having LVG sign a 3 year deal when the man only wanted 2 and then proceed to sack him after 2 seasons which resulted in him paying out an extra year of salary?
These 2 managers have won the league at every club other than United. It's time to accept that the problem may not be the manager.
For the sake of £5m in 2017 because of his age, he messed up the Perisic deal and then proceeded to sign Sanchez 6 months later (who is older than Perisic).
The man has let De Gea's contract run down so catastrophically, which would be forgivable if it wasn't the first time with this particular player. The man is a power hungry megalomaniac who is only in his position due to cronyism.
He tries to position us as the biggest club in the world yet penny pinches in God knows how many ways possible. Then he goes and mouths off about on-pitch success not being too important.
I'd rather a structure like Juventus, Bayern, Barcelona, Ajax (that was pioneered by Liverpool in a way). Why arent we looking at Vidic, Rio, Dwight Yorke or even Schmeichel as a DOF?
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Why not consider pre 2013? Who do you think Woodward reports to? You can't assess the problems at our football club by approaching the problem with a goldfish memory. The problems are cumulative, complex and interlinked between Woodward and the owners.
If you are happy signing players because of their marketability then you really don't understand the first thing about building an effective, cohesive football team. Woodward can do commercial deals well. But not much else.
You also seem not interested in assessing the incompetence of Woodward in extending Mourinhos contract then not backing him? Or changing from managers who require completely different types of players with completely different physical attributes. Thus restarting our squad building from scratch. E.g from LVG possession to Mourinho counter attacking.
Overall you seem far too keen to deflect blame from Woodward and the owners. Why? What is your assessment of our underperformance over the last 5/6 years?
FYI - pre 2013.
In 2005, Woodward advised the Glazer family during its takeover of Manchester United. The Glazer family then recruited Woodward to join the club in a "financial planning" role.
In 2007, Woodward was given charge of the commercial and media operations of Manchester United.
Try re-reading my post.
I kind of hoped that you had something else than Pogba and Sanchez because those are extremely stupid examples. Pogba is one of the best players in the world and was one of the best player for Juventus, he was bought for football reasons. Sanchez was one of the best PL players. And Perisic who hasn't been particularly good in the last year would have cost us a fortune in transfer fee and wage.
I'm not his biggest fan but most of the criticism of Ed is in hindsight. The idea we sign players for marketing reasons is total nonsense, same as the supposed Galatico policy. I can't even get into a debate about how wrong those assertions are.
His biggest mistake was made when he fired Moyes. He should have changed the entire structure and hired a DoF. To make matters worse, we tried to replicate the same structure with far lesser managers than SAF. He hired two completely different managers with different squad needs and we are surprised the squad is a mishmash.
Imo, last summer was when he started getting things right and his only mistake last summer was not sacking that poison.
His biggest mistake was made when he fired Moyes. He should have changed the entire structure and hired a DoF. To make matters worse, we tried to replicate the same structure with far lesser managers than SAF. He hired two completely different managers with different squad needs and we are surprised the squad is a mishmash.
Imo, last summer was when he started getting things right and his only mistake last summer was not sacking that poison.
I think the biggest issue with Ed is that he constantly picks wrong managers. You don't go from Moyes to LVG unless your vision is to play possession based football. Then 2 years later we hire a manager who is a complete opposite of LVG. Naturally half of squad doesn't suit new manager's philosophy and we need another rebuilding job. Now we gave a 3 year contract to Ole based on 10 matches (or mostly because he will never blame the board so it will take pressure away from them) even though it's very likely we will finish same place when Ole took over (6th). That's why I think we desperately need someone who understands football, DoF, technical director, whatever you call it.
His biggest mistake was that he shat himself when Mourinho was flirting with Paris and instantly handed him an extension. That extension forced the club to hand him a £19m buy out after sacking him halfway into an absolutely disastrous season which in itself could have been avoided had our owners and Ed not ignored the blatantly obvious signs in pre season that it was going to be one of those trademark shambolic seasons ala Jose.
Mind you they still had multiple chances to get rid and try to salvage the season earlier but decided to wait until we were 12 points of a 4th spot and the situation became so toxic that they were literally forced to sack him. They literally threw away an entire season for absolutely nothing and now it is most likely going to result in us losing out on 4th and the money that comes with it and then people have the nerve to call Ed a "Good business man" Give me a break.
I am mostly on Woodward's back here, but tbf to him he is also pretty much an employee of the club and answers to the board. For all we know, he could have proposed the changes on how the club should be run, but it didn't go through. And in the end, he doesn't have a final and definite say, so in terms of our general structure and long-term strategy he most likely doesn't deserve so severe criticism.
Now, the owners... They also own Tampa Bay Buccaneers in NFL (which someone pointed out to me here). And after reading more about it, both teams show worryingly similar struggles (after initial success) in terms of bad performances, no clear vision and awful appointments on the management side of things for several years now.
Now, the owners... They also own Tampa Bay Buccaneers in NFL (which someone pointed out to me here). And after reading more about it, both teams show worryingly similar struggles (after initial success) in terms of bad performances, no clear vision and awful appointments on the management side of things for several years now.
Re point 2 - how many clubs give transparency over transfers?
This is basically just “I’m a transfer muppet and I demand to know who we are buying!”
This is basically just “I’m a transfer muppet and I demand to know who we are buying!”
Again the NFL isn't comparable at all. There is a hard cap and you can't purchase players, you rely on the draft and the pool of available draftees, the Bucs have been mainly average which means that they don't pick high enough to get franchise players and particularly a franchise QB.
I have no problem considering that in a relevant conversation about it, just not in a conversation of Woodward’s effectiveness at his current job. Because that job began in 2013.
I’m not happy to do so. I’m happy to sign good football players. I would assume the best footballers also happen to be fairly popular. Your comments about us signing players due to popularity is baseless, and is a main reason to not take the argument seriously. You must honestly think the people we have in charge are school children or something. That they need you to tell them to try to sign the best players. Who have we signed for marketing reasons? The best examples I could possibly think of for that we’re under the previous regime with Kagawa and Chicharito. And Dong. I’m not accepting as some sort of fact that the players we have signed were done so for marketability, as the common sense conclusion would be that they were not.
There was no incompetence in extending Mourinho’s contract (by one fecking year). Mourinho’s job was secure at the time. He had just won a couple of trophies, and had us second in the league. For stability sake, giving him another year made sense. Similarly to what the perfectly-run Manchester City did with Pellegrini despite them knowing he would be replaced by Pep. It helps nobody for the manager to be going into the final year of his deal.
I agree that we have changed styles of managers, which hasn’t been ideal. Ultimately, things were not working and so we tried something else. The issue I have is with the revisionism. It all boils down to the fact we haven’t won the league. People supported Jose coming in. Now it was all stupidity from Ed. Also, what you said works on paper, but not really in reality. Which ‘possession based’ players did Van Gaal assemble that left the squad needing to be remodelled? And new managers are always given resources to buy their own players.
As for ‘not backing’ Mourinho - this is an over-simplification. He got Jose who he wanted last summer except a centre half. Reports said that we needed to sell one first. You speak a lot about incompetence. Incompetence is letting your manager buy new centre halves every year without questioning it. Jose had bought Bailly then Lindelöf then given a new deal to Rojo. Then said his centre halves were no good and he needed better. That in itself is not unreasonable, neither is it reasonable to be told to offload one of the ones you have bought (and deemed not good enough) first. I’m sure Woodward would have been perfectly happy if Bailly and Lindelöf would have formed a successful partnership. That would have meant he ‘backed his manager’ and bought him a new pairing in 12 months that is working. However, he bought JM those centre halves, and a year later, he wanted new ones. Because he wasn’t given money to do so without question is the opposite of incompetence.
Overall, I’m not too keen to blame any one individual at all for the last 5/6 years. This is football. It was always said things would be tough post-Fergie - and it does not mean that we have morons in charge because things didn’t just continue seamlessly. It’s just not our turn. We have appointed top managers and top players. It hasn’t come together yet. It takes time. And I have not mentioned the owners, I am speaking about Ed Woodward and the job he’s done since 2013.
United had operated a model where the manager has more control at other clubs. Perhaps we will move away from that model soon, and there has been talk that we will do. That doesn’t mean Woodward has been stupid and should be sacked. This is how we’ve done things. It’s not been working and we are actively looking to modernise and change. However, while operating in our model of managers having control, it is ridiculous to hold the board accountable for signings not working out. It doesn’t happen elsewhere and shouldn’t happen here. How can a manager be exonerated from the poor performances of the players he has bought simply because it wasn’t him who physically paid for them?
I know his roles pre-2013. They were largely financial, and last time I checked, things had gone well in that department, so it’s not even worth discussing in this particular conversation anyway.
So now the criticism is hiring Ole?
I posted in the thread the day Ole was confirmed as permanent that everyone should bookmark the reactions in here (they were unanimously positive) because if it doesn’t work out, the same posters would reference it as Woodward stupidity. We’ve lost a couple games and that seems to have begun already.
Also, what players did LVG sign that didn’t suit JM’s philosophy? Arguably Blind, that’s about it. These arguments sound good but have little evidence to support. LVG didn’t bring in an army of slow Spaniards who only like to keep the ball. There was no exodus of players not suited to non-possession football. It just didn’t happen.
Agree with the revisionism angle. Remember when we signed Bastian and there was a meltdown we might not sign Sneiderlin. Now, he was such an obvious bad signing that was imposed on LVG and Ed should never have touched him.
Aye, that is simply not true. They have been at the bottom of the NFC South division for 8 of last 10 years. They had terrible draft picks (despite having tons of Top 10 picks and the 1st overall pick in 2015) to go along with atrocious coaching and GM appointments during last 10 years.
A badly run organisation is a badly run organisation despite some differences in the way how they operate.
I always criticised our board for hiring Ole too early. I always said we should wait until the end of the season to evaluate things and hopefully bring DoF before that. I think it was stupid to do it in March and I never changed my opinion on that.
Perhaps, but that was far from the consensus.
As shown here:
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/ole-gunnar-solskjær-permanent-manager.446090/
I don’t think the two things cannot happen simultaneously. I’m sure we are looking for a DoF at the same time. But it was becoming ridiculous to not give Ole the job after what he was doing.
I'd love Woodward to be replaced by someone greying and aqualine looking, someone who wears rectangular gold rimmed spectacles, carries his connections and nouse lightly but exudes credibility, a man who has made mistakes in his life but not the clophopping imbecility of a Sanchez or a Fred, someone who wears a watch but doesn't need to, who could put on a pilot's uniform, a psychiatrist's white coat, or a chief inspectors flat hat and seem equally unbullshittable, someone, who in the final analysis, is not quite Ed Woodward..
The NFC South has arguably been the best division in the last 10 years with three of the best QBs in the league in Brees, Ryan and Newton. Not every draft includes franchise QB, in the last 10 years they have picked 4 times in the top 10(one 1st). They picked Evans and McCoy two pretty good players, Winston a decent QB and Clayborn who had plenty of injuries. After that it's mainly above 15 which isn't a great place.
Tampa aren't particularly bad, they are just average.
Woodward is terrible at his job and the club isn't going to improve as long as he's still the one making the decisions on the football part of the club.
Who do you have in mind?
Not sure that Tampa fans would agree, but anyway some of the complaints look very similar despite the differences in the way two clubs operate that you already mentioned.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tampabay.com/blogs/bucs/2018/12/15/dont-look-now-but-the-glazers-are-on-the-clock/?template=amp
I mean...
It's lack of planning than lack of investment.
The managers make football decisions.
He has the authority to make all important decision in the club and that means he has to take responsibility. If you are happy with the performance since SAF left, great, otherwise Woodward is literally the person culpable. All execs/DoFs/boards get stuff wrong, but Ed gets it wrong all the time. If he thinks that it is a good idea to delegate all "football decisions" to the manager, he'll live and die with the performance of these managers. He can't distance himself from them. He still owns all of it. So far 3/3 failed to reach the targets that he set them.
This doesn’t work.
If Ed Woodward hires a DoF, and the DoF fails, should he still take responsibility for our failures and be sacked? What difference does it make whether he listens to a manager or listens to his DoF? Does it make it all better if he listened to a Director with signings or listened to Mourinho? After all, it will be his fault regardless if the team loses too many football matches.
Again, a Director isn’t a bad idea, but the Director would be coming to take duties from the manager, not from Woodward.
I know what some of them think, I have been following the NFL for many years but it doesn't make any of it true, NFL fans and writers are big on hindsight and knee jerkism, they will easily pretend that the draft is some sort of guarantee when it's not or that hiring a good coordinator as a head coach was obviously a bad thing. The reality is that there was nothing crazy or bad about the HC that they picked and Arians is a good offensive coordinator and head coach, it doesn't mean that he will succeed though.
@Rozay you have been chatting some nonsense in this thread, for days now!
You have your say on defending Ed Woodward, in what you think his role has been to getting to our current situation. It's clear that many in here don't share your opinion.
You have your say on defending Ed Woodward, in what you think his role has been to getting to our current situation. It's clear that many in here don't share your opinion.
Edward woodward private school mentality and bankers brain Manchester united has never been overseen by these types of people this is where the real problem lies he even makes a suit look wack don't expect this man to make the club great
Feck off please. You have made no point at all here. Go and finish your homework. Actually, school is on holiday now.