Ha ha..see that seems to be your problem, you haven't done your homework on this subject. Your posts in this thread and are on to delusional, rewriting history and coming across like an absolute clown. Your opinion on Woodward is so ridiculous, you sound like a wum at this stage. I made my to point to you earlier on the transfer thread, probably forgot because you were to busy waffling on about Ed in there to. You should change that subject below your username to Master of talk shite.
Ed Woodward - Same medicine for the patient, no new structure?
- Thread starter ROFLUTION
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First of all none of us know how the club is run. Woody is the mouthpiece of the Glazers, thats all we know. Do they say heres x million a year to spend on whatever and we will give you another x million next year? do they actively tell him what to do, who to sign, which manager to hire? No-one knows.
As far as the managers go he hired Moyes, who everyone thinks was Fergies sole choice to hire. He gave him a ridiculous contract of 6 years, probably thinking he was Fergie mark 2, or was told by someone at the club he was Fergie mark 2.
He signed the semi final manager of a world cup team, who had won quite a few top trophies, or was told to sign him by someone at the club. He then backed him with a load of money to buy players, or he bought them himself, or someone told him at the club to buy them.
He signed a virtual title winner of championships at every club he managed and backed him to buy the players he wanted, or bought them himself, or someone told him at the club to buy them. He then stopped him buying more old players, or someone at the club told him to stop.
He then signed up a popular choice ex player as manager, or someone at the club told him to do it. He hasnt had a transfer window yet.
What I am getting at we all assume its Woody or not Woody, but no one knows. All we know is something is fundementally flawed. Will a DOF/Technical director fix this? Once again no one knows. All we can hope is it does.
As far as the managers go he hired Moyes, who everyone thinks was Fergies sole choice to hire. He gave him a ridiculous contract of 6 years, probably thinking he was Fergie mark 2, or was told by someone at the club he was Fergie mark 2.
He signed the semi final manager of a world cup team, who had won quite a few top trophies, or was told to sign him by someone at the club. He then backed him with a load of money to buy players, or he bought them himself, or someone told him at the club to buy them.
He signed a virtual title winner of championships at every club he managed and backed him to buy the players he wanted, or bought them himself, or someone told him at the club to buy them. He then stopped him buying more old players, or someone at the club told him to stop.
He then signed up a popular choice ex player as manager, or someone at the club told him to do it. He hasnt had a transfer window yet.
What I am getting at we all assume its Woody or not Woody, but no one knows. All we know is something is fundementally flawed. Will a DOF/Technical director fix this? Once again no one knows. All we can hope is it does.
This.club will stagnate where it is as long as Woodward is in charge. Total denial to think otherwise. We might fluke a trophy here or there but he has overseen our ruin
Nah thats not what Im trying to say at all. The purpose was like some other clubs talk about their way of operation. Zidanes e Pavones, Dortmund, etc.. Liverpool a new long term project under Klopp, so they should have patience..
There's no words at all from Ed which is a bit strange to me. When you've failed so much in the transfer window it'd just be a bit nice with an interview now and then to understand what the actual plan is. Is it to just follow the manager? Like with Jose for instance.. Because then we are left with Jose type of players when Jose leaves, for a certain way of playing. That's my big concern - Even Jose said he didn't fit the style of the club..
In general about some of the other comments and defending of Woodward in this thread: A lot of this is hindsight, but it doesnt mean we shouldn't learn from it. Let's face it, we've got the managers wrong 3 times now, and numerous players wrong. We are about to spend a lot again, and seemingly doing it the exact same way as before. Why would the outcome be different this time?
And thats my point about point 2) in the OP. There's a total lack of information on what our plan is. We're left with guess-work.
Go and face the wall.
If the one's in charge had a vision on how we want to play a DOF wouldn't be needed, but they don't. We've hired 4 managers with a very differen't approach compared to eachother and each of them started a "rebuild" of the squad. Say it doesn't go well for Ole but he buys 3-4 players which suit his vision and sells off thd ones that don't fit.
What if the manager after wants a big target man upfront again? Or a elbowing Fellaini or whatever.. The rebuild starts over a 5th time because the ones in charge have no idea what kind of football they want us to play.
I want Ole to have free hands in the market and I love that he's our manager but if we keep switching it up with managers, one style and then another, I don't believe we'll ever get back to the absolute top of football without having a fecking plan.
What if the manager after wants a big target man upfront again? Or a elbowing Fellaini or whatever.. The rebuild starts over a 5th time because the ones in charge have no idea what kind of football they want us to play.
I want Ole to have free hands in the market and I love that he's our manager but if we keep switching it up with managers, one style and then another, I don't believe we'll ever get back to the absolute top of football without having a fecking plan.
I've been quite supportive of Woodward, but I don't like where this is heading. I feel they WERE planning to change the club's structure and hire a DOF after failing with three managers in a row, which is partly why they got Solskjaer as caretaker. Once he had a couple of good months, though, they went the easy way and figured, like in 2013, 2014 and 2016, that if we just hire a good manager we'll be fine.
This whole thing about working with Solskjaer on getting a technical director or whatever, someone who may already be employed at the club and will operate with or under Solskjaer... sorry, that's a bit of a joke to me. Like they are trying to do something different, but when it comes down to it, still expect that the right manager will be a savior.
This whole thing about working with Solskjaer on getting a technical director or whatever, someone who may already be employed at the club and will operate with or under Solskjaer... sorry, that's a bit of a joke to me. Like they are trying to do something different, but when it comes down to it, still expect that the right manager will be a savior.
Yes. Of course. He can't delegate his responsibility to someone else as long as he is the chief executive. Woody can't distance himself from the long-term development of the club. He isn't responsible for every single ("micro") decision and consequently it doesn't make sense to blame him for every short-term variance. Can Florentino Perez distance himself from the long-term development of Madrid? Of course not.
If he'd be good at making football decisions, there wouldn't be any reason to hire an DoF. The problem is, that his track-record shows that he is not very good at it and up to this point I've not seen him learn a thing. Consequently he should be looking for people who are good (or at least better) at this to influence these decision. It really doesn't matter what job title they might hold. We know for a fact that nowadays managers don't last very long, even the good ones. If we exclude SAF-United and Wenger-Arsenal as anomalies in the modern game, most top clubs have a fairly high turnover in manager. Usually every few seasons someone new is getting appointed. We know that this creates a certain tension between short-term and long-term planning. Employing a DoF is just the most common way to create some balance, while adding professional expertise.
Woodward should acknowledge his own limitations and find a solution together with the owners and other heavy-weights of the club hierarchy.
Well, most fans and writers are big on hindsight and knee jerkism.
As just an occasional watcher of Super Bowl now and then I will take most of your remarks and observations here.However, I do find a bit worrying that same complaints exist on another team that they own. But, even ignoring that and putting it in a more proper context as you tried to do, doesn't remove the fact that we've seen (for whatever reason) huge issues in terms of our structure, as well as our long-term planning/vision which is pretty much non existent untill this day. Or that the club act mostly in a reactive way when it comes to football matters and decisions.
So, fully understand the people who are sceptical of things going forward. And you can't call it knee jerking after such accomulation of bad decisions in the last 6 years (managers, playing style, wages, success...)
Obviously am hoping to be wrong in terms of our near future as (considering the way we operate) a truly great manager can certainly improve things and remove most of the structural flaws that seem to exist in the club today.
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Sorry, i am in dark with this. When Ed said that we will spend big?
I agree to an extent. And I do think Woodward or ‘the club’ wants to appoint a DoF. Our preferred model is to have a long-term manager, but I think the club do want to take some things out of the manager’s hands. What I have been arguing in this thread is that, in the absence of a DoF, these ‘football decisions’ have been taken by our managers, not our execs. What people actually want, it seems, is a DoF to take duties from the manager. Yet all I’m reading is they want him to do Woodward’s job.
That said, since LVG left, the club has been trying to appoint a director. It’s not as if they are all daft. Andre Berta was strongly linked, and an obstacle was that Mourinho didn’t want to work with one (reportedly). Given Jose’s pedigree as a manager, and the club’s preference for long-term managers who do their own planning and structuring, it seems the club chose to appoint what they believed to be the right manager over changing the structure. But the talk of us hiring a DoF has been there for about 3 years now, and once Jose left, it was said to be a priority again.
Again, I’m not against a director, I just don’t understand how it will change Woodward’s role at all, and his role is apparently the problem here. What will happen is that he will allow a DoF to do many of the tasks his manager currently does. That doesn’t guarantee that results will improve. He will still sign players on the direction of his DoF (and manager too, I presume), and the ‘football decisions’ will still be taken by others, and he will still continue to lead on the business ones.
My issue is that the implication is that Woodward is the one taking all the footy decisions, which is a problem because he ‘knows nothing about football’. My point is that Jose and Van Gaal know about football, amongst others including Nicky Butt, who are the ones making the football planning. Woodward’s fault here doesn’t go beyond ‘well he hired them’. Which is true, but I still find that a weirdly obsessive and disproportionate bone to pick, as I have never seen fans calling for an exec to be sacked on the basis that the managers have underachieved and ‘they hired them’. It just smacks of a determination to point a finger.
I’ve said already in this thread, but I strongly doubt many posters could even say what it is that Woodward does on a daily basis. The fixation on his role is odd to me.
He didn't. Wishful thinking of some fans who interpreted what the press wrote as a briefing from Ed.
It’s not a case of getting upset, it’s more to do with the fact we are one of the few clubs that gets rinsed for every single transfer we do, whether that be the transfer fee or the wages. That’s down to the negotiater, which is Ed Woodward.
There is simply no need to provide the terms they do. If we didn’t waste so much money we would be able to bridge the gaps in our squad. You only have to look at our wages budget is double that of Tottenham. A side who have been better than us for 4 years now.
Most of the people on this threadc seems to be mostly upset about that the club/Ed might have (probably not) leaked some kind of info about us going to spend money in the transfer market in the summer. For some reason this seems to be a very bad thing. Even if everyone agrees that we really do need to spend money in the summer.
There also seems to be people very upset with us disclosing transfer targets (which there is no proof for), even if these transfer targets are exactly the same that you can read in any Caftard post.
But I'm pretty sure that the brief is real and it concerns Sanchez that's basically the only thing that would be newsworthy, the rest is about players that have their contracts ending at the end of the season which is known by everyone and has been reported multiple times. While the Telegraph just decided to play FM.
And agree with everything here.
Its really not and have not been for many years. Its Matthew Judge. If you are going to blame someone you should at least get it right.
That’s the name I’ve been looking for, not Arnold!
That was like the "Cruyff turn" of online arguments.
It actually would have been if the actual post fit your narrative, instead of just half of one sentence.
I dont understand that people are still living the narrative of Woodward being some power hungry person that gets involved in the football side of things too much. When he actually started to separate himself from the football side of things many years ago. As I stated above Matt Judge does the negotiations for United and have been doing that for many a years now.
What Woodward has and will still have DoF, technical director or not is the final say over the budget, wage bill and the financial side of things. That will not change even if we appoint a DoF for example.
One should also take into account that United as a club is probably the one club that historically is most against appointing a DoF or technical director. I would argue that this has nothing to do with Woodward. Its the otherway around: he is probably one of the more progressive elements in the club.
What we do have is an advisory board (with the great man himself) that prefers the "buck should stop with the manager"-approach. Those elements of the club is probably the biggest reason for why we have not seen a DoF or TD yet. Not Woodward.
What Woodward has and will still have DoF, technical director or not is the final say over the budget, wage bill and the financial side of things. That will not change even if we appoint a DoF for example.
One should also take into account that United as a club is probably the one club that historically is most against appointing a DoF or technical director. I would argue that this has nothing to do with Woodward. Its the otherway around: he is probably one of the more progressive elements in the club.
What we do have is an advisory board (with the great man himself) that prefers the "buck should stop with the manager"-approach. Those elements of the club is probably the biggest reason for why we have not seen a DoF or TD yet. Not Woodward.
Was it meant to be a competition?Is that the best you’ve got?
Bravo.
It's something that he shares with Arnold and Baty, who are respectively COO and CFO. The same way Gill shared it with Woodward, Arnold and Bolingbroke.
Perhaps people should be campaigning for Arnold out! Because you know, Sanchez.
Read the entire post. The truth is that I don’t know if our performances will change whether we have a DoF or not. I can’t possibly know. What I do know (as I said in my original post), is that it won’t change because of any change in Woodward’s role. The DoF will alter the manager’s role.
I guess there's always going to be a problem when you aren't winning, it's the nature of football. The one thing that he's done consistently is back the manager financially and generally the signings and how much we have paid generally backs that up. The managers and their signings have failed to deliver leaving us with a succession of players no where near good enough to be here. Every season the amount of players seem to increase and now we are taking 5 or 6 which is an absolute huge gamble especially given those players are the first 11 and not just to improve the squad. Not sure any of this is Eds fault....
I keep seeing posters pop-up with 'why do we need a DoF?', 'why is structure so important?', 'why doesn't the manager just sign player X, Y,Z'? - all of which are very outdated statements to be making in modern football
The reasons clubs appoint these people and have structure around the manager;
1) To prevent success/failure being totally dependant on one individual
2) To ensure continuity of vision i.e. if you want to play the 'United-way' or the 'Liverpool-way' or the 'City-way' or the 'Barcelona-way' you need to ensure that this comes from above and players are not just signed on the whim of the manager, as in the 90s
3) The modern football manager has to much on his plate to do things like handle contract negotiations, transfer negotiations and watch hours of video footage to scout players from the Dutch 2nd division
What we have seen at United over the last 5/6 season is a classic example of how not to run a football club. We've now had four different managers since SAF, all of whom have a different style, different objectives, different man-management techniques and who were at different stages of their career.
The result of this is this 'Frankenstein' of a squad we have put together whereby we have young, inexperienced lads who are not quite ready thrown into regular first-team actions with Moyes' panic buy(s), LvGs 'multi-purpose footballers', Jose's giants and SAFs squad players! How ridiculous is it to see a midfield containing Matic and Herrea together with wingers at full back, a wannabe-striker on the LW, a slow, technical #10 out on the right and our highest-earner sat on the bench!
If we are ever, ever going to achieve anything again we need to get over this 'Cult of the Manager'. I get it, because for a long time we were managed, albeit in a different era, by a man who will go down as possibly THE greatest ever. However, I think the fact that we were so successful under that 'structure' for so long is actually hurting us now because whilst our rivals where modernising we stood still. Let's be brutally, brutally honest without our rose-tinted glasses for a second...as great as SAF was, and I'm not knocking what he achieved, United where miles ahead of our rivals in terms of resources and power in the 90s/00s. Therefore when we did go a season or two without a trophy we would just flex our muscles and buy the best players in the league, that's not possible anymore!
To put it another way, look at both City and Liverpool - Pep and Klopp could leave tomorrow and the clubs would continue to move in the same direction. The signings, the ethos, the tactics, the style etc....would be continuous and the 'only' thing that would change would be the name of the bloke who picks the XI and makes the subs!
The reasons clubs appoint these people and have structure around the manager;
1) To prevent success/failure being totally dependant on one individual
2) To ensure continuity of vision i.e. if you want to play the 'United-way' or the 'Liverpool-way' or the 'City-way' or the 'Barcelona-way' you need to ensure that this comes from above and players are not just signed on the whim of the manager, as in the 90s
3) The modern football manager has to much on his plate to do things like handle contract negotiations, transfer negotiations and watch hours of video footage to scout players from the Dutch 2nd division
What we have seen at United over the last 5/6 season is a classic example of how not to run a football club. We've now had four different managers since SAF, all of whom have a different style, different objectives, different man-management techniques and who were at different stages of their career.
The result of this is this 'Frankenstein' of a squad we have put together whereby we have young, inexperienced lads who are not quite ready thrown into regular first-team actions with Moyes' panic buy(s), LvGs 'multi-purpose footballers', Jose's giants and SAFs squad players! How ridiculous is it to see a midfield containing Matic and Herrea together with wingers at full back, a wannabe-striker on the LW, a slow, technical #10 out on the right and our highest-earner sat on the bench!
If we are ever, ever going to achieve anything again we need to get over this 'Cult of the Manager'. I get it, because for a long time we were managed, albeit in a different era, by a man who will go down as possibly THE greatest ever. However, I think the fact that we were so successful under that 'structure' for so long is actually hurting us now because whilst our rivals where modernising we stood still. Let's be brutally, brutally honest without our rose-tinted glasses for a second...as great as SAF was, and I'm not knocking what he achieved, United where miles ahead of our rivals in terms of resources and power in the 90s/00s. Therefore when we did go a season or two without a trophy we would just flex our muscles and buy the best players in the league, that's not possible anymore!
To put it another way, look at both City and Liverpool - Pep and Klopp could leave tomorrow and the clubs would continue to move in the same direction. The signings, the ethos, the tactics, the style etc....would be continuous and the 'only' thing that would change would be the name of the bloke who picks the XI and makes the subs!
Do Liverpool even have a DoF?
They have a Sporting Director, Michael Edwards.
The city project has been going for a long time now and their dominance hasn't been anything like they would have expected. They are still waiting for CL trophy and no forgone conclusion that they will win the league or CL this year either. Since SAF left, how many trophies have Liverpool won or how many times have they finished above us? I think there's always a forensic view of things when you aren't winning but change and it's transition takes longer than fans would often like. SAF tenure helped us to not be as exposed to it as with other teams with their multiple appointments. Often it takes a series of errors in order to get where you want to be and we have seen this so many times in football. City and Liverpool equally made some costly errors before getting it somewhat right and even then, are still not where they want to be. Liverpool could quite easily come away with winning nothing this season.
So fecking sick of this Woody stuff. The Glazers need to sort this stuff out once and for all. We've been complaining about him for years. He's been made the scapegoat for every situation, its about time the managers and players feel the heat for once.
Thanks.
Ed Woodward maybe a genius on the commercial side, but he is absolutely a fkng moron when it comes to the footballing side of things. How can one keep repeating the same mistakes every year for 5 years and still not realize it's time to change.
Isn't a DOF another name for a scout ?
What footballing decisions does he make that he’s been getting wrong for 5 years? Do you mean not hiring a manager who has not gone on to win the PL? If so, fair enough.
Ole and his team will have a minor role in transfers. His job is to manage the team.
Where are you getting this from?
I read other forums where people know whats going on in clubs, Ole won't be like a Fergie having full control. Jose had this problem and voiced his concerns on many occasions yet it seems to get glossed over quite a lot because its Jose.
I see. Well I suspect a director will be introduced as we have said is our intention. We also wanted to introduce one under Jose but he resisted it. That said, I find it difficult to believe that the players we bought under Mourinho were not players that he selected. Unless we’re saying that Woodward scouted Dalot, Fred and Bailly himself!