From today's Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/clubs/manchesterunited/article4182556.ece
Ed Woodward comes from a world in which Manchester United are an easy sell. It is why, when asked last spring about the challenge of luring top-class players without the carrot of Champions League football, he spoke of how United’s pre-eminence in the commercial sphere was proof that their enduring allure was undimmed.
With eleven days of the summer transfer window remaining, the United executive vice-chairman is being confronted with an uncomfortable but inescapable truth: that while, for the purposes of adidas, Chevrolet, DHL and other blue-chip companies, the club’s appeal is as great as ever, the reality is very different when it comes to recruiting elite footballers of the type that Woodward seemed to think would rush to Old Trafford even without the prospect of playing Champions League football this season.
The £16 million acquisition of Marcos Rojo from Sporting Lisbon on a five-year contract, which was completed last night, takes United’s transfer expenditure this summer to £73 million following the acquisitions of Luke Shaw and Ander Herrera from Southampton and Athletic Bilbao respectively. It is a considerable outlay by the parsimonious standards of the Glazer regime, but it remains extremely doubtful whether it is anything like enough, under Louis van Gaal or any other coach, to recover the ground that has been lost to their leading rivals at home and abroad.
Woodward spoke at the end of last season, after David Moyes had paid the price for the failure to achieve Champions League qualification, about how the club, their needs pressing and their financial strength unblemished, would spend whatever it would to take to “see the best players play for Manchester United”. There were excitable briefings from the club about their interest in Mats Hummels, Toni Kroos, Cesc Fàbregas, Edinson Cavani and others.
The arrival of a “superstar” — any bloody superstar, so it seemed — was being talked about as a necessary statement of intent from the post-Ferguson regime, as much off as on the pitch.
Not since the summer of 2001 — the signings of Juan Sebastián Verón and Ruud van Nistelrooy, the attempts to lure Lilian Thuram, Bixente Lizarazu, Patrick Vieira and others — have United strived so hard to compete at the top end of the transfer market, but the elite players have gone elsewhere.
For all the club’s attempts to suggest that it was they who called off the lengthy pursuits of Kroos and Fàbregas, now at Real Madrid and Chelsea respectively, the more credible explanation offered elsewhere is that neither they nor Hummels, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Thomas Müller, Arjen Robben or Marco Reus had an over-riding wish to join a club that cannot offer Champions League football this season.
For once, it has not been for a lack of trying on United’s part. There was a serious amount of groundwork put in over Kroos, Reus and Cavani in the final months of last season, just as there was last summer with Fàbregas and, naively, with Cristiano Ronaldo at a time only interested in an improved contract with Real. Contrary to some of the accusations that are directed at the executive vice-chairman, it has not been down to Woodward’s ability or otherwise to close a deal.
No, the reality — a reality that they still hope to disprove through their pursuit of Ángel Di María, the Real Madrid midfielder — is that, in dropping out of the Champions League, United fell down European football’s food chain, at least in the short term. For all their financial clout, much of it undermined by the Glazers’ leveraged buyout, they have never truly been up there with Real or Barcelona, cherry-picking the game’s
galacticos, but longstanding geographical disadvantages have been overtaken this summer by the difficulty in enticing leading players without being able to offer Champions League football.
Manchester City managed it in the summer of 2010, signing Yaya Touré, David Silva and Mario Balotelli, among others, but that was at a time when many of the leading clubs across Europe, whether out of complacency or economic circumstances, either at a micro or macro level, were cutting back on their spending. Beyond City and Real, the European clubs who had the greatest net expenditure in the summer of 2010 were Zenit St Petersburg, Spartak Moscow and Rubin Kazan.
United, incidentally, spent that summer signing Anders Lindegaard, Chris Smalling, Marnick Vermijl, Javier Hernández and, most infamously, Bebé, the personification of a three-year period in which United seemed oblivious to the reality that an ageing team, containing several mediocre players, was in danger of being overtaken by City and others sooner or, given Sir Alex Ferguson’s continuing presence in the dugout, later.
Four years on, the landscape is very different. All the big clubs in England and Spain are willing to throw their money around these days — even Arsenal. If Barcelona have been spending like it is going out of fashion, it is because they are about to enter a transfer embargo until January 2016, pending an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport; Arsenal and Chelsea, like Real, simply have money to spend; Liverpool are reinvesting the cash they received from Barcelona for Luis Suárez; Atletico Madrid similarly after losing Diego Costa and Filipe Luís to Chelsea.
It is down to bad management, rather than bad luck, that United find themselves needing to spend like never before in a market when the competition for leading players is more intense than it has ever been. It is certainly down to mismanagement that a net outlay of almost £130 million since Ferguson’s retirement last year has brought no discernible improvement when set against the loss of the influence of Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Patrice Evra, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and, most importantly of all, Ferguson himself.
Woodward gave the impression that he thought he had all the answers, that his negotiating skills would serve United as well in the transfer market as they had in the commercial sphere. If he has made a mistake — and, being polite about this, he has made several — it has been in approaching the transfer market in a wide-eyed, excitable manner and in underestimating the difficulty of signing top-class players in this of all summers without the carrot of Champions League football.
Enticing leading players to northwest England was always difficult. Without Champions League football and, more damningly, with little sense of strategy, even since Van Gaal’s post-World Cup arrival, it looks more difficult than ever. It is a lesson that United, market-leaders when it comes to sponsorship, are so far learning the hard way.
United set sights on landing target men
Daley Blind
The arrivals of Marcelo Rojo and Luke Shaw lessen the need for a left-sided central defender or full back, but the Ajax player can also perform in midfield and is a possible target.
Arturo Vidal
United would still consider a pre-deadline deal for the Juventus and Chile midfielder on the right terms, but a January move for Kevin Strootman, of Roma, is regarded as the more likely option.
Ángel Di María
If he signals a desire to leave Real Madrid, United will be jostling at the front of the queue, but he is reported to favour Paris Saint-Germain if they can stay within Uefa’s Financial Fair Play regulations.
The ones who got away
Thomas Vermaelen
Signed for Barcelona for £15 million.
Thomas Müller
Staying with Bayern Munich
Toni Kroos
Signed for Real Madrid for £24 million
Mats Hummels
Staying with Borussia Dortmund
Summer spending
Barcelona £116m
Real Madrid £106m
Liverpool £104m
Chelsea £82m
Atletico Madrid £81m
Manchester United £72m
Arsenal £61.5m
Manchester City £52.3m
That makes depressing reading.