It makes sense regardless. The impact of a publically divided board vs manager is massive. On the players, on morale, on players contract negotiations and focus, everything. Combined with lack of investment it is tantamount to sabotage by Woodward!
Man Utd set to appoint Director of Football (when hell freezes over)
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That would be understandable if we are still up there, but struggling to compete with City. We are struggling to even compete with Bournemouth and Watford right now.
We spent roughly a similar amount with City, but they have maintained that same level, why we have gotten far worse.
What 19 points is he going to close when he is currently 8th on the table, behind six teams we finished above last season, three of which we outspent in the summer? Common sense is what is needed here. The £75m we spent in the summer is meant to help us to - at least - maintain a similar level, not to get worse.
Do you think more £100m input will suddenly catapult us from 8th to challenging City when the initial £75m only succeded in moving us below three teams who spent less than that?
What difference would more £100m make in a completely disjointed squad? Teams that operate on meager resources have much better organisation on the pitch than us, just lacking the quality. When a team has the quality after spending millions, but lacks the organisation, then it is on the manager. The board don't coach, the manager does.
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Well the board didn't know that in the summer. Using that as justification to why the board didn't invest is a bit odd. Just because we've underperformed this season so far doesn't mean we necessarily would have if we'd have investment. For instance a CB would have saved us from conceding ridiculous goals and that would have saved our drop in confidence.
Either way every fan should want more investment, more quality. I don't get the issue.
The truth lies somewhere in between. Cant believe how black and white some think. Woodward and Glazers are to blame where we are long term as a club and for handling the transition badly, but how can anyone watch us and blame the owners for the shite we have to see every week. Jose needs to go with new structures and change behind the scenes, as simple as that. I dont want him to stay, but sacking him and changing nothing wont help us in the mid to long term either
This !!
The board will do well to appint a DOF they want, Jose should not even be taken into consideration and if need be, be removed now or at the end of the season. If Jose gets his DOF we will get willians, perisic type of players whilst Martials and co will be sold. No thanks.
Being 8th in November doesn't mean anything. Not sure how many times people need this pointing out but it's extremely worrying that so called football fans can't grasp this very simple concept.
And as pointed out, the board didn't know any of this in the summer, nor did any fan (Mourinho did to be fair to him, well, he knew it wouldn't be an easy season).
If we are 8th in May, all your currently ridiculous points might actually hold up. Right now they don't. You would be better served formulating a new argument, not this tedious null point.
And as pointed out, the board didn't know any of this in the summer, nor did any fan (Mourinho did to be fair to him, well, he knew it wouldn't be an easy season).
If we are 8th in May, all your currently ridiculous points might actually hold up. Right now they don't. You would be better served formulating a new argument, not this tedious null point.
This is the point. Blame the board for failure to challenge City. But we aren't just failing to challenge City. Look at the table ffs!
It's silly blaming the board for Mourinho throwing a tantrum and potentially crashing the season. The leat you should expect from a manager earning £15m a season, is manage the situation. Look at Pochettino?
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It's also interesting that people who consider Mourinho a failure and entirely to blame for the current issues also believe those who appointed him are likley to get the appointment of a DOF right and things will be fine from that point.
The board have made it perfectly clear where their priorities lie, and any appointments will reflect that. Whether DOF or manager, they will be expected to achieve whatever keeps the money rolling in.
Anyone expecting us to suddenly challenge based on such an appointment is seriously misguided.
The board have made it perfectly clear where their priorities lie, and any appointments will reflect that. Whether DOF or manager, they will be expected to achieve whatever keeps the money rolling in.
Anyone expecting us to suddenly challenge based on such an appointment is seriously misguided.
The problem here is some are trying to blame the board for the state and position of the team on the table. The board didn't spend enough of course, but that should be no justification for where Mourinho currently have the team. £75m should help maintain a similar level, not to make the team worse and not certainly to be below teams we finished above last season, three of which we outspent.
I think you are the one trying to justify something here, not me. The team is conceding much because the board didn't sign any defender according to you, only if you ignore the fact that it is the same crop that conceded the 2nd least number of goals last season. The same level should be reasonably expected to be maintained if there's no addition to a team, not get worse. By your logic, a team should sign a defender every season. None of Tottenham, Man City, Chelsea, Waftord, Bournemouth, Liverpool signed center backs in the summer, but none of them have gotten worse, just as good and some, better. A manager should be expected to perform with what he has, but so far Mourinho have been unable to do that. All the blame should be on him and his players - you can take Spurs as an example.
You are not going to find a lot of people fitting that description.
I don't really need to go searching, just see the 'Mourinho should he stay or go?' thread. Plenty in there believe he's entirely to blame.
It's why there is no longer any point in that thread. There's no discussion to be had.
Really boils my blood, that arsehole duped us big time.
Or because he was doing well and going into the next season on the last 12 months of his contract wasn't a good idea. The fact we only have him a 1 year extension indicates a lot.
What we want is a DOF to have a consistent and clear direction for the club to take on. That will be passed onto by Woodward and the board. You're right that they (Woodward/board) could make the same mistake like when hiring a manager, but so long as they decide on that direction/vision, I'm sure that football brain of a leadership would be a watered down version of what we currently have aka Woodward and manager deciding on everything.
And by that I mean, a mishap in a DOF hiring is less likely to result in a negative impact than a managerial hiring. The logic being that the DOF wouldn't directly be responsible for how a side plays and all the decisions that DOF is involved in get input from the manager. The DOF is more knowledgeable in football than Woodward, and I'm sure the wrong DOF can at the very least hire managers that fit the club's direction better than Woodward can.
Bad DOF's knowledge on football > Woodward
Bad DOF knowing which managers fit the club's vision > Woodward
I hope this makes sense
These words from Ed Woodward show exactly what is the current most important aim of the club. "Playing performance doesn't really have a meaningful impact on what we can do on the commercial side of the business." Those words explain everything that is happening right now. The most important thing is no longer the clubs success on the pitch. The most important thing is the success off the pitch.
Can understand why not much point having a DOF which Jose still in charge.
Mourinho is targetting the wrong type of
players bringing in someone who will go along with what he wants won’t help. Alternatively bringing in someone who wants to go in a different direction will just see more of the same from last summer and more petulance from Mourinho.
Mourinho is targetting the wrong type of
players bringing in someone who will go along with what he wants won’t help. Alternatively bringing in someone who wants to go in a different direction will just see more of the same from last summer and more petulance from Mourinho.
I'm getting tired of making this point. But it seems people have a short term memory. Guardiola inherited a much better squad than Mourinho. The investment we have made is only enough to catch up with the City squad of 2.5 years ago! They already had their core of quality players who had played together for a long time. Silva, Aguero, KDB, Kompany and even Sterling and Stones (who cost £50m each prior to Guardiola joining). Don't forget they made mistakes signing Nolito and Bravo but quickly sold them on and replaced. Whereas our board have still not managed to sell Darmian!
Our key purchases of Pogba, Lukaku, Sanchez only get us level with Guardiola's inherited squad. He has then invested even more.
Football is a long term game.
Yep. However Mourinho has never been that type of manager and currently there is no on field evidence that suggests you should believe in his project. I'll give him credit for being slightly more entertaining than LVG, but we're not even good at something that before his time at United, we all thought was a given for a Mourinho side. That being counter attacking. What are we actually good at and what can we see that with just a tiny bit more on transfers we'll succeed? Are the problems easy to isolate? Seems like everywhere is a problem and the only way to identify those problems is by "man that player is crap."
We should already have gotten a DoF in by now. They need to be involved in the process of looking for a new manager, as they will be the ones primarily responsible for implementing the right footballing philosophy at the club. No, we shouldn't be looking for someone who will work well with Jose, you don't hire a DoF based on who the manager is. We should be looking at getting a DoF who prioritizes the following things which are core principles for Manchester United:
1.) Playing a fun brand of attacking football
2.) Promoting youth from the academy and developing purchased young talent
3.) Winning and competing for the biggest trophies (PL, CL, FA Cup)
Get in a director of football who will make those things the focus, and then let him take lead to hire a manager who will do the same. From there the job will be for him to do an excellent job of using our scouting network to do good recruitment, while Woodward focuses on the financial/sponsorship stuff that he's good at. We need a cohesive plan that flows nicely from board to CFO to DoF to manager to the squad down to the players. Failure to do this will result in this club continuing to spin its wheels and achieve nothing for the foreseeable future.
1.) Playing a fun brand of attacking football
2.) Promoting youth from the academy and developing purchased young talent
3.) Winning and competing for the biggest trophies (PL, CL, FA Cup)
Get in a director of football who will make those things the focus, and then let him take lead to hire a manager who will do the same. From there the job will be for him to do an excellent job of using our scouting network to do good recruitment, while Woodward focuses on the financial/sponsorship stuff that he's good at. We need a cohesive plan that flows nicely from board to CFO to DoF to manager to the squad down to the players. Failure to do this will result in this club continuing to spin its wheels and achieve nothing for the foreseeable future.
Mourinho inherited the same squad that finished level on points with City for a start. But even if Guardiola inherited the better squad, what of Tottenham, Watford, Bournemouth, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool? I think you are completely missing the point here. These are teams we finished ahead of last season, most of which we have outspent in the last three years. Why are they getting better and we are getting far far worse - we are talking about this season. How is the board to blame for our performances on the pitch when they are clearly spending as much as our rivals? Who should get the blame when we are struggling to compete with Watford and Bournemouth despite spending significantly more than them?
Why are the players who are supposed to be our key purchases - the ones who are meant to help us close the gap - all underperforming?
Literally on this current page there are two posters agreeing that Mourinho is completely at fault for our current problems while the board/owners are at fault for our long term problems.
It's not that difficult to apportion the blame here:
Mourinho is to blame for taking a group of players with the requisite quality to achieve a 4th/5th place finish in the league, down to 8th.
This squad certainly has a few gaping holes in it and doesn't look capable of overhauling Chelsea/Liverpool, let alone City, but it is clearly still good enough to be beating the likes of Brighton, Wolves, West Ham and Derby, and shouldn't be relying upon last minute desperate solutions to overcome sides like Newcastle/Bournemouth. José is not getting enough out of them and can rightly be criticised for it. His relentless negativity from the very first moment of preseason placed a black cloud over the club, from which we've never really escaped. The football is largely terrible to watch and is no longer getting results. I don't expect him to be here next year.
The Glazers/Woodward are to blame for us not being capable of mounting a title challenge in 6 years.
They have allowed the football side of the business, for which they bear ultimate responsibility, to completely run off the rails. Nothing works as it should, whether that's the appointing/firing of managers, scouting, buying/selling of players, renegotiation of contracts - it's all one haphazard, dysfunctional mess, with no evidence at all of long-term planning or any kind of single, unifying vision. Problems in the squad are allowed to fester for years, player recruitment is an expensive disaster and managers are appointed without any consideration of continuity or fostering a particular vision/style - they are then briefed against by their own chief executive, kept past their sell by dates for economic reasons and eventually fired via the media. This has to change.
Well, @izec doesn't fit the description since he made a difference between field and off field, in one case he blames the owner/board and on the other he blames Mourinho. The fact that he targets the transition and puts the blame on the board suggests that he considers that they are also to blame for the current overall situation. His point is simply that Mourinho is making things worse, you can disagree with that but you can't say that he is only blaming Mourinho.
This is a good summary of the problems they are both responsible for. A lot of the ones related to playing performance are still on Jose and that's the reason he seems to cup most of the blame when on the pitch improvements are being discussed
I'm not saying Mourinho is a long term solution. I'm saying our problems predate Mourinho and he is taking lots of flak. Some of which is due to problems we had before he joined the club.
As the board extended Mourinhos contact, knowing what type of manager he is, they should have back him much more. Otherwise we are destined to fail.
A) Unrealistic comparison. City under achieved the season before Guardiola and Mourinho arrived because the players downed tools after Xmas when it became clear that Pellegrini was going to be replaced by Guardiola. Look how their form dipped after December.
B) Board/Woodward coming out against the manager the day before the season disrupts squad morale and focus. Please see my earlier post on this topic.
Duped Ed. Jose has form for doing this and Ed didn't realise? He has a lot of power, why didn't he try to see if the PSG rumours were true before extending the contract? A complete feck up and the reason why Jose is still here. The club wants to avoid the massive payout.
No DoF will ever have authority over the CEO. In any club.
It is bizarre.
I think that the fans think that if we save money, all the money saved, will be given to the next manager.
In reality, most of that saved money will go to the Glazers and a small amount of that money will be given to the next manager.
I'll believe that when I see it.
Woodward is our DoF and he seems to quite like that role.
"Woodward disagreed. “If we had done a deal [for Alderweireld], we would have been swapping our fifth-best central defender for another fifth-best central defender,” a source told the BBC. "
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&s...aw3lPVX47XLNMOcVOYzvUnJv&ust=1542658590834765
This thread started on Aug 11, it's now Nov 18. Makes you wonder what the board of Utd's billion $$ company does all day.
Tell that to portsmouth fans, or coventry fans, or the fans of any other club that went into administration. should fans not also concern themselves that financially the club is run responsibly? what is bizarre about thinking that spending 70m on a cb when we already have a bloated squad and 5 other cb's on the books already may not be a wise decision. And in reality the money not spent wont mostly go to the glazers, why do you think it will?
The depressing thing is, a DoF would be our biggest signing we could make.
To look at our squad, the money we've spent, the wages we're paying, we're no better off from when Fergie left.
With our current squad, 2 of our 3 most important players contracts are running down, it's a situation we need to sort out, badly, yet we're hearing reports that Ashley Young is about to sign a new contract. He's been a good servant, but he's not what we need moving forward.
Since Fergie has left, in defence we've brought in Darmian, Dalot, Blind, Rojo, Shaw, Lindelof and Bailly. (May be missing somebody, but think that's it)
Of the 7 defenders we've brought in, only two are currently featuring in our starting 11. Them two at the beginning of the season could have left and most wouldn't have cared.
Midfield and attack aren't much better, but the point is, we've hired 3 different managers, each with a completely different philosophy, and a different player type.
I'd be shocked if Mourinho is here by the start of next season, and depending who we bring in, I can see Lukaku and Matic falling victim of not suiting the managers plans.
The club needs a restructure from the ground up.
We need to get our wages back under control, we need to sort players contracts out before they hold the stronger hand.
We've got a lot of players contracts due this summer. If we let them go, we need to bring in quantity as well as quality.
We've been poor at letting players go. Darmian is a prime example. Juve wanted him, we held on for a price, now he doesn't feature, so we're paying his wages and watching his value decrease.
Herrera could leave on a free. He's a good squad player, I don't want to lose him on a free, but I also don't want to give him a wage increase for being just that, a squad player
Big problems going forward that need fixing
To look at our squad, the money we've spent, the wages we're paying, we're no better off from when Fergie left.
With our current squad, 2 of our 3 most important players contracts are running down, it's a situation we need to sort out, badly, yet we're hearing reports that Ashley Young is about to sign a new contract. He's been a good servant, but he's not what we need moving forward.
Since Fergie has left, in defence we've brought in Darmian, Dalot, Blind, Rojo, Shaw, Lindelof and Bailly. (May be missing somebody, but think that's it)
Of the 7 defenders we've brought in, only two are currently featuring in our starting 11. Them two at the beginning of the season could have left and most wouldn't have cared.
Midfield and attack aren't much better, but the point is, we've hired 3 different managers, each with a completely different philosophy, and a different player type.
I'd be shocked if Mourinho is here by the start of next season, and depending who we bring in, I can see Lukaku and Matic falling victim of not suiting the managers plans.
The club needs a restructure from the ground up.
We need to get our wages back under control, we need to sort players contracts out before they hold the stronger hand.
We've got a lot of players contracts due this summer. If we let them go, we need to bring in quantity as well as quality.
We've been poor at letting players go. Darmian is a prime example. Juve wanted him, we held on for a price, now he doesn't feature, so we're paying his wages and watching his value decrease.
Herrera could leave on a free. He's a good squad player, I don't want to lose him on a free, but I also don't want to give him a wage increase for being just that, a squad player
Big problems going forward that need fixing
You think Woodward and the board are to blame for disrupting squad morale, but not Mourinho? Mourinho started off this summer by questioning Pogba's focus at United, right after winning a World Cup. That kicked off everything. You don't think Mourinho affected squad morale by saying his players were rubbish?
I hope we are not mistaking making our DOF the actually football manager. Like I understand the DOF is to ensure the clubs ethos is valued and we have a planned structure for player and manager appointments. But we still require the guy leading the ship to actually steer. Example Joe Gomez doesn’t become first team unless Klopp develops him similarly you might lose Emre Can’s of this world through this being football. Nothing is perfect in the world of football otherwise we would be criticsing Barcelona’s structure for allowing Ronaldo and Maradona to ever leave. All we need is a direction the other nitty grity’s you talk over are really not important. We wanted a market price for Darmian Juve/AC/Napoli didn’t want to pay it he stays we move on, it’s not s point for writing up a new blueprint.
The link didn't work but if anything, that statement should encourage the players, spur them on, make them believe in themselves, not make them worse. Mourinho on the other hand banged on about how his players are not good enough and how the team will have a bad season if more players are not signed. Mourinho should be the one blamed for disrupting squad morale if that is the problem.
We could spend 70m on a centre back every single season and it would do feck all to our financial stability. You know our net spend this season is £50m right? Spending 70m on a defender is standard practice for the club when it comes to expenditure. Its certainly not financially irresponsible and comparing us to Pourtsmouth and Coventry is laughable.
For some reason there is this widespread misconception that the board decided to close off spending when thats likely not the case. There are many reports from reliable journos that the club were willing to spend big on specific players and were not willing to spend big on other players.
Not buying Alderweireld probably had nothing to do with financial stability and everything to do with him being half the price the next season.
I think any appointment of a Football Director will wait until the next Financial Year, or late into this one because Man Utd are up against Premier League short term cost control measures (Annual wage bill increase). They will be very wary of adding any extra wages.
Utd could solve any problem by selling players at a profit, but that might not be as easy as you think given the wages that they are on.
Utd could solve any problem by selling players at a profit, but that might not be as easy as you think given the wages that they are on.
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