He appointed David Moyes and LvG yeah, but i'm not sure how you can blame Ed Woodward for their failures, that's surely on the Managers, and players, and the unrealistic expectation of some of our fans which doesn't help either.
Think I get you - everyone else is culpable except Woodward eh? Company is doing badly, but its everyone else's fault except for our infallible CEO
You do realise that circa 99% of all Managerial appointments end in failure don't you ? So why should Ed Woodward a non football man apparently get it right first, second, third or even forth time ?
There is a clear difference between ending in failure and being a failure. Mourinho's and Conte's tenures at Chelses ended in failure but were not failure, given the each delivered PL titles.
None of those manager's could be said to have had a successful tenure even by their individual standards. The only thing they had in common is having to work with Ed.
And how do you know that Ed is clueless when it comes to football, were you shooting the breeze with him and come to that conclusion, or did you just read/hear it somewhere, think it's probably true as others are saying the same and go with it(ah the old if you hear something often enough it must be true) with absolutely nothing to back it up ??
It is easy to see from the decisions he makes.
As an example, anyone with basic familiarity with the game would know what kind of manager LvG and Mourinho were both in philosophy and personality (afterall each had been coaching for 30+ and 20+ years respectively and at various top flight clubs). To appoint LvG after Moyes was to start upon a unique path (possession football, moldable youth players, flexible players etc), but after 2 season he replaces LvG with Mourinho who is the total antithesis of LvG (proven and matured players, direct system etc). In fact Mourinho first press conference, made it clear when he said he preferred 'specialists'.
What happens, the first two seasons of Mourinho's tenure are basically spent undoing what LvG had done, with most players acquired by LvG being sold (depay, Schneiderlin, Blind, Schweini) or consigned to the bench (Darmian, Rojo, Herrera). A player like Di maria, who would have fit well into Mourinho's system (and had played for him at real)
When Barcelona and Bayern fired LvG, he was succeeded by Rijkaard and Guardiola respectively, two coaches who shared philosophical roots with LvG and offered continuity. Ed could have also appointed a manager (e.g. Koeman) along that line of thought.
That he appointed Mourinho and thus inevitably wasted 2 seasons of transfers and thus left us with a mish-mash squad of aging and overpaid mediocre players is clear evidence of his arrant ignorance.