Removed from footballing matters with immediate effect.
Man Utd set to appoint Director of Football (when hell freezes over)
- Thread starter RedMachine03
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Removed from footballing matters with immediate effect.
I don't know how this can happen. Ed Woodward is definitely not going to remove himself from that role so the only people who have the power to do so are the Glazers, who are happy with Woodward with all the sponsorship deals he's bringing in.
Woodward for sure is culpable for alot of things. One example being the hiring of Mourinho with a style of play which is alien to our club.
But i'm glad he never backed Mourinho in the transfer market for the CB of the managers choosing. Which would've been Alderweireld from Spurs for around £70m if you believe what the Journos close to Spurs were reporting. Mourinho's alternate targets were Boateng, Godin and Harry Maguire for a ridiculous sum. I also commend him for keeping Martial and Pogba at the club when it was reported that Mourinho was happy to see them go. This decision will reap it's fruits when the new manager comes in and brings a more expansive style of play to the club imo.
There's been mistakes made for sure by Woodward but we would've been in a worse position if Mourinho had got his way. Woodward needs to get rid now and bring in the DoF pronto so we can get the ball rolling for next season.
But i'm glad he never backed Mourinho in the transfer market for the CB of the managers choosing. Which would've been Alderweireld from Spurs for around £70m if you believe what the Journos close to Spurs were reporting. Mourinho's alternate targets were Boateng, Godin and Harry Maguire for a ridiculous sum. I also commend him for keeping Martial and Pogba at the club when it was reported that Mourinho was happy to see them go. This decision will reap it's fruits when the new manager comes in and brings a more expansive style of play to the club imo.
There's been mistakes made for sure by Woodward but we would've been in a worse position if Mourinho had got his way. Woodward needs to get rid now and bring in the DoF pronto so we can get the ball rolling for next season.
leave the manager (Brittney) aloneJordi cruijff for coach and Jordi Cruijff for DOF are two different things. His father was not given a job in Holland too for most of the time.
Who is saying that ?
I do know for a fact SAF would not have gone to the board, whoever was in charge(be it Edwards, Kenyon or Gill), and ask the club to pay circa £75m for a near 30 year old Toby A, nor would he go to the board and ask for circa £65m for Maguire if he'd turned down the chance to sign him a year previous for £17m because he'd have known they'd have bloody laughed at him, and rightly so.
Toby at 30 would have been too young. SAF would have waited till he was 35yr old and got him on a free.
SAF bought Anderson for €30m when Porto paid €7m for him a season earlier. He also bought Berbatov for £31m when spurs had bought him for £11m prior.
Some of you try to rewrite history and paint SAF like some infallible transfer god, when the man, like every other manager, had his fair share of record fees and transfer failures.
It is less about the age for Mourinho but that the player be proven. But proven young players, like Dybala, are very expensive.
Ed paid 40m for Matic and 75m for Lukaku, and, agreed to the ridiculous wages for Sanchez. In between was the perisic bid. If he had a genuine problem with the perisic deal, then how does he justify the Sanchez one? By occam's razor, the answer is that Ed is a poor judge of the football side of things and his valuation likely had more to do with marketing opportunities than the footballing abilities of the players in question.
Ed decided which deals were acceptable and which ones to pass on thus I hold him responsible for the value (or lack of) we have gotten from our transfers. He is also responsible for wages, selling players and hiring managers, and, thus primarily responsible for the poor state of our squad.
In fairness, I think whatever arrangement they had prior was screwed up by the spike in transfer fees. Ed probably could no longer come true on earlier commitments while Mourinho expects the club to have the financial muscle to do so.
Unfortunately, neither of them are judicious in the transfer market. Mourinho has a low batting average with targets while Ed seems to end up overpaying.
Itb is considered but not made a requirement. You dont buy players with resale value as your primary goal unless you plan to sell the player, which is not what United has in mind when we were breaking records to sign players like Rio, Rooney etc
YES!!! By Everton standards, qualifying for the CL is like winning the PL. That they havent repeated it since is proof
First I do not believe that Toby couldnt be had for less than 75m. It does not make sense that Levy was willing to lose 50m just to keep Toby for a season. More so, when Poch was asking for reinforcements. I believe 50m would have been a closed the deal unless Levy has a very special reluctance to sell to us.
Even if Toby and Maguire are deemed not worth the asking price, where is the alternative 70m CB that was worth it. Instead we were trying to get Varane (who is probably the most valuable CB in the world) for 100m when even Koulibaly is valued above that. At the end no CB was brought in.
It is the same problem I had with the Perisic deal. If what is being asked is deemed too high, then a valid alternative should be brought in even if it is just as a stop gap. Not only does the manager not get his listed target, he doesnt get any player for the position at all.
By competitive, I was referring to the transfer market and general landscape.Not sure the landscape is more competitive now, in the late 60's, through out the 70s until Liverpool finally took over there were numerous Champions(I can think of 8 teams straight off the top of my head), there's not that many teams now that have a chance of winning the League
I think United fans could be doing more to express our displeasure at how Woodward has run the club in his tenure.
It's high time we realised that nobody is Alex Ferguson. We can't keep giving limitless time for people to grow into their roles.
Mourinho has been here 3 seasons. Woodward, 5 years. Both need to go.
It's high time we realised that nobody is Alex Ferguson. We can't keep giving limitless time for people to grow into their roles.
Mourinho has been here 3 seasons. Woodward, 5 years. Both need to go.
I never speculated as to what other owners might or might not have done. What I said was the Glazers have drained a fortune out of the club that should have been spent on the club not on interest payments. I don't give a toss if they managed the debt well. The debt should never have come into being.
The teams I mentioned have dominated European football. I'm not talking about their domestic leagues. It was Matt Busby's dream in the 1950s to have United mentioned in the same breath as teams like Real and Milan. That should still be the primary aim of Manchester United.
You're fecking clueless if you think Woodward is doing a good job.
He is doing an excellent job on one hand on the commercial side of things of which he is very good. He is fecking up on the footballing side and he needs to hire someone who can do a good job and knows football so the manager cannot get away by hoodwinking Ed.
But the Glazers have not taken £1 billion out of the club. The Red Knights put that out there but they misleadingly calculated the cost of all the interest payments over the duration of the loan to make the amount seem absurd, ignoring the events I covered in my previous post. Also nearly half of the original loan amount was secured against the Glazer's family assets (which to my knowledge they paid out of pocket), so it even makes that claim more dubious.
To say the debt should have never come into being is naive. That's like saying getting mortgage is stupid. The Glazer believed (and correctly in hindsight) that value/revenues of the club would increase under their ownership and the interest payment could be reduced and effectively managed.
Rhetorical question: How much money have the Glazers made for the club via business development? It's not fair to keep bashing them over the head for how much they "drained" from the club while ignoring how much they made for the club. It seems intellectually dishonest.
For the record, I completely understand your anger when this went down (2005). Leveraged buyouts are a very suspicious arrangement that usually leaves purchased company in a precarious position if purchasers can't delivery on their business strategy. But that was 13 years ago and by all accounts Manchester United is a solvent company with increasing revenues year over year and valuation of over £3 billion.
My point is the teams you mentioned have a much easier time getting to Europe.
Most of SAF's signings with United were top notch. Can you say the same about Moaninho?
He started to remove himself a long time ago and since two years back Matt Judge handles the transfer/contract business for United completely. Woodward has not been involved in the footballing side of things for quite awhile now.
He has not had that "role" for quite some time now. Come on. Woodward has distanced himself from the footballing side of things for several years now and has had nothing to do with transfer negotiations since Mourinhos arrival. The club has been looking to implement a DoF-role for several years now and it will be in place when Mourinho goes. Can we not at least get our facts straight in this thread?
Wait what? So all the Woodward out posters have been berating the wrong person? FFS
I literally never even thought to check who's in charge of transfers/contracts. My fault for believing the CAF haha
Woodward has had very little to do if anything with the transfer negotiations under Mourinho. Or the renewal of contracts.Wait what? So all the Woodward out posters have been berating the wrong person? FFS
I literally never even thought to check who's in charge of transfers/contracts. My fault for believing the CAF haha
Its been left to Matthew Judge who actually is who Mourinho is talking about when he says that he gives "lists" of transfer targets to Woodward. In reality it means that Mourinho has been controlling which players are brought into the club as long as he keeps within the set wage budget.
This Ed doesnt back Mourinho narrative is so fecking tiresome. I wish people at least could check some facts before posting. This has been mentioned enough times for this to stop. But I guess some things die very hard.
I would recommend just checking facts before posting the narratives pushed by ABU media as the Mail and the Sun who dont want anything more then to paint Woodward as a power-hungry Glazer-lackey that should stay away from the footballing side and fights with Mourinho every day over which players to sign. Its just not so.
So sack Judge, apologise to Woody?
Great post. Buying United was a risk for sure but the invested with the intention to grow so clearly saw opportunities. It is no coincidence that Woodward helped deliver the buy out and then brokered the advertising deals.
That the business is doing well should be just accepted at this stage. There are improvements needed on the football side of things for sure (DOF being the most commonly accepted requirement) but we are far from terminal as a club.
BeBe
One thing about Sir Alex is that he got rid of players if they weren't good enough or trouble makes or over the hill.
We don't do that anymore. I assume incompetence, but maybe there's a financial reason.
Fergie 100% kept hold of players much longer than he should have? To say otherwise is rewriting history a bit.
We are still £487million in the hole. Finance charges on that alone were £24 million in 2017-18. According to the Guardian:
The six Glazer siblings who collectively own 97% of United’s voting shares were paid approximately $23m (£18m) in dividends, the third year dividends have been paid. The total paid to them and the other financial investors was £22m, following £23m in 2016-17 and £20m the previous year, a total of £65m out of the club. The salary packages paid to directors and senior executives, which includes the six Glazers, was £13m, following £12m in 2016-17 and £11m the year before. A year ago, the Glazers’ holding company, Red Football, sold 4.3m shares in Cayman Islands-registered United, for $17 per share. That is a further $73m (£56m) made by the Glazers from their heavily leveraged acquisition of a football institution.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/oct/04/glazers-manchester-united
And you have the nerve to call me intellectually dishonest? This club serves now to make the Glazers rich. The club is so far removed from its traditional fan base, it might as well play home games in Miami. The Glazers don't care whose arse is on a seat as long as it's an arse.
True. If players like Butt and Phil Neville did not ask for transfers, he would have kept them at United. The same for Gary Neville. It was Gary who decided he has had enough and could not play anymore and retired.
Players like Smalling, Evans and Jones were players he bought to replace Vidic and Rio. They never did have the quality to do that in the first place.
Only by removing the Glazers will our fortunes change. If fans can do anything to turn this club around then effort should be focused on that.
Football before business
Entertainment before profit
Funnily enough that would actually help the business side of the club
Football before business
Entertainment before profit
Funnily enough that would actually help the business side of the club
top notch that were bought for top dollar.
The likes of Rio, Stam, Rooney, Cole, yorke, Ruud, Carrick etc were not bought for cheap, and yet most of his signings, like most managers, were average and he had his fair share of flops as well (kleberson, Veron, bebe etc).
I'd still like to see it.
edit: I thought you meant a poll on the Caf not Woodward per se, but now I'm in two minds
Honestly, I'm a bit confused as to what you posted is supposed to refute (not trying to wind you up). I never denied there is still debt or finance charges. I'm refuting 3 main things:
1) The Glazer's did not take £1b from . The Red Knight (IIRC) put this out to spook fans. They calculations are literally a worst case scenario. Even you add up the dividend payments and finance charges I would be completely floored if the total dollars spent to date is £1b
2) You cannot ignore the increased revenues and valuation. The increased valuation allows them to refinance the debt at a lower interest rate (which they did) and raise money through bond issues and IPOs (which they did). They bought the club at £800m and now it is worth £3b. This is pretty significant when when it comes to assessing the debt
3) The Glazer's DID NOT use the club for collateral for the ENTIRE amount of the initial debt. About £250m was secured against their own assets (which they are responsible for). So they also had skin in the game. (In the US, there are much more nefarious examples of leveraged buyouts where the purchaser puts up almost nothing)
The more important questions are: How much have the Glazers made for United compared to how much they've taken? What is the debt to asset ratio compared to other clubs? What is the clubs financial outlook in the next 5 years?
Nobody asks these questions b/c the answers are very dull and would obviously show that nothing insidious is happening behind the scenes. Journalists just want incite a reaction for clicks, so they will throw out all these huge figures without perspective. It's a travesty and extremely unfair to fans who have no knowledge of the entire picture.
Two other things related to your post:
1) There is nothing wrong with dividend payments. They are triggered when a company is making a profit. It's a very common thing and shows a relatively financially secure company.
2) I wasn't specifically calling you intellectually dishonest. My main issue is with the people putting out some of this slanted garbage trying to deceive the fans (Red Knights come to mind).
I won't dispute the Glazers are in it to make money, but why else would any businessman buy a £800m asset? I hear this point a lot, but it's not a real critique.
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Good post
If you would have put this in the Mourinho thread weeks ago you would have shut down some absolutely ridiculous claims being made. This just solidifies in my mind that Ed Woodward is nothing but a scapegoat. I don't think a lot of fans even care about the facts. They just want someone to blame and Woodward is the easy target. Sad stuff.
1. Several newspapers, including the Guardian, have reported the £1 billion figure. David Conn, who has been on this story for many years, has never deviated from his figures. Moreover, they have never really been refuted. The RK did try and scare up a takeover for a short while and they have now vanished. The debt has not. If it isn't a billion, then how much?
2. I'm not ignoring increased revenues and valuation. The 'increased revenues' are one reason why thousands of loyal United supporters no longer attend games. Increased ticket prices, the cup scheme, and general monetization of all things United for the benefit of the Glazers is, to me, reprehensible. Yes, the club is worth more and no doubt the Glazers have become immensely rich from this, but the cost for the average supporter has been staggering, and I don't just mean in financial terms. And we are still in debt.
3. £250 million sounds like a lot but the balance dumped on Manchester United was a lot more. They may not have used United as collateral for the entire amount, but the amount they did use was nothing short of corporate piracy.
I'll get to your other points later, but I've got to finish off a couple of things at work...
SAF made some great bargains too. Schmeichel, Sharpe, Johnsen, Kanchelskis, Ole, Blomqvist, Hernandez, Rai Van Del Gouw, Evra, Vidic, Park to add a few. Unlike Mourinho's signings with us SAF's signing were on the majority top notch. He's been far far more successful on the transfer market then Mou had been with us.
Apologies on this but I think you're either a troll or Mou's love child.
People defending The Glazers and Woodward should be given all the abuse under the sun by United fans.
I'm not interested in opinions.
I'm not interested in opinions.
The increase in value and turnover at the club is in line with most popular top clubs in the premiership. To wholly attribute that to The Glazers is disingenuous.
Also, to ignore the revenue and value added to the club by SAF by winning title after title on a shoestring transfer budget over the Glazer reign is intellectually dishonest. Not to mention the fact that he enabled The Glazers to reduce the large amount debt due to his ability to work miracles. Glazers should've built on his success rather than bleed him and the club dry.
No matter what the total debt they have put on the club and cost the club. It should've all been put into playing staff and infrastructure. Maybe it could have stemmed our decline instead of lining Glazer pockets.
Also, to ignore the negative impact their decisions have had on the football performances and strategic ineptness of the board at United is ridiculous.
So, for example Matt Judge was the one who gave Sanchez 400k, or whatever it was worth, United contract?
That's why I said in the majority of times.
That's something we'll have to disagree upon. It took us 8 long years to get rid of Anderson and we never managed to adequately replace Scholes and Giggs despite heading at the wrong end of their 30s. Which kind of shows that the current system was already proven inadequate during SAF's time. At the end of SAF's reign we were struggling to bring the top players we needed or more then 4 players at a time + it took us ages to get rid of the deadwood.
The difference between now and then is that SAF was special enough to paper the cracks something Mou is not. At least not anymore.
United hires Moyes for long term plans. It doesn't work out. Next hires Van Gaal, for short term, it doesn't work out. Now the real error is made. They got the whole time while Van Gaal was there to think about long term strategy. And next they hire the guilty pleasure but short term Mourinho, and it doesn't work out. They better get it right next one.
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