I think there’s an element of that. But is Mourinho our chief scout? Or director of football? I don’t know who’s calling the shots. We don’t seem to have had any transfer strategy since SAF left under any manager we’ve had. LVG bloated is with cm options whilst signing no wingbacks when he played a wingback system. Was baffling. Same with mourinho. We have no wingers. Or wingbacks.
Man Utd set to appoint Director of Football (when hell freezes over)
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I think there’s an element of that. But is Mourinho our chief scout? Or director of football? I don’t know who’s calling the shots. We don’t seem to have had any transfer strategy since SAF left under any manager we’ve had. LVG bloated is with cm options whilst signing no wingbacks when he played a wingback system. Was baffling. Same with mourinho. We have no wingers. Or wingbacks.
Unless we go with someone expected to stay 5+ years I don't think we will ever have a long term coherent transfer plan. ZZ for instance. What will his take be on Lukaku....would he want galactico's in and largely let them express themselves. Would that work week in week out here? Can we ever afford that given current spending control. Perhaps Pooch would be interested but I suspect not right now. Would he get 3-4 years to build again a team in his image? There will never be stability and clear strategy as we are all so instant and fickle and in the next 1-2 years a new shiny approach will be successful somewhere else and we'll want that and drop everything. Jose has shown when he throws money at a squad the managers behind him can usually use a good number of them so I think we should have let him correct his own mistakes last summer. Either Jose himself or the next manager will be identifying the same anyway come Jan!
Yeah because that wasn't embarrassing enough the first time, JC
Ed is the money man and is doing very well in this aspect for the club. Why the feck is he involves in footballing matters? It has been a disaster with him in charge. Why can't the club be like every other club with a DOF?
3 anti- football manager in a row for the biggest club in the world. Spending crazy money on players that can't string 2 passes together or don't have any fecking idea how to use them. Our transfer dealings and negotiation are atrocious. Our youth team is not one of the top team in England anymore. No vision and style of play after Sir Alex.
3 anti- football manager in a row for the biggest club in the world. Spending crazy money on players that can't string 2 passes together or don't have any fecking idea how to use them. Our transfer dealings and negotiation are atrocious. Our youth team is not one of the top team in England anymore. No vision and style of play after Sir Alex.
The problem is pretty simple overall. It's a lack of proactive decisions. We're always reactive on the field. We wait for the opposition to do something and than we try to respond. It's the same problem throughout the club. Not one person from the owners to the players themselves is proactive in making decisions.
At the top of the company, we have guys who are happy to sit there earning money while watching the rest of the big teams spend money. But when we do spend money or try to spend money it's in a reactive way. We have to wait for someone to become available before we decide we're interested and then when we fail to plan, we end up scrambling in the month before the end of the window throwing 100m bids at random superstars who would never join our club in its current state or overspending on aging superstars that will join but only for money (Sanchez, Ibra etc). There's no forethought, no long-term scouting plan, no rhyme or reason to any particular purchase.
In Mou we have a manager who is happy to cede possession and allow the opposition to dictate play, and then his teams try and respond. While the players are happy to simply try fancy tricks 30 yards from their own goal and to take 5 seconds too long to try and make a pass. There's no one-touch play. No flow. No forward movement. It's all focused on simply stopping the opposition and when we can't do that we have no ideas, from the top down. It's the complete opposite of the way the leading clubs do business and play football. Every other top team has a structure built for the manager and they talk to players months, sometimes years in advance about joining up.
Every other top premier league team is built to play with the ball and take proactive risks using the ball to open space against the opposition. We simply try to react, regardless of whether we're playing Manchester City or Brighton. And when we do take risks with the ball it's in stupid positions, with Pogba pirouetting 25 yards from his own goal. There's no logic to any decisions being made at the club, from the boardroom to the playing staff. And I hope someone with a bit of sense is able to see this problem and try to rectify it. I fear it will take more than Mou resigning (which he'll do before December) to fix it.
At the top of the company, we have guys who are happy to sit there earning money while watching the rest of the big teams spend money. But when we do spend money or try to spend money it's in a reactive way. We have to wait for someone to become available before we decide we're interested and then when we fail to plan, we end up scrambling in the month before the end of the window throwing 100m bids at random superstars who would never join our club in its current state or overspending on aging superstars that will join but only for money (Sanchez, Ibra etc). There's no forethought, no long-term scouting plan, no rhyme or reason to any particular purchase.
In Mou we have a manager who is happy to cede possession and allow the opposition to dictate play, and then his teams try and respond. While the players are happy to simply try fancy tricks 30 yards from their own goal and to take 5 seconds too long to try and make a pass. There's no one-touch play. No flow. No forward movement. It's all focused on simply stopping the opposition and when we can't do that we have no ideas, from the top down. It's the complete opposite of the way the leading clubs do business and play football. Every other top team has a structure built for the manager and they talk to players months, sometimes years in advance about joining up.
Every other top premier league team is built to play with the ball and take proactive risks using the ball to open space against the opposition. We simply try to react, regardless of whether we're playing Manchester City or Brighton. And when we do take risks with the ball it's in stupid positions, with Pogba pirouetting 25 yards from his own goal. There's no logic to any decisions being made at the club, from the boardroom to the playing staff. And I hope someone with a bit of sense is able to see this problem and try to rectify it. I fear it will take more than Mou resigning (which he'll do before December) to fix it.
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"United are focusing on the appointment of a technical director before the end of the year to provide a link between the manager and board at Old Trafford rather than rebuilding their recruitment structure with a director of football, sources have told ESPN FC.....
..Sources have told ESPN FC that a technical director is favoured by Woodward and United's owners, the Glazer family, with the appointment working alongside Woodward and Mourinho rather than being handed the responsibility of driving the recruitment process."
Will that make sod all difference?
You'd better hope that doesn't happen then because we'll be in serious trouble if they do, and that is the reality
Better the Devil you know.
Nail on head.
From the Glazers to Ed to Jose to the team, we're a completely reactive football club. Not proactive.
It's why we had threads last season asking why we need to go a goal down before actually attempting to play football. Because we are reactive, our game-plan revolves around not conceding so when we concede we have no choice but to go forward, but it's done in a headless chicken manner as it was never the plan to begin with - players are winging it, coz it wasn't in the script.
Forgive my ignorance but does this just mean we're going to have the exact same setup except with a middle man to communicate between Jose and Ed?
That is how I am reading it. What is the point?
Technical director ? 
He'll be a pawn for Ed. Nothing is going to change then.
He'll be a pawn for Ed. Nothing is going to change then.Aye. God help us if we actually went out and bought the right players. Suppose we will have to see who gets the job.Technical director ?
Poor ol' Woody getting scared he won't be able to influence footballing decisions with his fantastic expertise of sucking off noodle companies for sponsorships.
Sounds like they're appointing a patsy to take the heat off Woodward re player recruitment, while Woodward himself actually continues to drive player recruitment. I'd forget about Monchi/Rangnick/Zorc etc. My guess is it'll be an ex-United player, for PR purposes.
Technical director ?
And no one meaningful will interview for the job either. Try telling Monchi or the like that they wouldn't get to call the shots of they took the job.
Bloody hell! It's the hope that they might just do something right that kills you. Jose will just want the wrong players in the wrong positions again and this bloke will tell Ed. Big deal.
This is bull. Why does Ed fear relinquishing the football side of things? Does he fear he'll become useless?
Are they not the same thing? What's the difference between a technical director and a DOF?
Well that's rather depressing...
This is literally exactly what's needed FFS,let Ed and the gang continue to handle the commercial/business side of things while relinquishing the recruitment duties to someone who know's what they're doing.
They might as well keep things as they are if they're gonna half ass it when it comes to a director
This is literally exactly what's needed FFS,let Ed and the gang continue to handle the commercial/business side of things while relinquishing the recruitment duties to someone who know's what they're doing.
They might as well keep things as they are if they're gonna half ass it when it comes to a director
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These people should have literally no say in what happens on the playing side. A technical director is preferred to a director of football because a director has to be someone with a business-side first rather than a football-side first. Which is the exact problem with the team in the first place! It sounds like they just want someone to take the heat off Woodward when we don't sign anyone. This club is falling, fast. And the fans will know exactly who to blame when things go awry and it's not Mou.
There could be a number of reasons why they're doing this now. I imagine part of this is that they want to try and get the message out that they don't want to fire Jose, to try and sure up his position with the players. The players are more likely to accept Mou's authority if they think he's going to stay. By mentioning that this guy will work alongside Jose and be his day to day contact I'm guessing the board is trying to send a message to the players about Jose's position.
Now whether or not the board actually means any of this is another thing entirely. But I'm guessing that, at this moment in time, they don't want Mourinho's authority to collapse to the point that the team just stops playing completely and we end up out of Europe and far adrift of the top four.
This bloke will just be the message carrier between Jose and Ed?
Ed? Jose wants a CB.
Go tell Jose he can't have one.
OK Ed.
A DOF decides how the team should be playing and recruits to fit that chosen style. The also chose who manages.
So a glorified middle man who'll take all the heat instead of Woodward if a transfer windows goes tits up.
How predictable. The Glazers and their minion Ed aren't going to give up an iota of influence willingly.
How predictable. The Glazers and their minion Ed aren't going to give up an iota of influence willingly.
A DoF would bring a long term plan and implement a philosophy within the club, bringing in managers and players who'd fit that vision.
A Technical Director is just a middle man who'd take away the pressure on Woodward while he pretends to know anything about football.
Should I go out and buy yellow and green wool and start knitting?
That's the problem with United, the manager is supposed to be the Alpha and the Omega when it comes to the football side. The problem is that since he isn't the one signing cheques, he needs to continuously convince the ones doing it that he is a obviously on the right track and that the club can follow him blindly, when doubts creep in serious problems starts because the board isn't brain dead enough to invest in something they have doubt about whether the doubts are warranted or not.
On the chief scout part, I just noticed that no one actually thought about him, for all we know there is maybe a discrepancy between scout reports and Mourinho's wishlist. Maybe that's where the board got his opinion.
If the board has lost trust in the manager to identify players to sign, then they need to either change the manager, or come up with a way of removing that responsibility from the manager, and giving it to someone who is able to do it better.
Which one you go with probably depends on if you think the manager is just not very good at identifying the players he needs, or if you don't like the profile/type of players he thinks he needs in the first place.
What you definitely don't do, is nothing. Decide you don't back the manager when it comes to signings, then do absolutely nothing about it. Or decide you have a different plan to the manager's plan, but don't actually communicate that to him at all. Which is what we have done, according to Woodward.
Exactly. If they've lost trust in the manager who got us to second place last season, why not replace him? Why just stop him from bringing in the players he wants and then blame him when things inevitably go wrong? Maybe the Glazers just didn't want to let us spend our money this summer - new manager or Mou and that was why we didn't bid for Alderweireld or any other center back?
Fact is, for the moaning about transfers this summer, Woodward can literally look at Mourinho and use the Marky Mark line from The Departed: “I’m the guy doing his job, you must be the other guy...”
Woodward and those around him make tons of money for the club and since Fergie retired they’ve spent loads for whatever each manager wanted (almost always).
Woodward and those around him make tons of money for the club and since Fergie retired they’ve spent loads for whatever each manager wanted (almost always).
I totally agree and that's where the blame toward Woodward start, the only mitigating fact would be if the club is looking at changing things and need to time to do it but even then you don't brief what they briefed. Mourinho has shown a lot of self control after that.
Why would we be in serious trouble if the Glazers sell?
They used a leveraged buyout to acquire the club and put us in debt for years.
This club has made them serious money, and their reinvestment and vision for the club is poor to say the least.
Maybe the next owner would actually care about the brand of football being played on the pitch. You think City or PSG's owners would be standing for this nonsense?
The problem at the end of the day is still primarily the Glazers. Their interests are commercial first and foremost, which doesn't necessarily align with what's best for the club on the pitch. Woodward is the embodiment of those goals. Any manager coming into this situation, no matter how good, is going to experience the common factor of the Glazer/Woodward moneymaking machine driving the decision-making process. People say we don't have an identity but I would disagree - we very much do and it comes from the Glazers on down.
This club is rudderless.
PSG and City owner would never buy United, in fact Qatar thought about it but quickly realized that the purchase of the club itself was a waste of money and that was before FFP.
Most businesses are bought with a leveraged buy out. There are not too many people or entities who have £2.5bn in cash who are going to buy us outright.
A new owner could be great, or could be a lot worse than what we have. Who knows. I know the owners get a lot of stick, but in the last 5 years old City has spent more money than us, so I’m really not sure what else they should be doing?
Of course they run the club as a business, and expect to maximise future, why should they care what brand of football we play, we layed the path for this many years ago when listing as a PLC.
Why would they worry about the brand of football. The brand of the entire club may take a beating with Jose but providing he was getting us higher up the table than LVG and putting serious point totals up too then its worth the short term damage. ZZ or whomever can work on that in just afew months. Jose was the perfect man at the perfect time to up us a level from 6th and did that. We expected more but perhaps there is another guy for that.
What makes you think that any prospective new owner wouldn't buy the club with a LBO of such mammoth size that it would make the Glazer's debt look like chicken feed in comparison?
What I wouldn't give to know what Woodward said to the players after the game yesterday. Maybe something along the lines of "second most expensive squad ever assembled and that's what we get? fecking disgrace. You're all playing for your futures." would have done.
More like "I'm ordering a takeaway - anyone want something?"
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