Man Utd set to appoint Director of Football (when hell freezes over)

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Kostov said:
If he is our best option in that position which you are probably right, then we better play without a number 10, meaning a classic 433 is best suited to that squad. A number 10 that produces 2 goals and 2 assists in half a PL season should not be a starter for a team with title winning aspirations. Unless he improves of course.
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I totally agree with you but I also think stats don’t tell the whole story. His contribution to the team is about mor than goals/assists.
 
Adisa said:
Imo, time to revisit this. Don't know how the squad will shape up over the next month but this post might become relevant. At the moment, it's Mourinho's responsibility. But he has never in his career been responsible for building a squad.
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Perez gave him full control of transfers at Madrid.
They sacked Valdano and even stated they were following his request for a more EPL approach. He left a phenomenal squad behind him.
I can't see a director of football sanctioning Etoo plus money for Ibra without Jose's say so, I don't think he would join Inter without a similar approach.
Did he build Porto's squad? Any Portuguese that could shed light on this?
 
cyberman said:
Perez gave him full control of transfers at Madrid.
They sacked Valdano and even stated they were following his request for a more EPL approach. He left a phenomenal squad behind him.
I can't see a director of football sanctioning Etoo plus money for Ibra without Jose's say so, I don't think he would join Inter without a similar approach.
Did he build Porto's squad? Any Portuguese that could shed light on this?
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It was before his third season Valdano left. Will wait till the end of the window and I'm interested in listening to Mourinho's comments about how he thinks it would have gone.
 
Berbaclass said:
I totally agree with you but I also think stats don’t tell the whole story. His contribution to the team is about mor than goals/assists.
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Not for me, contrary I think his stats have been very good or better than his last season at least. He has better stats than some world class players in his position, his overall game comes nowhere near. If he builds more consistently next season than yeah I think he will get a fair chance for a starting place, as it stands he shouldn’t in my opinion.
 
Adisa said:
It was before his third season Valdano left. Will wait till the end of the window and I'm interested in listening to Mourinho's comments about how he thinks it would have gone.
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Yeah, but he's not a novice at it as you tried to portray
Even now you tried to pass it off as his third season when he was sacked before Jose's record breaking second season at Madrid.
Its all very strange
 
cyberman said:
Yeah, but he's not a novice at it as you tried to portray
Even now you tried to pass it off as his third season when he was sacked before Jose's record breaking second season at Madrid.
Its all very strange
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I'm just trying to find reasons why we seem to be sticking with players it seems he has decided aren't good enough.
 
Kostov said:
Not for me, contrary I think his stats have been very good or better than his last season at least. He has better stats than some world class players in his position, his overall game comes nowhere near. If he builds more consistently next season than yeah I think he will get a fair chance for a starting place, as it stands he shouldn’t in my opinion.
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Fair enough I think he does good work for the team, making runs/opening up space for others/closing down etc.

I used to be against having him in the team FWIW and thought he wasn’t good enough.
 
Berbaclass said:
Fair enough I think he does good work for the team, making runs/opening up space for others/closing down etc.

I used to be against having him in the team FWIW and thought he wasn’t good enough.
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I recognize the good he brings also. Previously I didn’t think he was good enough to be even a squad player, I was wrong he offers a good option to the squad. Plus he is homegrown and English. However from a Manchester United starting number 10 I want a player of the Isco/Eriksen/Hazard.
 
December 2018:

We currently sit 11 points outside of top 4, 19 points from the top of the table. Woodward didn't want to back Mourinho in the summer and yet he's not sacking Mourinho either despite a terrible start to the season. Does he have any plan or ambition at all? He seems very content to let us be as long as the money side of things continues to increase.

The worst thing isn't even that he hasn't sacked Mourinho, it's that he'll be in charge of who our next manager will be.

He needs to step down from the footballing side of things and hire experienced/talented footballing people to deal with player + manager recruitments.

Pre - Season:

A lot of flack being directed towards Mourinho but surely an equal amount of blame lies with Woodward? We started the transfer window hopeful we'd sign Sandro, Willian and yet we've signed none of them. Ditto last season with Perisic. Mourinho's said he's given a list of 5 players to Woodward, wanted two, but thinks we'll only get 1 (if that). We've known we've been crying out for new full backs and a RW, and we've yet to sign either a LB or a RW and it looks very unlikely that we're going to do so.

We've spent almost the same as City this summer, despite them having a far superior squad to us and having outspent us significantly in the previous two summers. Liverpool have a team that did very well in the second half of last season after adding Van Dijk, reached the CL final, and have now spent another £160m upgrading their team.

All the while Woodward seems to be going after Maguire who'd cost £70m+ or players who aren't for sale. This season we've seen Mahrez, Malcom, Lemar, Gelson and Moura (Jan) move and done nothing - all players that could've improved RW for us. Players like Sarr, Perisic still obtainable. Either Woodward is a really bad negotiator or it just seems likely that he doesn't want to spend the funds, and imo that's what's really hampering us this summer and will hamper us throughout this coming season. Of course Mourinho's list of 5 players could've been just really unobtainable players but surely we'd have backups in place?
 
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I can understand the frustration from both sides. I genuinely wouldn't be surprised, considering the money we have spent the last few seasons, of which there can be no complaints from anyone, if Ed Wood was feeling a little aggravated at how much Mourinho has spent and yet how little he has able to really get a tune out of them.
 
Truth is we can't really blame Mourinho or blame Woodward cause we really don't know what is happening behind the scenes. None of us do.

So I'll reserve judgement, however if it does turn out to be a shambles of a season. I'll blame them all, because other teams are doing a lot better and being ran well, from the top down.
 
Woodward can be aggrieved at Mourinho all he wants but the board appointed him, have failed to unload deadwood players and I specifically remember it being reported last year that despite Mourinho wanting a new LB they wanted him to give a chance to Shaw. I'm happy we signed Dalot and long term believe he can be the solution at RB but LB remains a glaring weakness as well as RW.

Jose takes some blame but Woodward and the board must as well.
 
Has been really good the last 3 summers and gave LVG and Mourinho what they asked for but this summer is a disaster tbh.
 
He’s got to take some responsibility but like others have said you could also understand if the club were reluctant to keep throwing a Mourinho project which right now honestly looks like it could easily go south this season, in a dramatic fashion.
 
Where is the old thread where people thought he was brilliant because he signed some dross for LVG.
 
We have incompetency ingrained in our footballing organisation. We have bucket loads of money yet are unable to acquire the best assests. You have to ask yourself why? We aren’t doing something right that’s for sure and someone needs to be made accountable.
 
Woodward can't do any right. If he buys whoever the manager wants he gets blamed for overspending on shit. If he doesn't spend he gets blamed for not backing the manager.

All Woodward has got wrong is hiring the three clowns post-Ferguson
 
Woodward's been a complete cock up for three managers in a row now, so the "we don't know what he does" and "it's the manager who is to blame" arguments just don't wash.

Even if you put all the blame on all three managers, you still have to confront that Woodward is the man who employed them.

If you let a manager replace his team 3 times over and the team is still shite, you certainly wouldn't sit there saying the manager isn't to blame.
 
I still will never understand why the bloke who's best skill is signing up random noodle partners, is also in charge of signing footballers.... As if it's the exact same skill or something.
 
He's probably two deals away from still being a Don Woodward but seriously it needs to happen.

Just two, Ed... You know, like that time you signed Schweini and Schneiderlin simultaneously... only this time bit better players, please ?
 
Woodward is appointed by the board, thus his obligation is to them. And the Glazers is more interested in £££ than how we play. So Woodward main objective is making $$$ for the owners, not ensuring we are winning titles or play brilliant attacking football. Eventhough it should be said that a team that is winning trophies and plays entertaining football will in the long term get more and more fans, thus increase their income this way.
Investment needed for a team to be able to have a chance at the CL trophy or closing the gap with City in the EPL this season, does not outweigh the benefits of doing so from a financial ROI perspective.

So based on what he is employed to do i would say he has done a brilliant job. He has ensured the debt has gone down, increased the revenue and valuation of this club and made the Glaziers more wealthy.
 
He's not blameless but he's right to ask why he's spending £60m on another CB for the third summer in a row.
 
I'm torn on Woodward. On one hand I feel sorry how his good work in the past transfers are being rewritten and people are lying through their teeth pretending that he hasn't backed his managers but on the other hand he certainly deserves to be criticised for failing to appoint the right manager to take us forward.

Though what's most perplexing about him is his inability to make quick decisions and try to salvage something but instead wait until things have become completely hopeless.
 
He's probably holding back wasting money on more players Mourinho wants since he's done nothing with the players he wanted the last two windows! £90m on Pogba and he cant even figure out how he wants to play him, bought Sanchez and continued playing him on the left displacing Martial who finally started to show some form, when we have nobody on the right wing. £35M on Lindelof who can barely get a look in despite the shite CB's we already have.

Why should Woodward just go and spend another 120M on players when we cant see any improvement with the current players. Our team looks like a bunch of random people off the street who have just been asked to kick a ball around, no understanding and no real method to how we want to win games. Spending anymore money will not solve any issues, even if we signed Messi we'd still have 11 men behind the ball defending for our lives against fecking Middlesborough!
 
I think there must be a mutual understanding that Ed would splash the cheque book if Mourinho looked profitable. He’s not. The football has not improved
 
WR10 said:
I think there must be a mutual understanding that Ed would splash the cheque book if Mourinho looked profitable. He’s not. The football has not improved
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Exactly it goes both ways. Woodward has done his part by financing several big money signings, but Mourinho has made them all look ordinary. We can't keep throwing money at a manager who continues to waste it.
 
We have Fred for more than 50m and Dalot for 20m. That's hardly nothing. You look at Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, City none of them added more. Only Liverpool did.
The situation is especially stupid since it's clear Jose wants CB. AGAIN. He already bought 2 for more than 30m each. We have 5 our books already.
 
No idea why anyone can criticize Woodward. His job - please remember - is to deliver value to shareholders. That's it. And he does that in spades, by delivering huge dividends and profits.

His job is not to make me happy, or Jose happy, or Marcus Rashford happy, or Old Trafford happy. His job is to make the Glazers and shareholders happy.

And by all accounts, he's very successful.
 
It doesn't make sense to not keep investing in Mourinho now. Its no point in wasting a year to "see what happens". Either you buy the players he want to make the team better, or you fire him and buy the players some other manager wants. Waiting a year to see if he will make it work with the players he has won't work and we'll only risk losing assets if we're playing that game. We could risk losing Pogba, De Gea and even Martial and Sanchez too maybe, if we just wait it out and aren't giving our top players a fair chance to win anything.
 
Adisa said:
He's not blameless but he's right to ask why he's spending £60m on another CB for the third summer in a row.
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Yeah the fans may have short memories but the guys signing their names on the cheques remember each and every signing and want them accounted for.
 
MikeKing said:
It doesn't make sense to not keep investing in Mourinho now. Its no point in wasting a year to "see what happens". Either you buy the players he want to make the team better, or you fire him and buy the players some other manager wants. Waiting a year to see if he will make it work with the players he has won't work and we'll only risk losing assets if we're playing that game. We could risk losing Pogba, De Gea and even Martial and Sanchez too maybe, if we just wait it out and aren't giving our top players a fair chance to win anything.
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If we invest more this season without selling, we will limit the amount we can spend next season and so on. From another tread:
FY2017 our EBITDA was about £200m. (think of that as the cash we generate from operations before any finance related stuff happens). If FY2018 was the same (it's likely to be a bit better for a number of reasons) then we'd have £200m this year as well. Off the top of that comes the finance charges - £20m interest and £25m dividends - which leaves £155m. We still owe a lot from previous years' transfers so that comes next. For FY 2018 we were on the hook for around £68m (net - we were owed a lot as well). (There's also another £68m owed for FY2019 but that's next years' story.) So, for FY2018 we're left with £87m to spend. Fred and Dalout cost us a total of £72m (according to Transfermarkt.com) which leaves us with £15m. I guess that CB had better come cheap, unless we want to go further in the hole for next year. (Of course, if the FY2018 EBITDA is bigger than FY2017, we'll have a bit more than £15m but ,the point is, it's not a bottomless pit.)
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My guess is that the board/Woody is either content with the squad and feels that Mourinho should secure a top 4 spot with the current players, and/or waiting for the next manager and give him funds to spend on players.
 
Mourinho has spent £370m in two years. I don't know who has gaslighted fans to make it seem like that is nothing.
Only 3 clubs have spent that amount in the same time, two oil clubs and another that sold a player for £200m.
I think he's entitled to ask if the manager is getting the most out of that money.
Anyway, i feel more holed in the squad should be filled and that we need a DoF. But any attempt to lay even the majority of the blame at Ed's door is unfair imo.
 
Beachryan said:
No idea why anyone can criticize Woodward. His job - please remember - is to deliver value to shareholders. That's it. And he does that in spades, by delivering huge dividends and profits.

His job is not to make me happy, or Jose happy, or Marcus Rashford happy, or Old Trafford happy. His job is to make the Glazers and shareholders happy.

And by all accounts, he's very successful.
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His job is also to secure transfers that the first team coach requests, targets which were agreed upon months ago. The purpose is to improve the first team which will lead to success, that makes the brand stronger which makes the shareholders happy. This can't happen if he can't negotiate properly and close the deals, he's failed this summer so far.
 
Adisa said:
He's not blameless but he's right to ask why he's spending £60m on another CB for the third summer in a row.
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Well said. There is a saying third time lucky, but Mou ought to have got the right balance CB wise by now.
 
Morpheus 7 said:
His job is also to secure transfers that the first team coach requests, targets which were agreed upon months ago. The purpose is to improve the first team which will lead to success, that makes the brand stronger which makes the shareholders happy. This can't happen if he can't negotiate properly and close the deals, he's failed this summer so far.
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If there were any sign that we needed to be fun on the pitch to deliver commercial results I'd be with you, but sadly I fear everything suggests a top 4 finish is fine.
 
If Woodward doesn't trust Jose to pick players to sign then he either needs to get rid of him or bring a DoF in. If neither happen then back the manager with what he is after. Not backing him, sacking him or getting a DoF in just leaves us in the current situation with a disgruntled manager and a team with gaping holes in it.
 
wolvored said:
Well said. There is a saying third time lucky, but Mou ought to have got the right balance CB wise by now.
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Ridiculously unfair. Jose came in and turned our questionable defense into one of the best units in the league. Under thirty goals each season.

So he's done what get has had to with what he's got. Now he just wants better. And yes, that takes fine tuning.
 
Hard to say. He is doing a good job in general, most people only care for transfer activity, but that is what, 5% of his job? He is not a football man and i think he needs help, but we wont appoint a DoF anytime soon. On the other hand, he did a great job the last few years and the managers fecked up on the pitch. We dont have enough information on what exactly goes on behind the scenes to distribute the blame accordingly on everyone. For all we know Jose's targets might either be unobtainable or far too expensive or quite simply not willing to join us/reject us. We dont have endless funds. We can judge Jose better though by watching games.
 
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