United’s Worst Decisions of the Last 12 Years

ole@thewheel

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We all know that Manchester United’s decline over the past decade hasn’t been due to just one bad decision but a series of them. However, if we were to pinpoint the worst single decisions that led to failures, which ones would stand out the most?

For me, these are the biggest mistakes in order:

  1. Moyes/Woodward appointment (2013) – The start of the post-Ferguson disaster. Moyes was never the right man, and Woodward’s inexperience in football operations was evident from day one.
  2. Ten Hag contract extension (2024) – Absolute shambles with the way it was handled and the outcome we all saw it coming and are living currently.
  3. 2013 summer transfer fiasco – From the failure to sign key targets to ending up with Fellaini on deadline day. Absolute mess.
  4. Rangnick appointment (2021-22) – A short-term manager with no authority and an advisory role that never happened. The whole thing was doomed.
  5. 2022 summer transfer spree – Overpaying for players like Antony and Casemiro, leading to an unbalanced squad and financial strain.
  6. Sanchez signing (2018) – A huge flop, disrupted the wage structure, and offered nothing of value on the pitch.
  7. Ronaldo signing (2021) – Meant to be a dream return but ended up causing dressing room issues, unbalancing the team, and setting the club back tactically.
What do you think? Are there worse individual decisions that should make the list?
 
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At a high level, giving every manager carte blanche to rip up the entire squad and spend hundreds of millions building a new squad in their image.

Now we're broke, with a crap squad and nothing to show for it.

As for your list, I agree on Woodward but disagree on Moyes. He was a very poor appointment, but he came in, failed, left, and we moved on. He didn't make tons of shit signings that we were saddled with for years. Overall, his legacy barely casts a shadow on the club.
 
Might be easier to say what our best decision of the past 12 years is.
I’m struggling to come up with an answer.
 
The Summer '23 window was an unmitigated disaster for us, and will haunt us for years.

170 million on a goalkeeper whose next howler is just around the corner, a midfielder who is permanently injured, and a striker who can't score goals.
 
Imho hindsight 20/20 and rose colored glasses and all that but imho firing LvG was terrible timing. Yes the footie shown was extremely dull at times but we also seemed to be hard to break down given an already broken squad. Getting rid of Chicharito was an odd decision and the issues with diva Di Maria were obvious lows - but it also seemed he had the gravitas to shake things up from a performance standpoint that went beyond the pitch alone. I don't recall reading of any other manager since SAF who forced some changes to be made immediately to things like Carrington etc.

Perhaps Im just at the point where im simply tired of getting rolled over with ease which despite all other issues didn't happen often during the LvG and to a degree Mou years either. I guess we can argue that their superstar singings upset the balance of the club etc. - but at least it felt we had some sense of direction. I understand if someone thinks this is all a high questionable or controversial opinion - but dropping a manager off the bounce of winning a trophy when things weren't nearly as dire as the last few years - just seems silly at best.
 
I'd argue the Ole contract extension was extremely poor move. Doing it mid-season off the back of an incredible start as caretaker, right at the peak of his wins only for us to go on and limp over the finish line meant that we were then unable to move on in the summer and get an established manager in. We ended up carrying on for ages until Ragnick and then Ten Hag and now Amorim. Classic Woodward shit move, should have waited until the end of the season.
 
Todd said:
The Summer '23 window was an unmitigated disaster for us, and will haunt us for years.

170 million on a goalkeeper whose next howler is just around the corner, a midfielder who is permanently injured, and a striker who can't score goals.
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If you could combine Summer 22 & Summer 23 into one decision, I think it would take the top spot.
 
DomesticTadpole said:
The biggest and most serious cockup was selling the club to the Glazers as it led to all the other mistakes.
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It wasn't willingly sold though. They just bought out the main shareholders and the rest were sold compulsory. Damn shame, facilitated by the premier league and the government at the time. It's a travesty what allowing those parasites in has done to the club.
 
Top_Bins said:
It wasn't willingly sold though. They just bought out the main shareholders and the rest were sold compulsory. Damn shame, facilitated by the premier league and the government at the time. It's a travesty what allowing those parasites in has done to the club.
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The Premier League are a disgrace letting this happen to one of their historic clubs.
 
The Moyes decision set the club back decades. What a monumental feck up that was.
 
Ragnick appointment was a great decision and it looks better and better with each passing year that proves he was completely right. What was a stupid decision was to never give him power and then make him a scapegoat for not sugarcoating it and being clear about our problems.
 
Lay said:
The Moyes decision set the club back decades. What a monumental feck up that was.
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How? He was a very poor appointment but we sacked him relatively quickly before he could do any lasting damage (like signing a ton of expensive deadwood).
 
- Selling United to Klopp as an adult disneyland
- Hiring Moyesiah
- Rooney's contract extension...the first stupid "protect the value" contract extension.
- Declaring to the world "we can do things in the transfer market other clubs can dream of"
- Following that up with Moyesiah's first transfer window - chasing ghosts and paying 4m more than Fellaini's release clause that summer.
- The Ander Herrera three musketeers fiasco.
- Buying Mata for 37m without the manager having a clue on what to do with him
- Extending Nani's contract to "protect his value", then paying 100% of his salary to play for Sporting to get Marcus fecking Rojo.

I am just getting warmed up...how long do we have here?
 
Big Ben Foster said:
How? He was a very poor appointment but we sacked him relatively quickly before he could do any lasting damage (like signing a ton of expensive deadwood).
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I think his clean out of the backroom stuff did some damage, but maybe he just tore the plaster off on one go.

While he wasn't an inspired choice, I think his effect is vastly exaggerated. First guy post Fergie was always in for a bad time
 
Insanity said:
- Selling United to Klopp as an adult disneyland
- Hiring Moyesiah
- Rooney's contract extension...the first stupid "protect the value" contract extension.
- Declaring to the world "we can do things in the transfer market other clubs can dream of"
- Following that up with Moyesiah's first transfer window - chasing ghosts and paying 4m more than Fellaini's release clause that summer.
- The Ander Herrera three musketeers fiasco.
- Buying Mata for 37m without the manager having a clue on what to do with him
- Extending Nani's contract to "protect his value", then paying 100% of his salary to play for Sporting to get Marcus fecking Rojo.

I am just getting warmed up...how long do we have here?
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As long as you want.
 
Similarly, as much as Moyes appointment proved to be terrible, I don't think it was a terrible decision as such - he was personally chosen by our greatest manager in history and I'm not sure if the club was really in the position to completely ignore Sir Alex. Sure, Moyes did set us back, but considering our non-existing structure, terrible state of the team that was hanging mainly on SAF's genius and that we were replacing Sir Alex and Gill at the same time, I sort of think that we were doomed to fail whoever would come to replace SAF.
 
Thinking everything could just continue with Woodward and a manager post SAF without putting a proper structure in place to handle the football side if things.

Everything else has just followed on from that.
 
Red Star One said:
Ragnick appointment was a great decision and it looks better and better with each passing year that proves he was completely right. What was a stupid decision was to never give him power and then make him a scapegoat for not sugarcoating it and being clear about our problems.
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Don't think it was a great decision. We hired a good team builder and poor coach to coach us and got rid before he got to build a team for a probably solid coach but terrible team builder
 
Yeah I don't agree that the Moyes decision in a nutshell is that bad. Any club can hire a crap manager and we got rid fairly quickly. If we had got a better manager to follow him then things would have got better quickly.

Woodward was the real problem.
 
hellhunter said:
I think his clean out of the backroom stuff did some damage, but maybe he just tore the plaster off on one go.

While he wasn't an inspired choice, I think his effect is vastly exaggerated. First guy post Fergie was always in for a bad time
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I think whoever came in would bring in their own people, although maybe Phelan or Rene would've been kept on for a season for continuity purposes. Don't think it would've made much of a difference though.

Agree that his effect is exaggerated. Big clubs make very poor appointments all the time (Lopetegui at Real, Setien at Barca, Kovac at Bayern just to name a few off the top of my head). They usually rip the bandaid off quickly and move on.
 
ole@thewheel said:
We all know that Manchester United’s decline over the past decade hasn’t been due to just one bad decision but a series of them. However, if we were to pinpoint the worst single decisions that led to failures, which ones would stand out the most?

For me, these are the biggest mistakes in order:

  1. Moyes/Woodward appointment (2013) – The start of the post-Ferguson disaster. Moyes was never the right man, and Woodward’s inexperience in football operations was evident from day one.
  2. Ten Hag contract extension (2023) – Absolute shambles with the way it was handled and the outcome we all saw it coming and are living currently.
  3. 2013 summer transfer fiasco – From the failure to sign key targets to ending up with Fellaini on deadline day. Absolute mess.
  4. Rangnick appointment (2021-22) – A short-term manager with no authority and an advisory role that never happened. The whole thing was doomed.
  5. 2022 summer transfer spree – Overpaying for players like Antony and Casemiro, leading to an unbalanced squad and financial strain.
  6. Sanchez signing (2018) – A huge flop, disrupted the wage structure, and offered nothing of value on the pitch.
  7. Ronaldo signing (2021) – Meant to be a dream return but ended up causing dressing room issues, unbalancing the team, and setting the club back tactically.
What do you think? Are there worse individual decisions that should make the list?
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5, 6 & 7 at least made sense at the time

The others were so obviously ridiculous decisions which were never going to work
 
Big Ben Foster said:
I think whoever came in would bring in their own people, although maybe Phelan or Rene would've been kept on for a season for continuity purposes. Don't think it would've made much of a difference though.

Agree that his effect is exaggerated. Big clubs make very poor appointments all the time (Lopetegui at Real, Setien at Barca, Kovac at Bayern just to name a few off the top of my head). They usually rip the bandaid off quickly and move on.
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Inclined to agree, think the bigger mistake was hiring Woodward and the appointments he was allowed to make behind the scenes. They were like yuppies who had just got a big bonus with our finances.
 
DomesticTadpole said:
Inclined to agree, think the bigger mistake was thinking Woodward and the appointment he was allowed to make behind the scenes. They were like yuppies who had just got a big bonus with our finances.
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Woodward (and by extension his mates who succeeded him) was an absolute calamity for the club. One we may realistically never recover from.
 
This is going back too far for me. It's mostly the recent signings like Casemiro, Antony and Mount as they're huge outlays for players who haven't fulfilled any potential and have since fecked us over in terms of PSR.

If I'm being harsh, you can also include a combination of Hojlund / Zirkzee as it'd be fine signing one for potential but we've been lumbered with two poor forwards when we should have spent the money on only one and a more established striker.

Onana, Martinez, Malacia are the usual suspects for flops but none are outrageously awful. I'd extend the same sentiment to Maguire who cost too much but is hardly Antony levels of money-wasting.

Transfers are of course always a risk but the first three names were avoidable issues. Case because of age, Mount because he occupies the same role as Bruno, Antony because our scouts rightly called his true value.
 
ole@thewheel said:
We all know that Manchester United’s decline over the past decade hasn’t been due to just one bad decision but a series of them. However, if we were to pinpoint the worst single decisions that led to failures, which ones would stand out the most?

For me, these are the biggest mistakes in order:

  1. Moyes/Woodward appointment (2013) – The start of the post-Ferguson disaster. Moyes was never the right man, and Woodward’s inexperience in football operations was evident from day one.
  2. Ten Hag contract extension (2023) – Absolute shambles with the way it was handled and the outcome we all saw it coming and are living currently.
  3. 2013 summer transfer fiasco – From the failure to sign key targets to ending up with Fellaini on deadline day. Absolute mess.
  4. Rangnick appointment (2021-22) – A short-term manager with no authority and an advisory role that never happened. The whole thing was doomed.
  5. 2022 summer transfer spree – Overpaying for players like Antony and Casemiro, leading to an unbalanced squad and financial strain.
  6. Sanchez signing (2018) – A huge flop, disrupted the wage structure, and offered nothing of value on the pitch.
  7. Ronaldo signing (2021) – Meant to be a dream return but ended up causing dressing room issues, unbalancing the team, and setting the club back tactically.
What do you think? Are there worse individual decisions that should make the list?
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giving Ole the job full time... I said on day one that it would end in tears. Dumb decision to appoint someone who failed at Cardiff
 
hellhunter said:
I think his clean out of the backroom stuff did some damage, but maybe he just tore the plaster off on one go.

While he wasn't an inspired choice, I think his effect is vastly exaggerated. First guy post Fergie was always in for a bad time
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Moyes had no chance, the club was not ready for the change or the rebuild that was needed.

The reaction to his failing was to chase big names on and off the pitch hoping their star power could be a short cut back to success. The club never fully committed to a rebuild and it has just been one panic led decision after another.
 
My top3 legitimate feck-ups:

1. Woodward. It seemed stupid then, it seems even more stupid now. He had no experience for the job, was completely out of the depth. Got promoted to the role of vice-chairman only for his links to Glazers - nepotism triumphed over standards and professionalism, which got us fecked.
2. Appointing EtH, giving him enormous power over transfers, allowing him to waste hundreds of millions of pounds through his favoritism, buying players represented by his family members. All the bullshit with his scout son, their links to SEG International, their preference to overpay for players which made their friends richer, it really reads like a textbook of a third world failed state, where they don't even try to hide the corruption and that you only get promoted based on your connections - again, nepotism triumphed over standards and professionalism, which got us fecked.
3. Not listening to Rangnick. He was already there, he identified the problems clearly, we all knew about the mess we found ourselves in at that time. It's not like we didn't get the diagnosis - it's just we refused to listen to it, because we didn't like it. Set us back a couple of years, we'd have been in a much different spot already have we taken him seriously.
 
Our inability to sell any players for any sort of decent money over the last 10 years has been our biggest hindrance, and can be attributed to our insistence of giving them an absolute feckload of money as wages. We give them such excellent contracts to get them in, then when they turn out shite, we can't get them to leave as they want the same money and won't get it elsewhere. This in turn means that we end up loaning them out and still paying their wages, or them letting their contracts run down and leaving for no fee, meaning we're then having to go out and splurge more cash to replace them, again offering big money to entice them in, and its then a rinse/repeat.

The biggest mistake however was allowing the Glazers to buy the club with cash leveraged onto the club, a mistake we're still paying for 20 years later, literally.
 
Things we got kind of right
Amad, Bruno, Herrera, Ugarte, I will die on the Dan James and Fred hill. They always gave full effort and we got a good fee for James. Selling McT at the right time for him.

Things that might have been better with a bit of luck or a well run club.
Shaw, Sancho, Di Maria, Pogba, Matinez, Rashford, Martial, Mount, Greenwood... such waste

The rest of it. All of it. Total Awful. Luckless half arsed and blinded by greed and thinking money and living on your past glories is enough to coast into the CL every year and no plan beyond that while the club crumbles in the background. Shameless.
 
Apart from Moyes, I think things were pretty sane until about 2018.

Since then, it's been pure insanity. I think it all started with Mourinho's contract extension.
 
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