United’s Worst Decisions of the Last 12 Years

ryansgirl said:
Wow, I never heard of that incident. In that case I understand completely why Sir Bobby and other board membes baulked at Mourinho - and it wouldn`t have been based just on that incident.
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Google mourinho eye gouge
 
Frostie said:
Ten Hag.

Keeping him last summer was beyond ridiculous. Everyone and his dog knew he was a a dead man walking, yet United came out and doubled down on him and gave him a longer contract.

It was almost laughable they gave the clown more time, and then the inevitable happened and United lost most of their games. How do people in charge of a multibillion business miss things that obvious? Why did they extend his contract?

It baffles me, it genuinely does. Is there some kind of money laundering going on? Why on Earth would they keep such a moron in charge? Not only keep him in charge, but extend his contract. It's mind-boggling.
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Kind of agree on this one, could you stand being in the room having to listen to his drivel and monotone delivery. How this guy led the team to a 3rd place finish then let the wheels fall off is a huge question mark. He needed to leave the training to Mclaren but was a control freak.

I would have kept RVN after they waved goodbye to ETH. He knew the team, had some idea of what setup to use to be successful. Hiring Amorim may be, and that is a may, work out long term but short term has followed the hierarchy abysmal list of signings. Again another change in direction and players. Guys like Casemiro, Eriksen, Shaw and I will say Bruno, heck the list could cover at least half the team, need to move on. Before they signed ETH, they were 2-3 yrs from competing for the league, sure they finished 3rd, that was the ghosts of the pasts helping out! Now, unless they have something magical in the system, they are 5 yrs behind. Soon, the yrs we spent winning and competing at a high levels will be distant memories. We have seen the expectations drop and have had to accept mediocrity as being the norm.
 
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. 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.
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these were the big two without a doubt and both driven by one great man…
 
The fact it took only recently and INEOS to come in to finally lay down a football hierarchy structure at the club. Woodward and his stupid power trip thinking he could be Florentino Perez fecked us and because his bosses were using club money rather than their own money and he was their buddy who helped this now illegal takeover method, they didn’t give a feck.
 
Moyes: Out of his depth, sacking all of Sir Alex coaches was just stupid and naive. He was responsible for bringing in that cretin Murtough also.

Not backing Jose after his 2nd season. Needed a big window. He got crap signings . Was also the start of player power culture at the club.

Not signing Rice, Bellingham and Kane. Sir Alex always got the best homegrown players. EG Pallister, Ince, Rio, Rooney.

Giving a mad man like Ten Hag so much money. Antony, Mount, Onana are up there with the worst signings in the club’s history all under his watch .

INEOs. They have been a disaster, raised ticket prices, cut jobs from loyal staff members, treated Sir Alex like crap and then sacked Ashworth after all that ballache getting him out of Newcastle. What a waste of time and money.
 
Moyes one was bad but it could have been (for the most part) reversed in a year.

I'd think that Woodward's appointment was the one that made the more damage long term: he was CEO for 8 years with no great plan for the football side of the club (nevermind the execution) and personally supervised United's lowering of standards and continuous decay.

When Arnold was starting his tenure Rangnick made the right diagnosis and in hindsight should have stayed as a DOF to supervise the treatment, but he was neither kept nor listened. Of if we assume the best case scenario he was listened and the task was assigned to Ten Hag who (even after a good first season) was not the right man for the job.

The decision of doing a minority sale instead of a majority/full one meant kicking the can down the road in a moment the club was already in a financial predicament and needed strong, decisive action. The result was a club with an excessive amount of heads at the helm but not enough brains/guts to do much more than going through the motions, and not enough wallets either. This could eventually be proven worse than the Woodward one if the big issues (Glazers, Debt, DOF) are still being avoided.
 
The biggest mistakes the more I look at it was by not signing more proven English players and leaders like Rice for example. He would have been perfect, a real leader and player sir Alex would have signed easily.
We have one English players in the starting XI today.

And I don't mean players like Mount or Sancho. More leaders like Bellingham, Rice, Kane and go all in for them instead. Even Pickford over Onana.
 
Man-United said:
The biggest mistakes the more I look at it was by not signing more proven English players and leaders like Rice for example. He would have been perfect, a real leader and player sir Alex would have signed easily.
We have one English players in the starting XI today.
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You don't need to be English to be a leader.
 
Man-United said:
The biggest mistakes the more I look at it was by not signing more proven English players and leaders like Rice for example. He would have been perfect, a real leader and player sir Alex would have signed easily.
We have one English players in the starting XI today.
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We already had our buy-English era recently and that didn't work out so well. Many bad buys - Mount, Sancho, Wan Bissaka, 80m Maguire is questionable
 
gaffs said:
You don't need to be English to be a leader.
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No, but with our tradition over all the years we really should have more English or British players. At this stage we will just have Maguire and Mainoo left.
 
The decision to bring in a manager that needs to rip the squad up and start again when we don't have the money to do so is fecking moronic. Thought this lot knew ball? Doesn't seem like it.
 
Red Star One said:
We already had our buy-English era recently and that didn't work out so well. Many bad buys - Mount, Sancho, Wan Bissaka, 80m Maguire is questionable
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We signed the wrong ones. Rice would have been perfect but instead we went for Casemiro a year earlier and again money badly spent
 
Looking more and more like this silly manager merry go round this season, potentially leaving us too broke to sack a manager who genuinely has us keeping one eye on the bottom 3.
 
gaffs said:
Player nationality is way down our list of issues.

Everton are not beating us because they have 3 english players to our one.
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Player mentality and lack of leaders and then I thought of three English players, at least two of them we should have signed in Bellingham and Rice.
 
This season they actually made two colossal blunders. Not sacking the manager that massively underperformed at the end of the season and hiring a coach who needed different player types well into the season without having the money to overhaul the team.
 
INEOS becoming minority owners and heading football operations.

Any hope for the club's future died with them.
 
Just goes to show you that experience DOES matter at the highest level.

Ce la vie.

Hopefully the next guy we bring in will be the one. fecking please for the sake of my sanity
 
BuzzKillington said:
You assume we didn’t try to, and that either of those players wanted to come.
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Did we do enough though? We don't know but in case of Bellingham it looks like the club could have done more. And with the money spent on Casemiro a year before, Rice was not easy at that price.
 
Man-United said:
The biggest mistakes the more I look at it was by not signing more proven English players and leaders like Rice for example. He would have been perfect, a real leader and player sir Alex would have signed easily.
We have one English players in the starting XI today.

And I don't mean players like Mount or Sancho. More leaders like Bellingham, Rice, Kane and go all in for them instead. Even Pickford over Onana.
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You mean ...at least trying to continue doing the same things United did the last 20 years prior and found great success with? It's wild that we did the exact opposite. Even brought Pogba back!
 
Ted Lasso said:
You mean ...at least trying to continue doing the same things United did the last 20 years prior and found great success with? It's wild that we did the exact opposite. Even brought Pogba back!
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Summer of 2015, we stopped doing in the old United way when the board let LvG spend so much money on crap. And it's now 10 years later same crap.
 
Are people serious when saying Moyes was THE single biggest mistake? You're surely taking the piss right? It was 1 year and he signed TWO players... That didn't cause much damage to the club and you can still recover after that.

The Ten Hag era however is seriously going to mess us up for the next 5 years and people are still defending him TO THIS DAY just because we won two trophies.

I'm not purely blaming him, the people above him like Woodward/Murtough deserve blame too.

But you look at our signings under him and the money we paid. It's diabolical to be honest.

60m on a 30yo Casemiro after we spent all summer chasing De Jong who didn't want to join us. 75m on Antony, nothing else needs to be said. SEVENTY MILLION on Hojlund, that should get you a world class talent. 50m on Mount who has barely played. 50m on Onana and we can't say we have a GK on the level of Alisson or any of the other top GK's. 35m on Zirkzee, again nothing else needs to be said. This isn't even the whole list, I'm sure I'm missing some others.

He allowed the quality of our squad to decline massively.

Astronomical numbers and would anyone say a single one of these have/will pay off and that these are class players who we can build on in the next 5 years?

Obviously if we had competent people above ETH none of this happens as they say they're not spending 60m on a 30yo who will need replacing soon or they would say I'm not spending more than 40m on either Antony or Hojlund so you better have a second choice.
 
Romez said:
Are people serious when saying Moyes was THE single biggest mistake? You're surely taking the piss right? It was 1 year and he signed TWO players... That didn't cause much damage to the club and you can still recover after that.

The Ten Hag era however is seriously going to mess us up for the next 5 years and people are still defending him TO THIS DAY just because we won two trophies.

I'm not purely blaming him, the people above him like Woodward/Murtough deserve blame too.

But you look at our signings under him and the money we paid. It's diabolical to be honest.

60m on a 30yo Casemiro after we spent all summer chasing De Jong who didn't want to join us. 75m on Antony, nothing else needs to be said. SEVENTY MILLION on Hojlund, that should get you a world class talent. 50m on Mount who has barely played. 50m on Onana and we can't say we have a GK on the level of Alisson or any of the other top GK's. 35m on Zirkzee, again nothing else needs to be said. This isn't even the whole list, I'm sure I'm missing some others.

He allowed the quality of our squad to decline massively.

Astronomical numbers and would anyone say a single one of these have/will pay off and that these are class players who we can build on in the next 5 years?

Obviously if we had competent people above ETH none of this happens as they say they're not spending 60m on a 30yo who will need replacing soon or they would say I'm not spending more than 40m on either Antony or Hojlund so you better have a second choice.
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This. Moyes is the type of mistake every big club occasionally makes and quickly gets over.
 
Not getting a top class sporting director in when Fergie/Gill retired - i.e Woodward.

Managers have been bad but everything would have been remedied by the above.
 
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