United’s Worst Decisions of the Last 12 Years

1)Management appointments, from the horrendous Moyes call, through to getting Van Gaal and Jose way beyond their peak, to the Solskjaer over promotion to picking the wrong "up and coming" European young talent (really hope Amorim doesn't end up in this boat too, but not off to a great start)

2)Recruitment - barely a signing in over a decade that everyone agrees was a success beyond a 6month period. Even Bruno gets abuse when he's be the one I'd rate as one

3)Allowing under performing players to stay for too long
 
Signing Sanchez or Ronaldo is hardly the worst decision. It's just another player. Transfers can be a bit of a gamble. The worst decision for me is definitely #2. Signing Moyes was bad, but keeping a manager you're not 100% confident in is worse. Also think Ole should've been let go earlier.
 
Red in STL said:
Schniederlein and Di Maria footballing wise were bad transfers, but on the flip side we sold them for almost as much as we paid for them so they cannot be classed the same as some of the other names listed
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I agree to an extent, but also can offer a counter-perspective and viewpoint. Context can sometimes be everything. Allow me to wax poetic....

When it comes to Schneiderlein, in retrospect - he can almost represent and be like a "post-modern avatar", that canary in the coalmine, that represents our "like of bite in the midfield." That gaping hole since Roy Keane left. Either a "midfield enforcer" or someone who can "tick things over" like Rodri or Carrick. Every season we hear the need for it, every year it comes up short. It's part of the intrinsic story of Manchester United over the past decade -which is what we're talking. He was supposed to be "the one." Like Ugarte is now. Or countless other defensive midfield signings people have posted thousands for on the Caf. The lack of that person on the pitch, is a huge disappointment, regardless of whether we made money on Schneiderlien himself. He represents the lack of a midfield solidity. That was a huge disappointment on the pitch.

As for Di Maria, he was the "coup", or the "silver bullet", if you will. Far from being "washed up", many thought he was a jewel in Real Madrid's crown. He didn't want to come here, it was well known he was being forced out of Madrid. And we did it ... anyway. Hopes dashed. Precious time spent to get him out. A year wasted on spending time on him, which could've been focused on other things, like finding a decent defensive midfielder. No team, much less Manchester United, likes to know you're "second best", not worth being here for, or worse, just a stepping stone to the next job. He mugged us, and tarnished our reputation. He basically said, "You are beneath me, and I'm just here until I get my next gig." He may have actually been worse than than all the others combined. He wasn't so much a disappointment on the pitch, or financially .. he was worse. He was a dagger into the heart of Manchester United fans -> He didn't want to be here and he couldn't care less. I hate his rat face.

I'd take a dogged-ass Rooney, on his very last legs and huge wages, in his very last match for United, who was at least trying over Di Maria on his best day.
 
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Has to be the Moyes/Woodward appointments. In hindsight it's unbelievable how naive we were. Moyes was so underwhelming, and Woodward had no experience running the football side of the club. What were we thinking.
 
Transfer Policy.

2013 - RVP, Rooney, Chicharito, Welbeck
2018 - Martial, Rashford, Greenwood, Lukaku/Cavani
2025 - Højlund, Zirkzee, Garnacho, Diallo

That's the deterioration in our striking options alone, we could do the same for every part of the team.
 
I still think it has nothing to do with a particular manager - but a perception of the club that is beyond the owners and the managers -which has been reinforced by actions - actions that have become a reality. It basically comes down to:

1) We overpay: We'll overpay our squad players, we'll pay too much in transfer fees, we'll give massive pay raises and contract extensions to homegrown and academy players that make the cut, and we'll give World Class pay packets to anyone that's at the top end of our performers.
2) We are incompetent: We'll buy Mason Mount for no fecking reason for 60 million pounds.

The perception of us has become reality. That will take more a manager change or ownership change. That's where we are at.
 
Gazza said:
Transfer Policy.

2013 - RVP, Rooney, Chicharito, Welbeck
2018 - Martial, Rashford, Greenwood, Lukaku/Cavani
2025 - Højlund, Zirkzee, Garnacho, Diallo

That's the deterioration in our striking options alone, we could do the same for every part of the team.
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And even this was somewhat of a downgrade from Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez, and Berbatov. The rot began with the Glazers and the whole "no value in the market" shtick that Fergie was forced to say.
 
I mean, we've spent an absolute fortune and got feck all to show for it. All we had to do was appoint someone to oversee transfers and the money spend and maybe we buy the right players and it all turns out differently.

So basically my answer is ed Woodward.
 
Woodward is #1 and it's not even close.

Giving an investment banker control of football related decisions was horrifically bad. He would choose players based on their marketability, and how many shirts they would sell - rather than whether or not they'd be a proper fit for the team/manager.

Then he would hand out ludicrous contracts to permanently injured and/or average players to protect their "asset value" which was pointless as no one wanted to sign them from us anyway.

His appointment has basically crippled us and it's going to take years to undo the damage he's done.
 
It all comes down to having no structure in the sports area, seeing our transfers since Sir Alex retired is depressing.

Big transfers:

Mata 45M
Fellaini 32M
di Maria 75M
Shaw 37M
Herrera 36M
Rojo 20M
Blind 17M
Martial 60M
Schneiderlin 35M
Depay 34M
Darmian 18M
Schweinsteiger 9M
Pogba 105M
Mkhitaryan 42M
Bailly 38M
Zlatan free
Lukaku 85M
Matic 45M
Lindelof 35M
Alexis Sanchez 34M
Fred 60M
Dalot 22M
Maguire 87M
Bruno 65M
Wan Bissaka 55M
Daniel James 18M
Cavani free
Pellistri 9M
Telles 15M
Diallo 21M
Van de Beek 39M
Ronaldo 17M
Varane 40M
Sancho 85M
Malacia 15M
Lisandro 57M
Casemiro 70M
Antony 95M
Bayindir 5M
Onana 50M
Mount 65M
Hojlund 74M
Mazraoui 15M
Zirkzee 42M
de Ligt 45M
Ugarte 50M
Yoro 62M

Thats about 2B spent in players. How many of those 47 players would you still sign in retrospective?

I'd say Shaw, Zlatan, Dalot, Bruno, Diallo, Cristiano (in his first season) worth their money thats 6 out of 42 signings. Excluding this season signins as its too early to tell.

Thats beyond awful recruitment, thats incompetence mixed with bad luck as well. I mean we all know its impossible to get only hits in the market but thats dross business. We have more total failures than medium hits, Maguire, Van de Beek, Sancho, Casemiro, Antony, Mount, Hojlund.... It's amazing really.

So yeah I think its pretty safe to say the worst decision of the last 12 years its been running the club without a proper sporting director.
 
Someone said:
Moyes was so underwhelming,
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SAF completely to blame here. He handpicked Moyes.
The only thing worst than handpicking Moyes was the Chosen One banner. In hindsight, absolutely baffling that we put that up, when we had absolutely no idea if Moyes would succeed.
 
343 said:
And even this was somewhat of a downgrade from Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez, and Berbatov. The rot began with the Glazers and the whole "no value in the market" shtick that Fergie was forced to say.
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Very true. You can argue that since 2009 our squad has gotten progressively weaker.
 
thisisnottaken1 said:
True. But ultimately we need to be finishing top 4 and winning a trophy every season.

And every manager should have been sacked earlier than they actually were.
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Winning a trophy every season, you don't want much, not even SAF managed that!
 
343 said:
And even this was somewhat of a downgrade from Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez, and Berbatov. The rot began with the Glazers and the whole "no value in the market" shtick that Fergie was forced to say.
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Feck I hated that line.

What it was really saying was 'The owners would rather take money out of the club to invest in another gold plated ivory backscratcher, so they're refusing to invest in the team and the facilities'.
 
1. Appointment of Mourinho. He started the downfall we see today by creating a toxic environment and a very inharmonious group of players - which the other managers were never able to recover.
2. Should have let Rangnick stay one more year with the task of cleaning up the ranks and preparing the ground for the next manager - who wasn't ETH
 
Honestly, a lot of our fundamental problems predate SAF retiring. It’s just that when he left, there was no one to paper over the many, many cracks. And over the years those cracks have become huge canyons.

All the bad decisions are symptoms of those unaddressed wider issues. That is the reality.
 
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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Absolutely correct. Nothing much will change whilst these leaches are on board. I have not handed a penny over to Utd since they arrived and won’t until there is a change of ownership.
 
RoadTrip said:
Honestly, a lot of our fundamental problems predate SAF retiring. It’s just that when he left, there was no one to paper over the many, many cracks. And over the years those cracks have become huge canyons.

All the bad decisions are symptoms of those unaddressed wider issues. That is the reality.
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It all comes down to the owners. The owners either didn't have a clue how to run the club, or couldn't care less, or both.

Fergie's genius kept us competitive despite the incompetent/uncaring owners. As soon as he left, we collapsed like a house of cards.
 
It’s hard to know where to start as pretty much everything from the second Sir Alex and David Gill left could be seen as the worst decision but I’d have to go with Woodward being given a free rein with the clubs money and making footballing decisions when he was simply an investment banker who got lucky in the fact he worked for Goldman Sachs when the Glazer’s went to them for the money to buy United.

A footballing structure should have been implemented the second Sir Alex and David Gill were known to be leaving so footballing decisions were left to football people rather than directors and CEO’s and whilst we may not have continued the success we had with Sir Alex we certainly wouldn’t be where we are now as we had a financial and stature advantage over every other club.
 
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, if hiring Moyes is on the list, should Sir Alex be on there as the man who made that decision?

An organisation the size of United should have had a succession plan in place or at least conducted a proper headhunting process.

I believe this was the beginning of the mess, made even worse by having Woodward in charge.
 
Ceteris said:
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, if hiring Moyes is on the list, should Sir Alex be on there as the man who made that decision?

An organisation the size of United should have had a succession plan in place or at least conducted a proper headhunting process.

I believe this was the beginning of the mess, made even worse by having Woodward in charge.
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Sir Alex said in his second book that his other choices were not available. Make of that what you will.
 
Woodward, without a doubt.

Losing Fergie and Gill in the same summer was a blow, but could have been mitigated by appointing a football CEO, who then would have gone on to make the correct staffing decisions.

Everything stems from there.

This is how empires crumble - weak, incompetent leaders.
 
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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He did a huge amount of lasting damage, in an really short time, it's actually impressive how destructive he was.

Moyes took the runaway champions down to 7th, cleaned out the backroom staff, shattered the winning mentality throughout the club that had been built up over decades, and generally set us up perfectly for years in the wilderness.
 
The damage done by Moyes is massively overplayed. We could have recovered fairly quick by appointing Ancelotti - given the Mourinho ship had sailed for this period.

OGS getting the job full time was a dreadful call. Said it before and will say it again, Ole to ETH was a complete waste of 5 years. Neither built anything remotely lasting.
 
Primarily it was replacing David Gill with Ed Woodward.

Following from that recruitment has been catastrophic but that been well covered.

After that it was the unnecessary contract renewals for me, often with years left to run on existing deals, and giving higher wages to players under no competition from other bidders for their services - literally pointless:
- Nani
- Marcos Rojo
- Phil Jones
- Martial
- Lindelof
- Rashford
 
I mean the Glazers are the route cause but they weren't a decision.

All of the crap decisions that led to the current mess can be traced back to Woodward. Who was himself a crap decision. So Woodward is the winner.

Although we have tried our best to make crap decisions independent of Woodward since he left, so it's not set in stone. I mean trying to bring Greenwood back is up there. Attempting to solve the club's financial situation by charging old people and children £66 for about 1% of the tickets for about 6 games was quite a good one in a world where maths is a thing.
 
Its not 12 years. When we sold Ronaldo and Tevez (one for an astronomical fee for the time) and allowed City to buy players like Aguero and Silva, two we should have been all over, was when you saw what our ownership was about. Moyes coming in to replace Fergie was the managerial equivalent of Ronaldo leaving and the owners thinking his goals and assists could be replaced by Michael Owen.

In fact, if you read the Boss by Newsnight contributor Michael Crick, Fergie propped up our ownership long before the Glazers turned up. We've always been a club that has been ran by people using our appeal as a cash cow. Alex Ferguson threatened to quit the eve of the 96 FA Cup final because Edwards disrespected him at the negotiating table. He resigned in the summer of 1998 due to Edwards undermining him. In fact, Edwards was working with Brian Kidd to bring in John Hartson because Dwight Yorke was to expensive and Fergie went ballistic.

Its why Rubin Amorim needs to be an absolute genius to sort this club out. Whatever game plan he's got, he needs to stick with it regardless of the results. Because its shown with Busby and Ferguson, the only way to have success at the club is despite the owners.
 
Not hiring an experienced, top class football man in 2013 as CEO to oversee the transition from Sir Alex and into the future.
 
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