United’s Worst Decisions of the Last 12 Years

Besides giving Woodward the DoF role...
Sacking LVG was a terrible decision imo, boring football but we were winning games including against strong opposition. He would have steered the team in the right direction and in due course, another, more excitiing, manager could have stepped in. The subsequent decision of sacking him in favour of Mourinho makes no sense!
 
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Selling the club to INEOs is the worst single decision the club has made since SAF retired.
 
bond19821982 said:
Thread 'List down all the bad decisions by the club since 2013'
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/list-down-all-the-bad-decisions-by-the-club-since-2013.450268/

Created this thread back in 2019. Funnily enough, 5 years after we are still making same mistakes .
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This reminded me of a very old thread I started:
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/when-will-united-win-their-next-title.386040/

This forum had an air of pessimism regarding the Glazers even in the late 00s, but only a few could have predicted, even in 2014, how bad things would become.
 
bringbackbebe said:
1. Not separating commercial from footballing operations. Rather than football as mainstay business with commercial revenue as a by product, we did the opposite.
2.Gill & SAF moving out at the same time and handing over control to Woodward
3. "We can do things in the transfer market that other clubs can only dream of"
4. Hiring managers diametrically opposite of the previous manager, requiring a squad rebuild each time. Also not having a "United" way of playing.
5. Entertaining egos in dressing room and allowing injured players own control over their recovery giving them both massive contracts to protect asset value (outcome of point 1).
6. Utterly terrible scouting. I mean, VDB and Antony aren't even real footballers.

Key of all:
Under LVG, we got rid of many players who broke through our academy or started from a younger age and who could have been decent rotational or backup players. Welbeck, Evans, Rafael, Cleverley, Januzaj, Will/Michael Keane. Those two years, we also sold almost every veteran who represented the spine of United - Rio, Evra, Vidic, Giggs (who retired), Van Persie, Bebe. For me, LVG era is truly the most disastrous of all periods for the long term damage it did to our culture.

I really wouldn't call extending ETH, not sacking Mourinho earlier, hiring Ole etc big mistakes.
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My unpopular opinion is that Gill was actually pretty useless at his job. He should have been succession planning between 2006 and 2009 whilst Fergie was getting on with his main job of winning everything.

Post 2011, Fergie's retirement was always going to be a problem as Gill ensured there was zero plans for what comes next.
 
I mean feck me where do we start and finish.
In no particular order…

- Giving LvG and ETH free reign on transfers.
- Hiring Ed Woodward
- Ineos
- Not sacking ETH in the summer
- Giving job to Ole after his caretaker stint
- Not sacking Ole after Europa final defeat
- signing Mount
- signing Zirkzee
- signing Antony
- signing Onana
- signing De Ligt
- signing Hojlund
- signing Yoro
- signing Malacia
- giving Rashford a bumper contract
- giving Martial a bumper contract
- completely changing the ticket exchange policy
 
Moyes was the single biggest mistake. Not on field, it was an embarrassing but short tenure, but behind the scenes him being here ripped out the culture we'd spent 25 years building in a few short months. Some of it he actively wrecked some just by his presence, but we have never recovered from it.

We've made some daft mistakes since but it all started there. Had we appointed Mourinho in 2013 we would have been so much better off now.
 
Moyes would have made more sense if SAF had stayed on for another season, with Moyes as his assistant.
 
- Anything to do with the Glazers
- The Ed woodward leadership
- The John Murtough reign
- Releasing DE GEA
-Alexis sanchez
- Not listening to Ralf
- missing out on Declan Rice
- Rashford new 375k contract
- Hojlund 72 million
-Anthony- 80 million
- Dan Ashworth ( whatever happened there)
 
KStandBarmyArmy1993 said:
My unpopular opinion is that Gill was actually pretty useless at his job. He should have been succession planning between 2006 and 2009 whilst Fergie was getting on with his main job of winning everything.

Post 2011, Fergie's retirement was always going to be a problem as Gill ensured there was zero plans for what comes next.
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He may have been useless on the footballing side but he certainly knew his limitations and acted accordingly. If you see the era before that (Kenyon), it was Woodward like with "oh, I have money which I'm going to throw". Gill stabilized that bit and supported a proper rebuild between 2003-2005. We worked on our scouting, youth players started coming through to fill squad roles and there was overall a sense of structure in place by 2006. If Woodward had got in a proper manager (Capello, Ancellotti, Mourinho, Klopp or Guardiola) and let them be, things would have been perhaps different.
 
GlazersHater said:
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.
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It would be mental to repeat the Cristiano transfer with the benefit of hindsight.

The season before Cristiano, we came 2nd in the league, scored over 120 goals in all competitions and reached a European final. In Cristiano’s first season, we came 6th and scored around 50 fewer goals.

It’s not a complete coincidence. Everyone could see he made the team and dressing room unbalanced.
 
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