When exactly did our decline begin?

Kopral Jono said:
Our failure to properly replace Ronaldo? Sometime during the 'no value in market' years? When Fergie left and picked Moyes as his successor?
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All of these, which happened one after another.

The very beginning was Ronaldo’s departure. Yes, no player is bigger than a club, but players like Ronaldo are almost impossible to replace, and they can make the difference between mediocre and good, and between good and great. Between a team that loses a close race to a team that wins it.
 
Giggsy13 said:
Ask city if decline is a natural order or things. They will have successors in mind already and are already preparing for Pep‘s departure. The excuses your offering up are strange. Why? The reality is we fell behind amongst the European powers after selling Ronaldo and failed to invest the £80 million and more that should’ve went into rebuilding us into a champions league contender. Yes the power had shifted to Spain but that doesn’t mean you stop acting like a big club. Did Bayern sit still? PSG? If we consider ourselves on the level of the super clubs why did we stop acting like one when we had the greatest manager in history?

That failure to invest the Ronaldo funds was seen in our embarrassing champions league defeat in 2011. It was only after that loss and finishing runners up to City in 2012 did we inquire for moves with Moura and Hazard. By then it was too late, city had established themselves as a force and Madrid and Barca were on completely different levels to everyone else. The cold hard reality is that we let this happen, the board, Gill and the Glazers. We had the greatest manager this club will ever see and we took advantage instead of bringing in players that could see us compete for another champions league or 2. Scholes said it himself, he was shocked that he still had a regular place in the squad. Why weren’t we after someone like Silva? We bought Anderson and Hargreaves in the past.
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What excuses? What I wrote was that decline is natural. By natural I mean, no one can sustain 20 years of success. That just doesn't exist anywhere any time unless maybe you are Bayern. We never went more than 3 seasons not winning the PL for TWENTY years. Name a single other club with that record. Let's wait and see if City can manage it. Look at Real in the '00s or Barcelona now. Look at Juve, Milan, Inter, Liverpool, ...

The idea that you think it is an excuse just shows that you fail to understand. It was noting that declining will happen to you eventually, the onus is on you to lift yourself back up. So instead of being surprised that we declined, we should question why we didn't see it coming and prepared for it.

My point is simple. It's a waste of time to think of what caused the decline since inevitably one thing or another will. It's more productive to think of what we did to reinsert ourselves and in almost 10 years now, nothing but money. If you think that's an excuse, I am really not sure what you are on about.

My point about the transfers is also not an excuse. It is just me stating my opinion as to why we didn't chase those players, not that I agree or disagree with the approach. The general consensus seems to be that there is some fantastical excuse why we didn't go for them. Our fans don't want to believe that Fergie just didn't fancy them for the amount of money needed. They want to blame the Glazers instead of come up with all sorts of theories. My opinion is if you just take a look at how Fergie handled his transfers, he didn't trust talent from abroad if it was going to coast a lot of money. It is why we very rarely made big money signing from abroad. There were very few in 27 years, in fact make that our entire history. He favored PL experience and could do with that considering he pretty much had first choice over British talent except Shearer and Gascoigne I guess. When we had more competition in the British market, it was more spread out so to me, his transfer strategy did not change at all during his time, he did what worked for him and what he knew and he was mega successful with it.
 
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Our decline had started well before Ferguson left. Many factors, debt payments, new money in the league, stagnation in the club, over reliance on Fergusons cult of personality and talents. With the correct investment and structure at the club we would have been absolutely dominant even when City and Chelsea arrived on the scene in earnest and we would have seamlessly passed the torch from Ferguson to his successor.

Fergue wrung every last drop of ability out of that set of players near the end and RvP won him that last title.
 
I think it's almost impossible to pinpoint a moment where things went belly up. Typically, it's a series of decisions that could go back years, even before Fergie left. To me, there's no doubt that there was a complacency creeping in a few years before Fergie even retired. Obviously, you can also look at huge events like the Glazer takeover. They've been categorically and unequivocally bad for this club.

In terms of post-Fergie stuff (because that's when things truly went off the rails), it all started with one of the biggest decisions this club had to make: the appointment of a new manager. Moyes was never, ever the right choice. That's not hindsight talking, either. It was so obvious at the time. I remember thinking "what the feck are we doing?" Obviously, I hoped for the best and there was a part of me that genuinely thought it wouldn't be THAT bad because we're United and we always find a way.

Obviously, it turned out to be the first awful decision amongst many awful decisions that this club would make over the years. Again, it's a series of decisions that have gotten us to this place. Piss poor player recruitment, piss poor managerial recruitment, and a team that has been under-coached for years and years. I think we've also allowed mediocrity to fester. We've allowed certain players (and managers) to remain at the club far beyond the point where they should have been let go. Top four has now become THE goal for the club. Yeah, there was some half-hearted talk about us challenging for the title this season, but that literally lasted weeks before the conversation shifted to 4th place. And at the end of the day, I think the Glazers are fairly happy with that position.

Feck knows how we get out of it. It's not just us we have to take into account, it's our rivals around us. They've improved immeasurably since our decline, and merely throwing money at the issue isn't going to solve it. In fact, our way of spending money has made things significantly worse. Because now we're saddled with some very expensive mistakes.
 
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Fergie winning the title in his last season, with lets face it, an ageing team was one of his biggest achievements. It did mean (sadly) that he wasn't leaving us in the best position. That said, even he couldnt have predicted how poor we'd be in the years that have followed. We've had some amazing signings during this period though, and plenty of young talent coming through. What we havent had is a leader who's been able to put it all together. On paper this current squad should absolutely be challenging for the title. Its so frustrating that the reality is just the opposite. Our performances against Newcastle, Wolves & Norwich have been awful! And Saturdays last 15mins wont help either. Confidence is king in football, and we wont improve while ours keeps getting dented. One thing I do know is that its simply not in United's DNA to defend a one goal lead, never has been, never will be. Get on the front foot and damn well stay there. All this score a goal then sit back nonsense has to stop or we wont get anywhere!
 
Ludens the Red said:
@Josh 76 makes a good retort about this and I agree. Back in 2013 I definitely and a lot of others were of the opinion that those mentioned players had a good future at United. People on here were pretty mad when Welbeck left. And yeah I get none of them went on to big things but they did fine here under Sir Alex.
To me a decline would be a significant change that alters results and league positions going forward. You say 2009 but we would go on to win 2 out of the next 4 league titles. Lost out on one via goal difference and another by a point to a side who scored 100+ goals. I’m not sure how in anyway that is a decline.
Our decline began when Fergie left and then once Van Gaal walked in.

We had the resources to prevent a decline, the league was quite weak after Fergie left for a few years and we wasted that opportunity to bring in suitable talent and a stable team, instead engaging in kamikaze spending and allowing managers too much freedom as if they were Sir Alex.
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A decline isn't always just a straight plummet to the bottom but a slow decay and I don't think people are quite realizing the massive heights we were at-people often talk about the 08 team being Fergie's best for instance and it was challenging for trebles/quadruples. The fact that we won those titles afterwards was down to Sir Alex and his veterans (plus RVP). I don't see how you can ignore the cracks that were appearing at the time. The 'zombie football' as it was called on here, the humiliating CL group stage exit in 2012, the loss and absolutely being played off the park by Bilboa in the Europa League, the constant riding our luck or just nicking games, being played off the park by Poch's Southampton (even Fergie admitted we were lucky), the constant "United were not at their best but managed to win". The warning signs were absolutely there.
 
ryansgirl said:
Manchester United needs stability above all now - we won't attract the players we need for the right reasons if the merry-go-round of managers continues. And we need to give Rolf the time to re-structure and make the club one that looks worth playing for again at all levels. I can't believe the whingeing about how he is seeing what players can do on the pitch why is why some of them are getting time that some United supporters are getting all worked up about.

It's not hard to understand - we are nowhere near winning anything this year so the new manager has to experiment to some extent and it is better to do this now because we have no chance of the title and most probably silverware too.
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I agree with most of what you say but Ralf hasn't got time; well not much of it. He is manager until season's end so he is limited in what he can do. No doubt his brief is to get top four and you'd imagine that is his priority. Setting the stage for the new manager won't be easy but, as I've said before, it's to be hoped that the new man has been identified and an agreement is in place. If not, then do we start all over again this summer with Ralf in a consultant's role? I've never believed in the doctrine of limbo but I'm beginning to wonder if it really is true and we're in football's version of it.
 
This is not when our decline started. That was later. But this is something I wanted to point out...

Between 2001 and 2003 we lost Cole, Yorke and Beckham. Obviously they were well replaced, but I feel like we never quite had an attacking partnership like Becks and these two.

What would have happened if we kept the three of them longer instead of going for Ruud, Ronaldo and Rooney ?
 
When we replaced Ronaldo and Tevez with Valencia and Owen in 2009 if we're being harsh (and honest). It didn't just happen as soon as Fergie left. That trend continued over the next couple of years as we replaced Rio and Vidic with Smalling and Jones.
 
Theonas said:
What excuses? What I wrote was that decline is natural. By natural I mean, no one can sustain 20 years of success. That just doesn't exist anywhere any time unless maybe you are Bayern. We never went more than 3 seasons not winning the PL for TWENTY years. Name a single other club with that record. Let's wait and see if City can manage it. Look at Real in the '00s or Barcelona now. Look at Juve, Milan, Inter, Liverpool, ...

The idea that you think it is an excuse just shows that you fail to understand. It was noting that declining will happen to you eventually, the onus is on you to lift yourself back up. So instead of being surprised that we declined, we should question why we didn't see it coming and prepared for it.

My point is simple. It's a waste of time to think of what caused the decline since inevitably one thing or another will. It's more productive to think of what we did to reinsert ourselves and in almost 10 years now, nothing but money. If you think that's an excuse, I am really not sure what you are on about.

My point about the transfers is also not an excuse. It is just me stating my opinion as to why we didn't chase those players, not that I agree or disagree with the approach. The general consensus seems to be that there is some fantastical excuse why we didn't go for them. Our fans don't want to believe that Fergie just didn't fancy them for the amount of money needed. They want to blame the Glazers instead of come up with all sorts of theories. My opinion is if you just take a look at how Fergie handled his transfers, he didn't trust talent from abroad if it was going to coast a lot of money. It is why we very rarely made big money signing from abroad. There were very few in 27 years, in fact make that our entire history. He favored PL experience and could do with that considering he pretty much had first choice over British talent except Shearer and Gascoigne I guess. When we had more competition in the British market, it was more spread out so to me, his transfer strategy did not change at all during his time, he did what worked for him and what he knew and he was mega successful with it.
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Hazard didn’t fit the profile of Silva, Aguero or Yaya? Strange view and completely incorrect but ok Joel. The reality is we stood still and our rivals didn’t. Our rivals at the time being Madrid, Barca, Bayern etc. This idea we only pursued PL proven talent is a strange one when we had Vidic, Evra, Hargreaves, Nani and Ronaldo in our 2008 squad. But OK fergie only preferred PL talents, let’s line up the excuses for the Glazers.

The Glazers failure to implement a proper succession plan is the reason we’re here today. You’re going to look mighty silly when city continue to dominate due to having a plan in place when Pep leaves. This argument that our cycle was done is there to protect the glazers from pelters they rightly deserved. We haven’t made a title challenge for a decade. It was never supposed to be this bad.
 
I thought it was interesting that long interview with SAF recently where he said Gill and him managed to persuade Mendes and Ronaldo to stay another year. And then he followed up with - paraphrasing here - and then we signed Valencia to replace him and he was a very good player for us.

I think the dismantling of that '08 team was the beginning of the decline. There was no serious ambition from that point onwards though we still had some outstanding players and a genius manager. The recruitment from then on wasn't on par with our main rivals.
 
Giggsy13 said:
Hazard didn’t fit the profile of Silva, Aguero or Yaya? Strange view and completely incorrect but ok Joel. The reality is we stood still and our rivals didn’t. Our rivals at the time being Madrid, Barca, Bayern etc. This idea we only pursued PL proven talent is a strange one when we had Vidic, Evra, Hargreaves, Nani and Ronaldo in our 2008 squad. But OK fergie only preferred PL talents, let’s line up the excuses for the Glazers.

The Glazers failure to implement a proper succession plan is the reason we’re here today. You’re going to look mighty silly when city continue to dominate due to having a plan in place when Pep leaves. This argument that our cycle was done is there to protect the glazers from pelters they rightly deserved. We haven’t made a title challenge for a decade. It was never supposed to be this bad.
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You have a serious reading problem, especially if English is your first language.
 
Decline started the second the blood sucking yank Malcolm glazier got his claws into the club. Sir Alex drove us on despite this with the support of David Gill.

Things completely went to pieces when Woodward was made all powerful. I don't think one footballing decision has been made since then.
 
Theonas said:
There is an easy answer for the no value in the market argument. Fergie never went for stars outside of the British isles with maybe one or two exceptions (Veron and arguably RvN). The idea what we used to compete for the best players is frankly a fabrication. If we take the equivalent of today with us competing for players with the likes of Real and Barcelona, that just was not the case under Fergie, we never went for the top, top talent in Spain or Italy.

The Glazers era came when Chelsea and later on City started competing with us over the local market. A market we had a monopoly on that was almost Bayernesque. Fergie had the most contacts and established relationships with players and their families before moving for them and here now was a new era with expensive agents and even young local talent being poached with teams able to offer similar if not more wages. So Fergie never really changed his stance, he just had more competition in the market he favored and his main transfer strategy (local, personality, contacts, ...) was simply outdated in the age of world wide networks, agents and data scientists. He still made it work obviously because he was a one off but the idea that he somehow became cheap couldn't be more misguided.
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For whatever reason I hadn't thought of it like this before. Good post.
 
I'll do the official counting when I can be bothered, but a quick skim through this thread suggests (arrival of the Glazers aside) a forum consensus of failing to properly replace Ronaldo to be the start of our decline.
 
Fluctuation0161 said:
When the Glazers arrived. 2005.

When they arrived the squad was strong, or was developing to its peak in 2008, it only got weaker as the Glazer years went on.
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ManchesterManchester said:
Great to see so many posters pin pointing it was exactly when the glazers bought us.

When they didn’t buy any players for years and let Scholes, Vidic, Rio, Carrick, Giggs retire and sold Evra, RVP and Ronaldo without any replacement. We still have never recovered from that and never will under them.
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doesn't make sense considering we are the 2nd highest spending team in Europe for 9 years. Plenty of teams have spent less and had more success. How can you be feeling a hangover of replacing players 9 years ago? At some point you gotta move on. Problem is we buy overpriced players who aren't meeting their expense and we reward mediocrity with big wages and appoint suspect managers.
 
Theonas said:
You have a serious reading problem, especially if English is your first language.
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You just don’t have a response to my points and you think having “scout” by your name gives you a superior opinion over mine. Go ahead and attack me personally, it doesn’t change my point of view and I provided evidence to you about Sir Alex’s recruitment not necessarily being PL centric that you can’t accept or are conveniently ignoring. No Club needs to go thru the decline that we have gone thru. The fact supporters like you have accepted that and are providing excuses for the Glazers is also a problem. They have you firmly hook and swim, believing that this drop is completely normal.
 
Luke1995 said:
What would have happened if we kept the three of them longer instead of going for Ruud, Ronaldo and Rooney ?
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Our decline would have begun almost a decade earlier.
 
Giggsy13 said:
Not really.
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Well it was. Judging by the back and forth @Theonas appears to be correct in his implication that maybe you aren’t taking things in and maybe aren’t reading things properly.
You name dropped Anderson, Stam, Hargreaves, Nani and Ronaldo.
Those are players that literally fall under exactly who Fergie would prefer to sign. Young English and unpolished potential from abroad as Theonas said. He specifically said Fergie would not sign established players from la liga and serie a and he didn’t.
You then go on to say he”tried to sign hazard and moura” from the behemoth leagues of France and Brazil . I mean seriously … come on.
 
Peak of 2007-09 where we were at the top and arguably favourites against any side. We took a big step down when we sold Ronaldo, let go of Tevez and replaced them with Michael Owen, Obertan and Valencia. Sir Alex kept us among the top teams and kept us dominant in the league, but in Europe we were no longer a favourite, but more of an underdog.

Huge drop off replacing Sir Alex with Moyes (equivalent of Ronaldo with Obertan). Then it's been slight improvements and then drop offs, mostly oscillating around being a competitor for 4th place. Even when we finish above 4th, most of the season is spent fighting for CL places and never more.

Our current shit show happened at the end of last season/summer. We had an OK season but failed to win a trophy, which probably led to a lot of loss of belief among the squad. Then there were raised expectations because after back to back top 4 finishes and big names being signed, the pressure was on to make the transition from a top 4 team to a title challenger. Fell off the wheels trying to change that when it became clear Ole couldn't make that step, and now it's impossible to get back on track without a little refresh. There's the chance to get back on track for next season if we get things right though. Get a couple of midfielders and get Ten Hag in, and I'll feel a lot more confident.
 
Irwin99 said:
A decline isn't always just a straight plummet to the bottom but a slow decay and I don't think people are quite realizing the massive heights we were at-people often talk about the 08 team being Fergie's best for instance and it was challenging for trebles/quadruples. The fact that we won those titles afterwards was down to Sir Alex and his veterans (plus RVP). I don't see how you can ignore the cracks that were appearing at the time. The 'zombie football' as it was called on here, the humiliating CL group stage exit in 2012, the loss and absolutely being played off the park by Bilboa in the Europa League, the constant riding our luck or just nicking games, being played off the park by Poch's Southampton (even Fergie admitted we were lucky), the constant "United were not at their best but managed to win". The warning signs were absolutely there.
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I get that but to me that isn’t a decline as much as transition. We had that happen numerous times under Fergie. Our 1998 squad was weak and decimated by injury we won nothing. Fergie responded by bringing in Yorke, Blomqvist and Stam.
2004 similarly, that team was approaching the end and had to be rejuvenated by Ronaldo, Rooney etc. The simple fact is even during those periods we always competed and even knicked a few titles.
We knew it back then as transition although all the neutrals would claim it was our decline….
I have absolutely no doubt that had Fergie stayed he’d have rebuilt yet another team so I refuse to call it the start of a “decline”.
You get a few people saying he left at the right time because the league was getting stronger but between 2013 and 2017 the league was as weak as it’s ever been. Hence Leicester winning the league, fecking Spurs getting close and a Liverpool side conceding about 900 goals only just missing out too.

He left that rebuilt for someone else to do and judging by the transfer spend of LVG, a shed tonne of money was left over too. Unfortunately everyone left at the club who made big decisions as a useless sack of shit and we’ve continued to hire useless people since then and what you then have is a full blown decline.
 
Hammondo said:
Yes thats all fine, but we lowered our standards with how we treat players, and what we expect from them. We became way over time lazier.
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I agree. But I think that happened years later, most likely during Mourinho’s last few months. Maybe a bit during LVG’s reign, when each lost their wars against players.
 
Luke1995 said:
While I can see that Beckham had declined a little bit, was it really necessary to sell the other two ?
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Yorke and Cole? Of course it was, they were both well past it by 2001.
 
frutti di mare said:
I agree. But I think that happened years later, most likely during Mourinho’s last few months. Maybe a bit during LVG’s reign, when each lost their wars against players.
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I think it started with Rooney, he was allowed to be lazy and not good enough.
 
Luke1995 said:
While I can see that Beckham had declined a little bit, was it really necessary to sell the other two ?
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Selling York and Cole, also RVN, and in 95 Ince, Hughes, Kancheckis etc was actually a sign of United being at its peak and most elite. Getting rid of players just as they had declined, were about to decline, or simply replacing players with better.

The problem later on was that players like Cole and York would have still been at the club into their mid 30s, same with those sold in 95.
 
Stacks said:
doesn't make sense considering we are the 2nd highest spending team in Europe for 9 years. Plenty of teams have spent less and had more success. How can you be feeling a hangover of replacing players 9 years ago? At some point you gotta move on. Problem is we buy overpriced players who aren't meeting their expense and we reward mediocrity with big wages and appoint suspect managers.
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Because during that time period, the 5 years we didn’t invest end of Fergie years. That was actually the last period of easy cheap transfers and we didn’t take advantage of our spending power. Suddenly broadcasting revenue went through the roof. That’s when we finally started to spend but all clubs had money now so transfers had increased about 200% in price along with agent fees/contracts.

We were trying to buy the league like City did as you say but it was already too late, they built their world class squad when it was relatively cheap. You don’t get as much value for your money now so we could only get one or two decent players each window, always being short a few positions. We just haven’t been able to catch up on those 5 years we didn’t invest. The opposition aren’t standing still (Chelsea, Man City). Both teams had consistently invested in their squad every year.

Of course I do agree with all your points about the mis-management. We shouldn’t be this far behind with the money spent I agree but we just won’t catch up now . Getting lucky with a world class manager like another Fergie/Klopp is our only hope.
 
Ludens the Red said:
Well it was. Judging by the back and forth @Theonas appears to be correct in his implication that maybe you aren’t taking things in and maybe aren’t reading things properly.
You name dropped Anderson, Stam, Hargreaves, Nani and Ronaldo.
Those are players that literally fall under exactly who Fergie would prefer to sign. Young English and unpolished potential from abroad as Theonas said. He specifically said Fergie would not sign established players from la liga and serie a and he didn’t.
You then go on to say he”tried to sign hazard and moura” from the behemoth leagues of France and Brazil . I mean seriously … come on.
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I was honestly reading my post again to see if I was daydreaming. But thanks for snapping me out of it.
 
It all started when people who have more interest in United as a cash cow than seeing it win trophies like a proper big club would be doing bought it and took over. Alex Ferguson's presence and management managed to delay the decline somewhat but it's all gone wrong ever since.
 
Very illuminating posts @Theonas ! They make a lot of sense.

btw Bayern hasn't sustained 20 years of success either (yet). Our 00s were rather poor. Around 2006, for example, I would have considered us a much weaker team and club than Arsenal. Something to remember when thinking about the trajectories. They built a stadium, we built a stadium. Getting kicked out of CL by Mourinho's Chelsea in 2005, I remember feeling like we were in 2nd division compared the English clubs and would never reach them. We only started to get better again around 2009, through a mixture of investment, a fundamental change in management (getting in van Gaal and settling on a possession-based style with this doing), and a reaction to the shock to the system that Klopp's Dortmund provided domestically.

Also, looking with a bit of distance your decline isn't that epically massive so far, honestly.
 
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Ludens the Red said:
Well it was. Judging by the back and forth @Theonas appears to be correct in his implication that maybe you aren’t taking things in and maybe aren’t reading things properly.
You name dropped Anderson, Stam, Hargreaves, Nani and Ronaldo.
Those are players that literally fall under exactly who Fergie would prefer to sign. Young English and unpolished potential from abroad as Theonas said. He specifically said Fergie would not sign established players from la liga and serie a and he didn’t.
You then go on to say he”tried to sign hazard and moura” from the behemoth leagues of France and Brazil . I mean seriously … come on.
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Young and English? Go and then continue to agree with him and make those excellent points you're making.
 
frutti di mare said:
Selling York and Cole, also RVN, and in 95 Ince, Hughes, Kancheckis etc was actually a sign of United being at its peak and most elite. Getting rid of players just as they had declined, were about to decline, or simply replacing players with better.

The problem later on was that players like Cole and York would have still been at the club into their mid 30s, same with those sold in 95.
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I can see the logic in it.

So if Fergie had stayed on for 2013-2014, he could possibly have sold Ferdinand, Vidic and Evra. Perhaps even Rooney. (Giggs the only one who would get to stay if Fergie was still ruthless in management)
 
It's pretty obvious, the year we lost a legendary manager and a chief executive at the same time, with no clear plan for succession.

The club was delivered into the hands of people who had no idea what they were doing when it comes to the footballing side of the "business", because from that point on its been businessmen running Utd, as a business.
 
Ludens the Red said:
Incredible thread. Another thread to blame Fergie for the current mess. Usual suspects appearing too.
Within two seasons of Fergie leaving, United spent almost 300 million under van Gaal and had completely gutted the 2013 title winning squad. I have not seen one person mention LVG as starting our decline. It is the freedom in the transfer market he was given and overspending that caused the start of us being ripped off in the transfer market and buying marquee players that turned out to be failures. It began the era of “deadwood” in our squad.

If you spend large amounts of money wisely in football and make good appointments you will have success, almost immediately . Only United fans seem to think this doesn’t happen. Even though city and Chelsea did it.

Only Manchester United fans seem to think you need prolonged rebuilds and that things that happened in 2009 would still effect the squad in 2022 despite a billion pounds being spent on the club during that period.

Our decline began when LvG walked through the door. It wasn’t Fergie and it wasn’t even Moyes. As bad as Moyes was, the club got rid of him fast. Since LVG walked through the door what has followed is a procession of allowing managers too much freedom in the transfer market, taking too long to get rid of managers and players not good enough and giving out undeserving contracts. As well as inflating our very own transfer market. These and and only these are responsible for our decline. Ed Woodward oversaw this era so I think he’s somebody right at the top of the list to blame.
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Exactly. This idea if a "rebuild" is nonsense. Top clubs can put together a team fairly quickly if you know what you're doing. United don't. People here act like every manager deserves absolute power a blank cheque and 5 years. It's ridiculous.
 
Started with the Glazers takeover, accelerated like a rocket with the appointment of the unmitigated disaster called Ed Woodward.
 
Definitely the final couple of years of Fergie's tenure.

I know we continued to win a lot despite Fergie's decline, with a combination of managerial brilliance, a winning mentality in the senior players, and only Chelsea and a budding City to deal with in the League. But the decline definitely began in his final few years and it has been downhill since.

I always felt he should have called it a day after overtaking Liverpool's PL tally in 2011 (and then losing to Barcelona in the Champions League). But in all honesty, even if he had retired then, the succession plan would still be non-existent and we would be not much better than where we are right now.

The single biggest reason why we are where we are is because the club didn't have a proper post-Ferguson succession plan.
 
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