Why is Ed Woodward held in such contempt?

Leroy The Red said:
You certainly don't know. Unless you've sat down with Magners and Mcmanus, you cannot tell me that a disagreement over a horse made them sell the club at that specific time. Their plan was very very clearly always to sell. It's conjecture, plain and simple.



Yeah I mentioned Moyes, we've done that. Like I said though, Moyes was gone after a year and it's been seven years since he left .................



Carrick needed replacing? :lol: He literally played for five more years after Sir Alex left. Van Persie literally came in the year before Fergie left and was 30 years old.

Just so I'm clear what you're advocating is that before a manager leaves a club he should sign loads of players to make sure that anyone over the age of 29 is covered long term? That sounds like an awesome plan. Or maybe what you meant was that Fergie should have made sure when he left that nobody at the club over 29? So basically when you're a manager at a club make sure when you're there none of your players are over 29. Sound reasoning.

And I'm guessing none of the following players count at the time - Nani, Welbeck, Kagawa, Rooney, Hernandez, Valencia, Evans, Cleverley, De Gea, Rafael, Smalling, Young. These guys were not important presumably?

The year is 2021, We've literally spent record amounts since Fergie left and we still haven't reached the pinnacle of domestic or European football. Yet somehow Fergie has significant responsibility for this because he
a) told United to hire Moyes in 2013,
b) argued over a horse in 2003
c) and was friendly with the Glazers between 2005 and 2013

Thanks for enlightening me. I apologise to Ed Woodward.



Christ the irony here. His departure would have 0% effect because he was fecking shite when he was here, making mistakes and goofs left right and centre. He was being paid millions to be shite. Hence him leaving would make no difference because he was so shite.
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Carrick was 32 when Fergie left, of course he needed replacing, same as Matic does now (same age as Carrick was at that point) Anyway Im glad you agree with me that the core of the squad was on its last legs. As for Welbeck, Kagawa, Clevery, Nani....what the feck you smoking man? If you think those guys are going to make up the core of a title winning squad, good for you. Fergie was right about Rooney in fairness but as another example of Moyes's mess, he gave him a 5 year contract.

As I originally said, the mess we are currently in ain't just down to Woodward. Going by your logic, if Fergie had appointed Klopp or Pep (as he apparently attempted to do) we would still be a mess now because Woodward was in charge. Had we hired one of those guys we would have 3 or 4 more league titles by now, you know it, I know it and it wouldnt have mattered a feck if Woodward or Borris Johnson was in charge.
 
The idea that Woodward is some kind of well meaning naive patsy is bonkers... he was the guy who facilitated the takeover in the first place, and devised the methods that have saddled us with debt, and allowed the Glazers to recoup their costs whilst destroying our financial independence. It was ALL his doing. He designed it. That’s precisely WHY he was promoted so rapidly, and at such a relatively young age. It was his reward.

The posters blithely assuming he’s just some random incompetent suit we’ve unfairly made scapegoat are wildly off base here. This isn’t just about him being occasionally shit at transfers. He’s every bit as culpable as the Glazers for our current predicament

4:50 onwards for an idiots guide to his role.




if you wanna be cynical, his resignation is potentially just a calculated move to minimise backlash against his long term employers and benefactors... he was going to step down at the end of the year anyway.
 
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It’s easy to argue that Woodward was MORE responsible for our post-SAF decline than the Glazers.

The Glazers are parasites but they don’t DO anything. They don’t decide which managers to hire, how to structure the management team, which players to sign etc...

Regardless of what anybody might think of the Glazers, money has been made available post SAF (3rd highest net spend in Europe) and Ed has overseen pissing a huge amount of time and money away.

I’m sure he is “book-smart” but I do think it’s fair to say his actions as CEO of Manchester Utd have been those of stupidity and arrogance. To think you could run a football club and refuse to cede any power because you were a decent investment banker is bonkers.

I’ll admit he does seem to have learnt lessons post Jose, but we’ve endured 6/7 terrible years with him overseeing the club.
 
RonaldoVII said:
He resided over Moyes, Van Gaal and Jose. We spent over £900m in that time. What do we have to show for it?
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That´s pretty much explains it all. The great hate towards Woodward (and the Galzers as well, I must say) is in the end down to one thing: The results on the pitch. If we had been doing better, I think most fans would have been happy enough (the SL apart, of course).
 
Why do people think that he has been at the club for 8 years?
 
He's not the hero we need right now but he's the hero we need. So we hunt him because..something, something. Batman.
 
RedSky said:
Manchester United tried to lure Jurgen Klopp away from Borussia Dortmund in 2014 by describing themselves as “an adult version of Disneyland.”

“an adult version of Disneyland.”
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The stadium, not the club.
 
RedSky said:
Manchester United tried to lure Jurgen Klopp away from Borussia Dortmund in 2014 by describing themselves as “an adult version of Disneyland.”

“an adult version of Disneyland.”
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He has no fecking clue about football or how to interact with football people.

As if Klopp somebody who has said before he prefers rock and roll type of football and atmosphere would ever be interested in a place referred to as Disney land.

Stupid pin headed feck.
 
It’s a very emotional question and, I agree, I think a lot of fans don’t use their heads when they think of Woodward and write with their hearts. The truth is United lost SAF and Gill and so Woodward came in and essentially blundered his way around for a while. This doesn’t excuse him but it is his fault for believing he was capable - see the Herrera transfer saga, Klopp Disney Land, texting Wazza trying to be one of the lads etc. It smacks of someone out of their depth.

What I think is unfair is this forum likes to adopt anything positive he did and then attribute it to other people. Woodward, due to his own failings in his loose ‘give me 5 targets in order and we’ll do our best’ approach with lvg and Jose , is the one who has really changed how the club scout, operate with a transfer committee and has really optimised our off the field revenue. He’s actually done a great job from what we can tell from the commercial side and the transfer committee in particular should be a huge improvement.

I don’t blame him for managers buying players who don’t fit their philosophy and actually he signed off on some mega transfers/exciting players which is something Gill often didn’t.I actually think, long term, he’s done a lot of good with the changes he’s made but I do blame him for having the arrogance/naïvety to think he could walk in, take on Gill’s job and part of SAF’s job without it being detrimental to the club.

Basically a mixed bag but I think he’s overly vilified on here. Glazers are the head of the snake, Woodward actually will be looked back on more positively in a few years I think.
 
He was complicit in destroying our club to line the Glazers and his own (too many people don’t acknowledge that) pockets.

What sane fan wouldn’t hate him.

Unfortunately, although we have chopped off a rotten branch, the acrid roots are still there.
 
He’s not a football man. I don’t hate him like most, I do genuinely believe he wanted to oversee the return to glory of this club, but he’s a commercial guy not a football guy. He’s bungled an awful lot of things during his time here.
 
His extremely punchable face doesn't help. Up there with Priti Patel for needs a slap smugness.
 
This is why



Every good thing you hear about this man is PR, that's specifically WHY he signed a PR dude, cause all he ever did was shady stuff and he needed someone to try covering his ass, the fact that a lot of you are falling for it is laughable, it's so blatantly just PR moves, when all the execs and the other teams left out of this Super League have all been saying Woodward pretty much masterminded the whole damn thing, that on top of the rest of the horrible stuff he's done to this club.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
It’s a very emotional question and, I agree, I think a lot of fans don’t use their heads when they think of Woodward and write with their hearts. The truth is United lost SAF and Gill and so Woodward came in and essentially blundered his way around for a while. This doesn’t excuse him but it is his fault for believing he was capable - see the Herrera transfer saga, Klopp Disney Land, texting Wazza trying to be one of the lads etc. It smacks of someone out of their depth.

What I think is unfair is this forum likes to adopt anything positive he did and then attribute it to other people. Woodward, due to his own failings in his loose ‘give me 5 targets in order and we’ll do our best’ approach with lvg and Jose , is the one who has really changed how the club scout, operate with a transfer committee and has really optimised our off the field revenue. He’s actually done a great job from what we can tell from the commercial side and the transfer committee in particular should be a huge improvement.

I don’t blame him for managers buying players who don’t fit their philosophy and actually he signed off on some mega transfers/exciting players which is something Gill often didn’t.I actually think, long term, he’s done a lot of good with the changes he’s made but I do blame him for having the arrogance/naïvety to think he could walk in, take on Gill’s job and part of SAF’s job without it being detrimental to the club.

Basically a mixed bag but I think he’s overly vilified on here. Glazers are the head of the snake, Woodward actually will be looked back on more positively in a few years I think.
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Woodward was the one that got the Glazer's into the club via his position at JP Morgan in the first place. He was the architect behind the leveraged buyout that saddled us with infinite debt. The hatred for him is far deeper than just his incompetence on the football aspect of things.
 
If you think Ed Woodward deserves anything but scorn you should be a candidate for chemical castration
 
I’ve never really been anti-Woodward like a lot have on here. I don’t think he’s particularly good or bad really, although his (assuming it was his) reluctance and delay in appointing a football director was one point of annoyance I had with him. He’s brilliant at what he was actually supposed to be doing, which is making money for Manchester United/the Glazers.

How many of us actually know what he was doing behind the scenes anyway? We were all keen to buy into the idea of some banker without a clue, sat at a negotiation table and ballsing things up, but we’ve got no clue what actually happens when our actual transfer negotiator Matt Judge gets round the table with these clubs. Ed is just a convenient scapegoat, and if we’d appointed Pep in 2013 and continued our success on the same trajectory, nobody would have had a bad word to say about him.

Basically I’m not fussed either way that he’s going. The obvious PR campaign since he’s resigned though is about as transparent as it gets.
 
Irrational. said:
He’s been at the club for eight years, and I’ve never quite understood the extreme revulsion and hatred for him, even before this latest ESL fiasco. I was equally bemused when supporters turned up and threatened him outside his house. I can’t remember him saying anything or doing anything to deserve this level of disdain, and I hear news of his resignation tonight met with ‘this is the best news since we won the treble in 1999’.

Surely the anger is best directed at the Glazers? Or is he thought of as part of them, and an attack on him is an attack on the Glazers? I haven’t even heard anywhere near the same level of abuse or loathing towards them as towards Ed.

From my perspective it seems he was a guy following orders and (trying) to work in the best interests of the club. Is the anger actually aimed at the Glazers and he’s the figure that’s easiest to target?

Please excuse my ignorance if I am missing something obvious.
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Joel?
 
I’ve been guilty of jumping on the bandwagon against Ed but at times I’ve also pointed out the idiots he’s been working under.

He’s guilty of appointing shite managers with LVG in particular and then Mourinho. But he’s not a football man and no doubt needed guidance with this.

Hes a bit of a transfer muppet at heart so I at least hope his replacement is eager to sign top players like Ed was, albeit in a naive slapdash manner.

He certainly spent money and more importantly he was fecking excellent on the commercial side which is major part of the role.

Grass may not be greener as they say, which I also happen to think goes for the owners, not because i like them one bit, but because new potential owners are very limited for us and they may want to take out even more than the Glazers (whose dividends are a paltry amount in the grand scheme of things.)
 
Harry Harries said:
Woodward was the one that got the Glazer's into the club via his position at JP Morgan in the first place. He was the architect behind the leveraged buyout that saddled us with infinite debt. The hatred for him is far deeper than just his incompetence on the football aspect of things.
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This demonstrates perfectly my point - how on earth would Woodward, an M&A banker, be to blame for 'getting the Glazer's into the club'? The Glazers were his client and he advised them but the wheels were already in motion. Woodward did not create the LBO, the Glazers were already buying stock in 2003, JPM is just one of 15 or so banks which would also have been able to lead this transaction. Just because something is not 'good' for United does not mean the person doing it is automatically in the wrong, it'd be like all of us unanimously despising Aguero for scoring that goal but, actually, most people respect him as a player a huge amount (despite playing for a rival).

Glazers are awful because of the business model they tested with the Bucs and now are carrying out with United. There has to be some kind of regulation put in place around maintaining a positive cashflow into a club (i.e. not just letting United self support whilst taking out money). Woodward is culpable of many things but, actually, his performance of CEO seems pretty solid if we strip away the emotional side of it. Even the ESL (as poor an idea as it was for the everyday fan) was 'good' for United when you think about it.
 
Irrational. said:
He’s been at the club for eight years, and I’ve never quite understood the extreme revulsion and hatred for him, even before this latest ESL fiasco. I was equally bemused when supporters turned up and threatened him outside his house. I can’t remember him saying anything or doing anything to deserve this level of disdain, and I hear news of his resignation tonight met with ‘this is the best news since we won the treble in 1999’.

Surely the anger is best directed at the Glazers? Or is he thought of as part of them, and an attack on him is an attack on the Glazers? I haven’t even heard anywhere near the same level of abuse or loathing towards them as towards Ed.

From my perspective it seems he was a guy following orders and (trying) to work in the best interests of the club. Is the anger actually aimed at the Glazers and he’s the figure that’s easiest to target?

Please excuse my ignorance if I am missing something obvious.
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I would excuse the ignorance if it wasn't at such a ridiculous level.

He's the front man for the Glazers, which he is happy to be because it means he gets given money. He isn't enslaved by them so he is no less culpable than they are, and unlike them, he is at the club making decisions that negatively affect the fans and is a visible and viable target for criticism, and unlike them he doesn't own the club, so isn't tied in to the situation. If he doesn't like what he is doing he can walk away.

Not only that but he's stuck his oar very heavily into matters involving the team and management of the team/squad, and frankly, massively fecked it all up multiple times over due to having no clue what he is doing. This can be evidenced by his own press leaks where he tries to justify his moronic transfer market behaviour.
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He's overseen the club being ripped further and further away from the fans. People being kicked out of the ground for voicing their opinions. The automatic cup scheme for season tickets. Selling off of club assets to the owners via consortiums so even if they do sell the club, the club would have to carry on paying them money.

I mean what more do you want? Just because he isn't Joel Glazer doesn't excuse him from a) being an idiot, and b) ruining Manchester United and treating fans as nothing more than sums of money.

He is choosing to do that job and choosing to do it the way he does. No one is forcing him to and even if they were he has had the option every day to stop doing it. WHich he has only decided to do now because he's managed to feck up so badly he had no choice.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
This demonstrates perfectly my point - how on earth would Woodward, an M&A banker, be to blame for 'getting the Glazer's into the club'? The Glazers were his client and he advised them but the wheels were already in motion. Woodward did not create the LBO, the Glazers were already buying stock in 2003, JPM is just one of 15 or so banks which would also have been able to lead this transaction. Just because something is not 'good' for United does not mean the person doing it is automatically in the wrong, it'd be like all of us unanimously despising Aguero for scoring that goal but, actually, most people respect him as a player a huge amount (despite playing for a rival).

Glazers are awful because of the business model they tested with the Bucs and now are carrying out with United. There has to be some kind of regulation put in place around maintaining a positive cashflow into a club (i.e. not just letting United self support whilst taking out money). Woodward is culpable of many things but, actually, his performance of CEO seems pretty solid if we strip away the emotional side of it. Even the ESL (as poor an idea as it was for the everyday fan) was 'good' for United when you think about it.
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Mate. Woodward was the one who planned this to turn Man United a football club as their commercial benefits. And that's not the only thing he done.

Woodward was the one who allowed the announcement of ESL to be on our match day vs Burnley, which forcing Ole in difficult situation during the post match interview. If I'm Ole, I feel betrayed.

Woodward lied to Ole and the fans by saying we can sign Sancho. That Sancho saga alone gives you an idea about his treatment towards the previous managers behind the scene. It reflects to the main reason why our club struggle to make progress. He doesn't understand what football club is. He thinks everything can be solved with just money without football thinking and plan.

The ESL idea is just the end of him in football industry because it shows zero ethics and respect for football.
 
Shows what a type of person Ed is, trying to spin this around. Great that others came out and put things right. Of course he was in the driver seat from day one ffs
 
The abject naïveté of our fans. Half our support almost deserve the Glazers & Woodward.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
This demonstrates perfectly my point - how on earth would Woodward, an M&A banker, be to blame for 'getting the Glazer's into the club'? The Glazers were his client and he advised them but the wheels were already in motion. Woodward did not create the LBO, the Glazers were already buying stock in 2003, JPM is just one of 15 or so banks which would also have been able to lead this transaction. Just because something is not 'good' for United does not mean the person doing it is automatically in the wrong, it'd be like all of us unanimously despising Aguero for scoring that goal but, actually, most people respect him as a player a huge amount (despite playing for a rival).

Glazers are awful because of the business model they tested with the Bucs and now are carrying out with United. There has to be some kind of regulation put in place around maintaining a positive cashflow into a club (i.e. not just letting United self support whilst taking out money). Woodward is culpable of many things but, actually, his performance of CEO seems pretty solid if we strip away the emotional side of it. Even the ESL (as poor an idea as it was for the everyday fan) was 'good' for United when you think about it.
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I disagree with basically all of this, and to put it down to just emotions ruling heads is a bit condescending if we're being honest.
 
Harry Harries said:
I disagree with basically all of this, and to put it down to just emotions ruling heads is a bit condescending if we're being honest.
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How can you disagree with, it’s a series of facts:

Did Woodward create the LBO? No
Are JPM the only bank who could have lead the deal? No
Were the Glazers already buying stock? Yes

I don’t particularly like Woodward but the above are concrete facts. Which part do you disagree with? Woodward wasn’t even head of M&A at JPM, he’d have just been the MD the Glazers worked with most and therefore created a relationship with.
 
Woodward was instrumental for United's hostile takeover. Financial wise he's been excellent but football wise he's been horrible. Under his tenure, United had thrown 900m of transfer money in the bin and our salary bill had exploded with so little to show for. He insulted legends, he hired the wrong managers often giving them contract extensions prior to sacking them and he hired Judge whose clueless in football. Woodward and the Glazers were involved in the SL project which ruined what left of our reputation
 
tomaldinho1 said:
This demonstrates perfectly my point - how on earth would Woodward, an M&A banker, be to blame for 'getting the Glazer's into the club'? The Glazers were his client and he advised them but the wheels were already in motion. Woodward did not create the LBO, the Glazers were already buying stock in 2003, JPM is just one of 15 or so banks which would also have been able to lead this transaction. Just because something is not 'good' for United does not mean the person doing it is automatically in the wrong, it'd be like all of us unanimously despising Aguero for scoring that goal but, actually, most people respect him as a player a huge amount (despite playing for a rival).

Glazers are awful because of the business model they tested with the Bucs and now are carrying out with United. There has to be some kind of regulation put in place around maintaining a positive cashflow into a club (i.e. not just letting United self support whilst taking out money). Woodward is culpable of many things but, actually, his performance of CEO seems pretty solid if we strip away the emotional side of it. Even the ESL (as poor an idea as it was for the everyday fan) was 'good' for United when you think about it.
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The Glazers are not Manchester United.
 
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