Just because Woody has been safe until now does not mean he should be this time. With Moyes it was too early and he took all the blame, arguably with LvG as well even though a lot more were critical of the upstairs people at the time. Ideally he should have gone with (or even before) Jose, but the impression i think most had was that Jose had a meltdown and became toxic so he had to go. Woody got away with it that time as well just because Jose stole all the media attention, but really that should have been it
And the bolded part is true, but i think we can make an educated guess: Managers give their wishes of outgoing and incomings to the board, but ultimately they are the ones who sanction it. Transfer and contract negotiations are most likely handled by the club. So yeah, just praising the manager for the good transfers and blaming the board for the bad ones is hypocritical, but the problem imo is not so much the transfers themselves, but how they are conducted and how much we end up paying versus how much we sell for.
The whole Sancho saga and then the following panic buys at the end of the window i think is fair to blame at Ed and the board. If we were completely unable to meet Dortmunds demands, why the feck did we linger so long at it instead of looking at alternatives? I also think what former managers have been saying about the club/board is a clue to how things are going behind the scenes. Many just wrote it off as sour grapes, but when everyone says pretty much the same things then there has to be some truth to it.
Just to be clear, if we dont drastically improve before Christmas then Ole needs to go, but so does the board and Ed as well. Pinning yet another manager to the wall and just carrying on as we have wont fix anything