Woodward is being blasted left, right and centre. The idea that he escapes criticism is baffling, he's one of the prime targets. The poor structure of the footballing side of the club is brought up repeatedly, too, and that is the owners' fault.
That commerce is more important to the owners than footballing success is indeed an undeniable fact. But then that's what football is these days. A huge money-making business. You can either have oil princes financing you as a PR exercise - which is ultimately still a profit-motivated thing - or businessmen trying to make money. I do not think this is a good thing but can't really see a way out of it, unless the Premier League adopts the Bundesliga model which is not happening at the moment.
And by the way you can absolutely accuse Mourinho of placing the success of the team secondary to his own ego, to political points scoring. See his lack of subs against Juventus, for example. He was making a point rather than attempting to win a football match.
Woodward gets criticism but is always offest with "but he is good at the commercial side"...with barely anyone stopping to think that maybe there is a link between what Woodward is good at, and what the club's owners want him to be good at...or more tellingly, whether neglecting the team in favour of commercial success is actually a viable or smart plan in the long run.
You are even doing it in your post "but that's what football is these days"...except it isn't. Teams build commercial success on the back of being succesful on the pitch. Liverpool, City, Chelsea, etc. We are the only team focusing on commercial success at the expense of on the pitch success. Woodward by his own admission would rather spend money on a player he can market than a player the manager thinks the team needs. If this was a concern to the Glazers, he would have been sacked by now.
I would dare say there is no fan who would rather cheer a spnsorship deal than winning a football game, but even if there were, our ignorance of the way one eventually links to the other should be a big concern to them. We are unique as a club in possessing this ignorance. It's a far bigger and more fundamental problem than who Pogba chooses to high five, or why Mourinho didn't make an subs iin our last game.
You can certainly accuse Mourinho of being out to prove a point, being childish, negative, etc. You can accuse our players of being idiots, having the wrong attitude etc...but at the end of the day, their success is directly related to our results and how we perform as a team. Whatever their motive and how lost it might be, the goal is to be succesful as a player, manager, team. When you get to Woodward and above, where other clubs still place priority on this, with us it is very clearly of secondary importance.
