Fergie’s role in our current plight

2cents

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Probably not gonna be a popular topic on here, but I’m wondering how to assess Fergie’s role in our predicament? I don’t want to shit on his legacy, which is obviously ultimately defined by the bulging trophy cabinet and our re-emergence as a major domestic and European power, but I’d be interested to hear honest takes on how some of his decisions might have contributed to our decline. I always remember his assurances that the club wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the post-Busby years once he’d gone and that a smooth transition was the number one priority. Yet here we are.
 

el3mel

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Not much.

Fergie can be blamed for the team he left for Moyes but that's about it. 6-7 years later and we are still using players from his last season, it's simply our fault we were unable to make a rebuild.

Another club and we would have had an entire different squad now than what he had left, but for United we are still entering 6th season post SAF playing against Barca with a defense having Jones, Smalling and Young.

The board is the ultimate reason for our failure.
 

Tarrou

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It's his fault people believed the Glazers are great owners - but I don't blame him for it
 

Nico87

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I'd say very minor, his only real mistake was letting the midfield rot yo the extent he did which was partly due to his sentimental attachment to certain players. He should have introduced Pogba to the team much ealrier and also been a little more flexible with the role agents now played and the fee's they could charge.

The flaws with the transition are entirely Moyes and the boards doing, once they realised Moyes had no intention of keeping any of the back room staff he should have been removed from consideration.
 

Stepney73

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The glazers takeover of the club is the root of our problems.

Obviously it didn't go all to shit the day after they took over but within a decade we became a second tier club.

The pivotal point for me was trousering the ronaldo money and then just spending the minimum of what they think they needed to keep the cash cow milkable.
 

Shark

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Not much.

Fergie can be blamed for the team he left for Moyes but that's about it. 6-7 years later and we are still using players from his last season, it's simply our fault we were unable to make a rebuild.

Another club and we would have had an entire different squad now than what he had left, but for United we are still entering 6th season post SAF playing against Barca with a defense having Jones, Smalling and Young.

The board is the ultimate reason for our failure.


This is spot on, and should wrap up the thread in all honesty.
 

Bojan11

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I'd say very minor, his only real mistake was letting the midfield rot yo the extent he did which was partly due to his sentimental attachment to certain players. He should have introduced Pogba to the team much ealrier and also been a little more flexible with the role agents now played and the fee's they could charge.

The flaws with the transition are entirely Moyes and the boards doing, once they realised Moyes had no intention of keeping any of the back room staff he should have been removed from consideration.
He let the defence rot too and passed up the chance to sign Hazard due to agent fees.

He got too sentimental in his latter years and held onto too many 30 plus players hence why our squad is a mess and their replacements aren’t good enough which isn’t his fault. But I wish he sort of signed more players like DDG in his latter years. Sadly he had blind faith in Cleverly, Welbeck, Jones and Evans.
 

Zlatattack

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The team he left won the league. That'll always be his answer.

How much influence he had in the handover, selection of replcements - who really knows.
 

Raees

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It’s 2019. There’s a limit to how long he should be allowed to be seen as hindering the club post his departure and I say that as someone who wasn’t happy with the way he didn’t really plan for the future during the 08-12 period.
 

Zlatattack

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He could have left the squad in a better state, but again, the squad he left won the league with him.
 

Jim Beam

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He took us as a broken club (in a way) and left us as an absolute giant. Nobody, even him, could predict such incompetence from our board. I mean, more then half of our squad is still his and we bought exactly 32 players. Also, changed 4 managers, 3 playing styles and played like 2 decent games all together.

As for the team he left, I still stand that he could easily maintain our dominance in the next 3-4 years just by buying Thiago and Herrera for example.
 

ATXRedDevil

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Ultimately, the board screwed us by not investing properly in Fergie’s last 2-3 years. Shortly after he left, transfer values inflated significantly. An extra £50m or so in each of the last two summers Fergie was here would have bought us 2 real quality players in each window - so much more than those same sums returned for us merely a few years later.

Hindsight is 20/20, but everyone could see we needed investment in certain areas, particularly CM, but Fergie was bringing success without it so they skimped which left us needing to splash much larger amounts in an inflated market and after our needs swelled to beyond a couple of positions. I don’t think that was Fergie’s fault. I’m sure he would have loved some better players..

When you’re are ahead you have to keep building or risk losing your foothold on the top spot. That’s what City are doing now and why it’ll be hard for us to catch them.
 

Revaulx

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If we're going to go back that far to assign blame, I'd be more inclined to ask questions of Gill. He appears to have:

1. Been complicit in (or maybe encouraged) Fergie's agent aversion and "no value in the market" thinking
2. Made no provision for any post-Fergie transition plan
3. Bungled his own departure by having no proper handover to Woodward
 

devilish

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SAF left us in a perfect position to continue success...

But he can't pick managers - and shouldn't be doing so.
He really didn't. The squad he left behind was the weakest team he had ever had. We only had 1 WC player in that team. I wouldn't really blame him on the matter (I suspect the accountant was the man behind the value strategy) but to say he left us in a perfect position to continue success is wrong.
 

Sylar

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He left us with United as champions. He also had DDG entering his prime and RVP as top goalscorer. He also opened the door for us to sell Rooney and replace him whilst he was on the downward decline. He also got us Zaha ready to come in.

And since hes left, weve spent around 750m. Thats more than enough to add to what he left behind and still be fighting for trophies on all fronts.

His big mistake was putting Moyes up for being in charge of us. However Moyes should have been sacked around November/December.
 

2cents

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If we're going to go back that far to assign blame, I'd be more inclined to ask questions of Gill. He appears to have:

1. Been complicit in (or maybe encouraged) Fergie's agent aversion and "no value in the market" thinking
2. Made no provision for any post-Fergie transition plan
3. Bungled his own departure by having no proper handover to Woodward
Good point. I’ve never got the admiration people seem to have for him. If he’s to be judged by our transfer dealings, then it’s fair to consider him a complete failure from 2007 onwards.
 

Rhyme Animal

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He really didn't. The squad he left behind was the weakest team he had ever had. We only had 1 WC player in that team. I wouldn't really blame him on the matter (I suspect the accountant was the man behind the value strategy) but to say he left us in a perfect position to continue success is wrong.
He left us Champions, with a massive war-chest, one of the richest clubs on Earth.

DDG in goal, Zaha to come in, RvP still in great form, Rooney set up to leave and as I said - money to spend.

The trouble is, he was then allowed to pick his own successor (what the actual feck?)...

And he chose David fecking Moyes...
 

AndyJ1985

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He did get player recruitment wrong during his latter years, but then again he kept on winning titles, so it's difficult to really criticise him for that. He done his job and it was for those who followed to continue the success. Everyone involved has failed, and Fergie can't be held accountable for that.
 

beingshe7don

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So here's the thing, Fergie got out at the right time and when I say this, I mean he realized that City were becoming more than just "noisy neighbors" and that United couldn't match their ambitions. I guess that trip which Fergie took to speak with Pep in New York, I think he had that inclination that Pep would join a club that was willing to fund his ideology and that United couldn't do so. Mourinho also came back to the PL that season with Chelsea and won the title. No experienced manager in their right mind would like to take on an aging and talentless squad and manage United after Ferguson because they would not be able to match Ferguson and deliver the title with the squad at that time. More than that, David Gill left a gaping hole in terms of transfers and getting in the required players in. So there are quite a few things that went wrong. Fergie's masterclass was when he offered the managerial job to Moyes which even a blind man would have stated what a disaster that was going to be.

Ferguson and the board are to be blamed for the United crisis right now. People keep talking about Mourinho, Pep, Pochettino, Zidane and Ancelotti but in my mind from the days of Dortmund, Klopp was the manager that should have taken hold of United. We should have offered him everything to get him here. He delivers good football and the players he's invested in, have been phenomenal. Unfortunately, it's too late to talk about that as I think he will remain with Liverpool for years to come and could become a legend at the club after winning an EPL title.

Now that we have Ole... He's clearly not a masterclass tactician but he's a terrific man manager. When you don't have a certain skill, you either learn it or your outsource. I think he needs to bring in a master tactician to help him develop as a manager and not to mention an immediate need for a Director of Football. Paul Mitchell needs to be brought in ASAP before we squander more money foolishly on mindless contract extensions and transfers.
 

devilish

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He left us Champions, with a massive war-chest, one of the richest clubs on Earth.

DDG in goal, Zaha to come in, RvP still in great form, Rooney set up to leave and as I said - money to spend.

The trouble is, he was then allowed to pick his own successor (what the actual feck?)...

And he chose David fecking Moyes...
That means jack shit really. A winner's squad needs time to build. SAF left a squad made up of a horde of mules which were decent enough to support his very old guard but were pretty average on their own. If SAF was serious in leaving a legacy that endures past him then

a- he would have pushed for serious changes in our infrastructure. The man could live without a top DOF but the same can't be said about his successors especially if the successor in question was David Moyes
b- he would have replaced the likes of Scholes, Giggs, Rio, Vidic and Evra long ago

As Scholes once said. There's something really bad in a team when their best midfielders are at the wrong side of their 30s

There again, I sometimes wonder if its SAF's fault or the club's fault. The more time passes, the more I think its the latter.
 

Kapardin

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He left us an aging and bad squad. Okayed Moyes. Two big blunders the impact of which we are still feeling.

However, any club with our resources would still be able to handle it and bounce back after perhaps one bad season. For example, look at Real, they have appointed Zidane and are looking like a sure bet to spend wisely this summer and come out of their slump. The point is, if Woodward were competent, it wouldn't take us more than one or two bad seasons at the most to come back to the top, but here we are after 6 years.
 

Champagne Football

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David Moyes was the right choice as long as he kept Mike Phelan as his right hand man. He'd still be in charge today had he kept someone in his backroom team who could teach him how to set up a team to play nice football. If David didn't suffer from delusion of grandeur about his coaching ability then he'd still be here as he possessed the work ethic and man management skills for the role.

Let's look on the bright side. Ajax were knocked out of the Europa League by Rosenberg last season. Ole is the right man who will play the right way and who will sign players with Utd DNA such as hopefully Rice, Sancho, Neres along with some PL experienced heads like Alderweireld, Doucoure on top of hopefully some super kids like William Saliba. While also developing Greenwood and Garner. A big summer can change it round quickly.
 

amolbhatia50k

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Had Pep succeeded SAF we'd have won the league within a few years.

Sir Alex did let standards drop in his latter years and obviously picked the mighty David Moyes as his successor. He could have left the team in a better shape but that should have been corrected by now by succeeding managers.
 

Rozay

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Judging by current views towards Woodward, anything anyone would want to hold Fergie accountable for should ultimately be directed to David Gill.
 

Kag

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The club was a shambles when he left. We just didn’t know it yet. Ferguson was the glue holding it all together. The Glazers, Gill, Woodward and Ferguson were all complicit in this. Some more than others, of course.

In truth, Ferguson was stuck between a rock and a hard place. We were paying stratospheric interest fees, selling our best players (right when we should have been consolidating our position at the top of Europe) and investing little into the first team. It’s at this point I remind you that we didn’t buy a central midfielders for six years. No value...

Ferguson could either take a paddy and leave or work his magic. He managed the latter, but our football was getting gradually worse - something we all moaned about at the time - and by the time we played Barcelona in the 2011 final, there was a chasm between us.

Ferguson left and it quickly became apparent to us (but not to close observers; they saw this years prior) that the academy was an underfunded joke, no real scouting system was in place apart from the eyes of Martin Ferguson and the administration tasks directed towards the manager were unmanageable for anybody other than Alex Ferguson.

We were a huge club in one man’s little world. Gill conveniently fecked off for more fame and fortune at the same time and arseholes on here seem to love him for it. Woodward this, Woodward that. He’s done more to modernise this club in five years than anybody did between 2005 and 2013. That’s for certain, even in spite of the errors that have been made along the way.

I mean, I can’t stand David Moyes, but it’s well known now that when he first arrived he enquired about the scouting assessments and players reports relating to various targets across the world. Those above looked at him like he was some sort of oddball.
 

Roboc7

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No blame on SAF, it was the clubs responsibility to have a plan in place for when he left, 6 years on they still haven’t got one. There is no identity and no adaption to a modern football club.

Choosing Moyes was a huge error but he shouldn’t have been allowed to make that choice. Fergie was United, when he left everything people thought about United left with him and it exposed what it was really like behind the scenes.
 

Varun

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Erm, how many years have to pass before he isn't judged for the ineptness of those who succeeded him? We're still using his defenders ffs, that should say everything about the stellar job people have done after he left.
 

Zlatattack

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That means jack shit really. A winner's squad needs time to build. SAF left a squad made up of a horde of mules which were decent enough to support his very old guard but were pretty average on their own. If SAF was serious in leaving a legacy that endures past him then

a- he would have pushed for serious changes in our infrastructure. The man could live without a top DOF but the same can't be said about his successors especially if the successor in question was David Moyes
b- he would have replaced the likes of Scholes, Giggs, Rio, Vidic and Evra long ago

As Scholes once said. There's something really bad in a team when their best midfielders are at the wrong side of their 30s

There again, I sometimes wonder if its SAF's fault or the club's fault. The more time passes, the more I think its the latter.
What utter tosh. He won the league with the same "mules" the season he left. He won it by 11 points. Everyone else didn't suddenly become wank. He beat the best the league had to offer as he did time and time again. We went out in the CL to a poor refereeing decision against Real Madrid.

Had he stayed on, he'd have won the league next season too.