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.