- Let Moyes replace the successful backroom staff and let senior players' contracts expire
- Aimed for Fabregas, Thiago and Bale, ended up overpaying for Fellaini
- Overpaid for Mata and set a precedent that he'd trust the manager (Moyes) for signings even on high wages even if they don't fit in
- Failed to recruit Klopp with Disneyland comments, failed to recruit Pep by laying out a structure for him
- Awarded Wayne Rooney a contract that would collapse our wage structure and haunt us in retrospect for years
- Showed no vision or consistency after we sacked Moyes and hired LVG who played tumescent, boring football
- Continued the precedent to trust the manager for most signings who don't fit in again, but identified targets poorly, didn't get who LVG wanted
- overpaid for those that we did acquire with not much foresight as to if they're long term recruits or if their motivation is simply money (AdM)
- Let go of key players without thinking of a possibility where the next manager could use them, only to sack the current manager within a season
- Lost faith in LVG after boring football and a fifth placed finish and sacked him unprofessionally right after a trophy, less than a season after we let expensive players leave based on his judgement
- No footballing vision or long-term plan when we hired Mourinho, another manager who traditionally doesn't trust youth, leaves teams broken after 3 years and plays conservative football
- Smashed the wage structure again by signing Alexis Sanchez with a contract that left the likes of De Gea with extremely high bargaining power
- Failed to learn from previous mistakes and again let key contracts run down losing bargaining power along the way, and eventually Herrera as well
- Once again, awarded the likes of Jones, Rojo, Smalling, Lingard new undeserved, overpaid contracts, unnecessarily boosting player power
- Gave Mourinho a new contract, but suddenly broke the precedent of trusting the manager with signings with Maguire, Perisic and allegedly Willian
- In the most crucial, marketable summer since SAF (a top manager, a squad with big name players and a 2nd placed finish, rivals strenghtening) we bought an overpriced CM and a backup RB/GK and set the clock back by years again
- After triggering Mourinho's meltdown, signed a rookie manager from Molde on the sole basis of him being a United legend, in another departure from consistency in footballing style
- Ended up signing the previous managers targets for higher, record transfer fees (Maguire)
- Did not have the foresight to at least wait out the rest of the season before hiring Ole fulltime
- Suddenly decided to balance the wages by by stripping the squad down to the bare bones in one go without replacing the big names that have left
- Left the squad massively imbalanced and extremely thin going into the season, despite Ole publicly promising a massive turnover
I don't think Ole is responsible for any of the above.
The bolded point hurts the most for me. We could have pushed on from 2nd place, we could have backed Jose properly and avoided the toxic meltdown. That is a moment to look back on and wonder what could have been if we'd gotten him Perisic and Maguire along with Fred and Dalot, and then spent again next summer. We may have stopped Liverpool's rise if we did that, and possibly stopped them from winning another CL.
Parts of the 'heritage' presser from Jose come to mind:
Jose couldn't use Depay, Rooney, Schneiderlin or Schweinsteiger. And Ole couldn't use Lukaku, Matic or Sanchez. That's 200m without any return right there.
And that's a direct reason for why Woodward is responsible.