Telegraph: Gary Neville calls for Ed Woodward to be sacked for Manchester United's 'unforgivable' recruitment

[sammsky1]

Analysis: BBC Sport's Simon Stone
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51178288

There are plenty of Manchester United fans who agree with Gary Neville - and a number of people on Twitter have adopted anti-Woodward and anti-Glazer handles to underline their feelings.
At their last home league game, the 4-0 win over Norwich on 11 January, songs were sung against the owners and the man responsible for running Manchester United.
This will hurt Woodward just as United's current plight bothers him.
Plunged into the role of chief executive following the departure of David Gill, Woodward had to handle what turned out to be a major mistake in appointing David Moyes as Sir Alex Ferguson's successor. He now accepts mistakes were made in those early years, particularly around recruitment, largely to pacify the demands of Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho, who both tried and failed to turn United back into Premier League title contenders.
Woodward feels changes in the way United recruit players means they now have a grip on the situation.
There is still no director of football at Old Trafford - and the word I am hearing is that there is not going to be one in the foreseeable future.
But Woodward thinks United got it right in the summer when they signed Harry Maguire, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Daniel James. Now he knows they need to get it right again this month - a top-four place is still a possibility - and, more importantly, next summer before they can be judged.
In a sense, Woodward can't win. United's pursuit of Bruno Fernandes is an example. If they sign the Portugal midfielder, they will be accused of overpaying. If they don't, it will be cited as evidence of the club not backing their manager.
But Woodward gets a handsome £3.16m salary to deal with such matters. Sympathy will be in short supply.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

CEO's in most large organisations have veto on people who report directly into them, and the layer below that.

Manchester United is not that big an organisation of people, so I'd expect the CEO to have involvement in recruitment of manager level and above non playing staff.

Then Woodward has 163 football, technical and coaching staff to take care of. He doesn't interview and employ them, stop being daft. Decisions like physio will be left to football people.

I expect he has a veto on pretty much anything, but the idea he involves himself in these kinds of decisions, no chance for me.

 

[Zen86]

It’s probably harsh to pin all of our failings and problems on him, I’m sure there’s a list of people who are at fault for what’s happened.

One thing is for sure though, we’ve declined quite sharply on his watch, so it’s ultimately him who’s culpable.

 

[redshaw]

Garry is about a year or two late with the wage stat but at least he has given it more coverage.

 

[Uniteddy]

Yeah, if this were a Fortune 500 company, the CEO would been replaced long ago. It's a simple matter of responsibility. Only reason he's still here is because he's the Glazers' favorite son. He's living on borrowed time.

Simply not true.
The owners/investors are making huge amounts of money from the club.
If you look at United as an investment then Woodward has done an excellent job of delivering dividends and return on investment for the Glazers.

Have you ever listened to the earnings calls he has with shareholders?
These guys know very little about football and care even less!

We are the consumers. CEOs care about the owners not consumers.
We are a golden goose, it is not like we will change to a different brand if the "product" is terrible.

Don't think about United as a football team but as like a marketing/advertising company if you want to understand Woodward and Glazers.

 

[Rhyme Animal]

Hang on, are you lot talking about this Gary Neville...? Talking in this August just gone...!?

From 5.20 onwards - 'it's a cycle', 'what's the panic about', defending the Glazers, comparing them to Liverpool's owners. Carragher chips in, 'but Liverpool's owners aren't taking money out of the club'...


Enjoy.

 

[TrueRed79]

It’s probably harsh to pin all of our failings and problems on him, I’m sure there’s a list of people who are at fault for what’s happened.

One thing is for sure though, we’ve declined quite sharply on his watch, so it’s ultimately him who’s culpable.

He's responsible for everything. The buck stops with him. He has failed as a CEO and we have declined under his watch. He has failed to modernise the club and is responsible for hiring four managers who have ultimately failed. Yes you can hold them responsible for certain things, no doubt, but ultimately it was his decision to hire them, then back them and then sack them. He is a narcissistic little weasel and needs to be removed from his job asap. Let's not forget the guy saddled the club with all the debt we have as well. Pretty sure the Glazers wouldn't own the club without his help.

 

[mu4c_20le]

Simply not true.
The owners/investors are making huge amounts of money from the club.
If you look at United as an investment then Woodward has done an excellent job of delivering dividends and return on investment for the Glazers.

Have you ever listened to the earnings calls he has with shareholders?
These guys know very little about football and care even less!

We are the consumers. CEOs care about the owners not consumers.
We are a golden goose, it is not like we will change to a different brand if the "product" is terrible.

Don't think about United as a football team but as like a marketing/advertising company if you want to understand Woodward and Glazers.

He's not even that good on the financial side, because he's making deals off our brand, which was mostly developed under Fergie and Gill's reign, as well as our history. He hardly did much to strengthen our brand, he's living off of it.

I know he's not a footballing expert, very few CEOs are in fact. They surround themselves with people who are. And we've already replaced those people several times, we've replaced the manager, the coaches, we've revamped the scouting department and created the transfer committee. But if bad decisions are still being made, then Woodward should be held responsible, because it's clear that he has no clue how to take us back to the top, nor does he know who to bring in to do that. All he's doing is continuing the United way of rolling the dice on a manager and giving them the keys to the club.

 

[Fosu-Mens]

You seem to have some real insight. Please share where you got the basis of this claim.

We can only assume what happens on the inside at MUFC, and we have already discussed this in the Woodward thread on multiple occasions.
So i can only assume based on the outcome of some of our processes.

1. Our ability to retain possession last season was far below the top teams in the league. We lose a central midfielder during the summer and do not go on the market and get players that can pass the ball... If data driven and benchmarking against other teams, we should have done something about this.

2. Hired OGS fulltime. Appointed Moyes and Mourinho. In an environment where there are fewer counterattacking opportunities each year, and hiring managers whos success depends on counter-attacks or crossing by numbers as a means to create chances...
OGS number of points was not reflective of how we performed. Win against spurs was lucky, the same was beating PSG.

3. We signed players that are not suited to the type of football that will make us competitive, and bragging about having a list of 1000 right back to analyse from and ending up with one that would suit the Serie A in 1975. You can surely have a list of 1000 right backs before the screening (sort and exclude based on certain performance indicators) and then thoroughly analyse the 10-20 players after the screening is performed

4. If our approach to appointing managers or signing players is partly based on data, then we are either emphasising the wrong type of data (I.e. Defensive output over offensive output regarding AWB for the fullback role) or the people that are presented the data are not using the information correctly.

Either way, something is not working. If we do actually have state of the art (or close to) structure and department for the analysis of data, then we are not utilizing it correctly.

 

[clarkydaz]

Hang on, are you lot talking about this Gary Neville...? Talking in this August just gone...!?

From 5.20 onwards - 'it's a cycle', 'what's the panic about', defending the Glazers, comparing them to Liverpool's owners. Carragher chips in, 'but Liverpool's owners aren't taking money out of the club'...


Enjoy.

I remember watching this at the time and left gobsmacked when he says united will win the league before Liverpool do.

 

[Big Ben Foster]

Simply not true.
The owners/investors are making huge amounts of money from the club.
If you look at United as an investment then Woodward has done an excellent job of delivering dividends and return on investment for the Glazers.

Have you ever listened to the earnings calls he has with shareholders?
These guys know very little about football and care even less!

We are the consumers. CEOs care about the owners not consumers.
We are a golden goose, it is not like we will change to a different brand if the "product" is terrible.

Don't think about United as a football team but as like a marketing/advertising company if you want to understand Woodward and Glazers.

A common misconception. The shareholder returns have actually been abysmal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opini...er-united-is-the-general-electric-of-football

 

[clarkydaz]

I keep reading that we don't have a 'Director of Football' but we have a 'chief executive'...

Didn't Evra say that during his contract dispute that Woodward said over the phone 'I'm the Director of Football at Man United... '?

Woodward is DoF without the title. If he ever announced he was, he would be ridiculed for his complete lack of experience or knowledge.

Yes according to Evra they were having a heated argument and called himself that

 

[Wumminator]

I mean the biggest mistake he made was hiring Mourinho and LVG and trusting them. I can not believe how much damage those two men did to our football club.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

Hang on, are you lot talking about this Gary Neville...? Talking in this August just gone...!?

From 5.20 onwards - 'it's a cycle', 'what's the panic about', defending the Glazers, comparing them to Liverpool's owners. Carragher chips in, 'but Liverpool's owners aren't taking money out of the club'...


Enjoy.

Wow, that's one hell of a flip flap just to defend his mate Ole. haha

Fact is, Ole took over a squad that HAD finished 2nd. Neither Mourinho nor Ole were the people for stage 2 of that rebuild that Mourinho started, we fecked up not sacking Mourinho earlier (in the Summer) and made it worse by employing Molde's gaffer.

Neville was happy with our Summer, now Ole is struggling after culling the squad like Gaz wanted it's somehow someone else's fault.

 

[Amerifan]

Did Neville just wake up one day and look around and decide Ed isn’t good enough? What’s changed to get him activated now?

 

[Wumminator]

Wow, that's one hell of a flip flap just to defend his mate Ole. haha

Fact is, Ole took over a squad that HAD finished 2nd. Neither Mourinho nor Ole were the people for stage 2 of that rebuild that Mourinho started, we fecked up not sacking Mourinho earlier (in the Summer) and made it worse by employing Molde's gaffer.

Neville was happy with our Summer, now Ole is struggling after culling the squad like Gaz wanted it's somehow someone else's fault.

The squad hasn’t been good enough for a while. The squad that finished second is drastically different to what we have now.

We have spent 35 million on Bailly, 16 million on Dalot, 45 million on Matic, untold wages on Sanchez, 75 million on Lukaku, 60 million on Di Maria etc etc.

 

[Amerifan]

A common misconception. The shareholder returns have actually been abysmal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opini...er-united-is-the-general-electric-of-football

Very interesting story. Based on share price I thought Ed was weathering the transition from SAF to post-SAF as well as could be expected. We were never going to make that transition easily or quickly, but I assumed the club was at least looking after the interests of the shareholders. Apparently not.

 

[diarm]

At the end of the day, we've had an injury crisis, particularly in midfield, for months. I can't think of a top 6 team in any other league on the planet not having somebody lined up, ready to come in and help share the load on January 1st, the second the window opened.

They didn't have to be a world beater but we are beyond desperate at this stage. There simply had to be someone.

Instead we are 21 days into the window and have not brought in anyone. We have played 6 crucial matches and dropped points in 4 and we won't have anyone in now before Burnley either.

The failure to identify, recruit and give power to a director of football is he single biggest repeated failure of the past decade at the club. We can blame Fergie, Gill, the Glazers, Moyes, Van Gaal, Jose and Old all in their own ways but the major problems - the failure of coaches, the horrific transfer record, the lack of long term strategy and direction, the complete absence of a playing style and consistent set of tactics between various managerial regimes all boil down to us not having an able and qualified DoF overseeing the footballing well-being of the club.

One man and his ego is to blame for that.

 

[edcunited1878]

It's not even only about recruitment. It's about culture. Every person you hire, or recruit, they have to have some type of cultural fit.

Do they contribute to the well-being of the culture, to an environment. Sometimes, you hire the person who doesn't have the most out going personality, but they get the work done and are happy to contribute and keep their head down...but they aren't a pain in the ass. Just a loyal, honest, worker. Then you have the hires who you're looking to perform and bring a particular culture standard.

Just the same narrative but with another different slant.

 

[redshaw]

Part of the issue I always felt was the pressure to get top 4 in 2015 just two years after Fergie left. You can understand the requirement but I said at the time LVG and Jose bought players in quickly hoping some would stick and we'd get back to a decent position quickly. Moyes and LVG missed top 4 and got sacked. Jose was the same by Dec but you can say half of it was losing the players and a very bad atmosphere too.

The club has got in a mess with trying to rebound quickly with poor recruitment by poorly selected managers tasked with top 4 or bust, it leads to where we are now, nothing to show for it. A lot of money flung at the wall, non of it sticking.

 

[Old Ma Crow]

What involvement do these sagacious ex-players have on United these days apart from media soundbites?

 

[Jostein Hjorteset]

The wage % to revenue table (from 1990's to now) tells a story about of how the club is being managed. United was lowest on salary budget compared to income in the glory years, and it allowed us to spend the big transfer fees if required. And in addition spend on facilites and stadium. But never bending over to extortion demands over salaries. A relatively flat salary structure (at least a fair one) for the squad as a whole was also a principle before Woodward came into the picture. Now we are in the situation that we can not spend big on transfers because of bloated salary expenditures. The Glazers would not go for more debt to cover for more signings most likely, even if it's needed. If these ridiculous contracts continue to be handed out, we would fall much deeper I am afraid. If the management was up for it, they would have sold De Gea and Pogba in the summer to lower the salary budget and used that to heavily recruit on up and coming younger players. Then endured a rough season and be ready to recruit 1/2 key players next summer in the positions most needed.

 

[Handsome Devil]

What involvement do these sagacious ex-players have on United these days apart from media soundbites?

They read the Caff!

 

[Uniteddy]

He's not even that good on the financial side, because he's making deals off our brand, which was mostly developed under Fergie and Gill's reign, as well as our history. He hardly did much to strengthen our brand, he's living off of it.

I know he's not a footballing expert, very few CEOs are in fact. They surround themselves with people who are. And we've already replaced those people several times, we've replaced the manager, the coaches, we've revamped the scouting department and created the transfer committee. But if bad decisions are still being made, then Woodward should be held responsible, because it's clear that he has no clue how to take us back to the top, nor does he know who to bring in to do that. All he's doing is continuing the United way of rolling the dice on a manager and giving them the keys to the club.

I agree with alot of that.

But the club did become a leader in leveraging the brand across different markets. The likes of "Vietnamese tractor partners" and the club app which seems to be their next big thing. They want the app to operate like a social media platform, delivering localised ads directly to the consumer onbehalf of our brand partners! Its disgusting to me but other clubs have followed our model too.

I'm not crediting him with being a genius. But I do think from Glazer perspective he's done a good job.

The bad decisions are not actually hurting the Glazer's bottom line, so far anyway. They still see him as delivering dividends, increasing the market value, the club is paying for their debt, and they can cash in whenever the return isn't to their liking.

They never should have been allowed to buy the club the way they did. Woodward made that happen and they owe him everything in that sense. Bad player or manager appointments won't be enough for them to turn on him.

It's sad but they don't care about matters on the pitch unless it's hurting their pockets. United is simply a revenue machine for them that they bought while putting in basically none of their own money thanks to Woodward.

The only chance I see is if Woodward himself recognises his limitations on football side and makes the appointments you mentioned.

 

[Amerifan]

Part of the issue I always felt was the pressure to get top 4 in 2015 just two years after Fergie left. You can understand the requirement but I said at the time LVG and Jose bought players in quickly hoping some would stick and we'd get back to a decent position quickly. Moyes and LVG missed top 4 and got sacked. Jose was the same by Dec but you can say half of it was losing the players and a very bad atmosphere too.

The club has got in a mess with trying to rebound quickly with poor recruitment by poorly selected managers tasked with top 4 or bust, it leads to where we are now, nothing to show for it. A lot of money flung at the wall, non of it sticking.

This is an excellent point. We did try to get back on top too fast. Never going to happen. I think we have recognized that and are building now, but it’s harder for fans to have patience since 6 years have elapsed in the interim.

 

[JPRouve]

I am going to disagree because there were stories saying the opposite coming from Joses camp

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...erguson-chelsea-manchester-united-david-moyes

“Every manager in the world looks at Man United as a huge club but I wanted to come to Chelsea and we didn’t bring that to the table because we were so open and he knows so much about myself,” Mourinho said during an interview for a new BBC documentary, Sir Alex Ferguson: Secrets of Success. “He knew that for almost a season I want to leave Real Madrid and I want to come to Chelsea.”

 

[Cassidy]

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...erguson-chelsea-manchester-united-david-moyes

Yes said after the fact...

 

[JPRouve]

Yes said after the fact...

Fair enough, make up your own version.

 

[AneRu]

This is an excellent point. We did try to get back on top too fast. Never going to happen. I think we have recognized that and are building now, but it’s harder for fans to have patience since 6 years have elapsed in the interim.

I don't think we tried to get back into the top 4 too fast, the strategy in the PL is first get into the top 4 and establish yourself then build for a title challenge. City did it earlier in the last decade and Liverpool recently.

The challenge for us was Woodward failing to recognize that whilst Van Gaal was a good coach he was seriously inexperienced in the British style where the coach had a dual role as the DOF. The recruitment was poor and we panicked by hiring a washed up Jose.

All of this points to a man who is limited in identifying managerial talent and he will be the one looking to make the next one when Ole is inevitably thrown under the bus.

 

[Uniteddy]

A common misconception. The shareholder returns have actually been abysmal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opini...er-united-is-the-general-electric-of-football

The comparisons in that article are a stretch. Comparing share price of minority stocks, in different currencies, on different exchanges wouldnt be something I'd do. They are all subject to different market forces and decisions about ownership structure by the main shareholders which can influence price a lot. Although Juve do look astonishingly good!

The article focused on traded share price, not dividend due to main owners. Most of the equity still belongs to Glazers in untraded shares, these are people Ed is accountable to.

These people bought the club for next to nothing, using the club the pay back their debt while assumed market value grew massively.

My point is not that Ed has done fantastic. My point is that from Glazer view Ed has done fantastic and they are loyal to him. He facilitated them basically stealing ownership of the club and now squeezing every penny out of the brand until they sell eventually.

 

[RedStarUnited]

It’s probably harsh to pin all of our failings and problems on him, I’m sure there’s a list of people who are at fault for what’s happened.

One thing is for sure though, we’ve declined quite sharply on his watch, so it’s ultimately him who’s culpable.

But its Woodward who refuses to shield himself from this. He is the one refusing to get in DOF, who would pretty much get all the blame.

I will never understamd why he doesnt want a DOF.

 

[Lentwood]

This is the one thing about the Glazer ownership I’ve never worked out

Posters say the Glazers love Ed because he saves them money - but he doesn’t. We’ve pissed away a couple of billion on transfers and wages since he became CEO and we’ve continually failed to hit our targets

Despite what Ed says our performance on the pitch IS having a material impact on our commercial success so I really don’t get how he is still in a job

 

[VP89]

This is the one thing about the Glazer ownership I’ve never worked out

Posters say the Glazers love Ed because he saves them money - but he doesn’t. We’ve pissed away a couple of billion on transfers and wages since he became CEO and we’ve continually failed to hit our targets

Despite what Ed says our performance on the pitch IS having a material impact on our commercial success so I really don’t get how he is still in a job

How much does he bring in from the sponsors?

 

[JPRouve]

This is the one thing about the Glazer ownership I’ve never worked out

Posters say the Glazers love Ed because he saves them money - but he doesn’t. We’ve pissed away a couple of billion on transfers and wages since he became CEO and we’ve continually failed to hit our targets

Despite what Ed says our performance on the pitch IS having a material impact on our commercial success so I really don’t get how he is still in a job

Cowardice, I said before and it explains everything. These people can't stomach change, they fear it.

 

[Lentwood]

How much does he bring in from the sponsors?

Roughly what you would expect anybody doing that job to bring in

 

[VP89]

Roughly what you would expect anybody doing that job to bring in

So you don't know, then. He did very well from what I recall, better than others in similar roles I assume.

 

[Paul_Scholes18]

So you don't know, then. He did very well from what I recall, better than others in similar roles I assume.

Not really given that we are starting to earn relativly less and less compared to our rivals.
Our popularity is going down due to poor results.

 

[JPRouve]

Not really given that we are starting to earn relativly less and less compared to our rivals.
Our popularity is going down due to poor results.

That's because we didn't sign our contracts at the same time, this happens every single time and some people always freak out.

 

[Lentwood]

Not really given that we are starting to earn relativly less and less compared to our rivals.
Our popularity is going down due to poor results.

Failing to achieve Champions League is the big one. I can understand the Glazers don’t actually give a monkeys about winning anything but I can’t believe they are happy with 5/7 seasons with no CL football

We’re MUCH less attractive to sponsor if we’re playing in the Europa League

 

[McGrathsipan]

All of the failings are on Woodward.
Time to fock off.