When exactly did our decline begin?

[Ludens the Red]

Incredible thread. Another thread to blame Fergie for the current mess. Usual suspects appearing too.
Within two seasons of Fergie leaving, United spent almost 300 million under van Gaal and had completely gutted the 2013 title winning squad. I have not seen one person mention LVG as starting our decline. It is the freedom in the transfer market he was given and overspending that caused the start of us being ripped off in the transfer market and buying marquee players that turned out to be failures. It began the era of “deadwood” in our squad.

If you spend large amounts of money wisely in football and make good appointments you will have success, almost immediately . Only United fans seem to think this doesn’t happen. Even though city and Chelsea did it.

Only Manchester United fans seem to think you need prolonged rebuilds and that things that happened in 2009 would still effect the squad in 2022 despite a billion pounds being spent on the club during that period.

Our decline began when LvG walked through the door. It wasn’t Fergie and it wasn’t even Moyes. As bad as Moyes was, the club got rid of him fast. Since LVG walked through the door what has followed is a procession of allowing managers too much freedom in the transfer market, taking too long to get rid of managers and players not good enough and giving out undeserving contracts. As well as inflating our very own transfer market. These and and only these are responsible for our decline. Ed Woodward oversaw this era so I think he’s somebody right at the top of the list to blame.

 

[Fluctuation0161]

The real answer is always when the Glazers arrived because it changed the whole dynamic of the football club. That said, our 2007-09 peak was aided by big yet shrewd investments to the squad, sanctioned by the owners.

It remains a mystery what really happened behind the scenes during the 'no value in the market' era. I despise the owners as much as you do, but in this instance my hunch has always been that Fergie really believed that there really was no value in the transfer market. The question now is if this had been indeed the case, was it because the great man had started to lose his edge in the market as @MoskvaRed point out? Or like I said was it simply a case of him not seeing where football at the highest level was heading? We'll never know.

Looking at our transfer history post 2005 it was more shrewd signings by Fergie than big investments. Vidic and Evra for example were bargains and not big names. Never any attempt at investing in the midfield other than Carrick in 2006/7 was it?

And no attempt to rebuild r refresh the squad until after Fergie left and we fell out of top 4.

Terrible mismanagement by the Glazers.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/manchester-united/alletransfers/verein/985

 

[TMDaines]

Van Persie played his first game for United just turning 29. Lewandowski was 29 at the start of 2017, Benzema was 29 in 2016, Ibrahimovic was 29 in 2010, to give a few examples, it could have been reasonably expected that Van Persie would be good for 3-4 years, given his amazing technical ability, that he'd adapt to be an all-round or support striker. His decline was sudden and unfortunate.

Van Persie was very injury prone for the first half of his career too. I wasn’t at all surprised we only got one great year and one fair year out of him.

I’m not going to rewrite history and pretend it was a terrible signing, because he did arguably carry us to a title. It was, however, a signing Ferguson made because he wanted to maximise his chances of winning the league in the final season, with little regard for the future.

I’m not blaming Ferguson. He was somewhat entitled to focus on the immediate future at that stage of his career.

 

[spiriticon]

When Moyes culled the entire title winning staff for Jimmy Lumsden.

Players immediately downed tools and that mentality has stuck ever since.

 

[FrankDrebin]

Transfer wise, the signs were there when we replaced the then best player in Europe with Valencia (who I liked btw), Obertan and past-it, injury plagued, brochure boy Michael Owen.

 

[SilentWitness]

1-2 years before Fergie left. That’s not his fault per say, as if he was still in charge you’d back him to address that and rebuild as he had multiple times before but it’s a problem because it meant a brand new face had to be in charge of that rebuild instead.

 

[Lecland07]

Incredible thread. Another thread to blame Fergie for the current mess. Usual suspects appearing too.
Within two seasons of Fergie leaving, United spent almost 300 million under van Gaal and had completely gutted the 2013 title winning squad. I have not seen one person mention LVG as starting our decline. It is the freedom in the transfer market he was given and overspending that caused the start of us being ripped off in the transfer market and buying marquee players that turned out to be failures. It began the era of “deadwood” in our squad.

If you spend large amounts of money wisely in football and make good appointments you will have success, almost immediately . Only United fans seem to think this doesn’t happen. Even though city and Chelsea did it.

Only Manchester United fans seem to think you need prolonged rebuilds and that things that happened in 2009 would still effect the squad in 2022 despite a billion pounds being spent on the club during that period.

Our decline began when LvG walked through the door. It wasn’t Fergie and it wasn’t even Moyes. As bad as Moyes was, the club got rid of him fast. Since LVG walked through the door what has followed is a procession of allowing managers too much freedom in the transfer market, taking too long to get rid of managers and players not good enough and giving out undeserving contracts. As well as inflating our very own transfer market. These and and only these are responsible for our decline. Ed Woodward oversaw this era so I think he’s somebody right at the top of the list to blame.

Why are you not allowed to say the truth? The team was on the decline under Ferguson. Look at the 2013 side that he left; where are the successors to any of the players?

When you look at the average age of the players that were any good, I wouldn't be surprised if it was near 30. The young players in that team didn't ever really show any notable talent, aside from De Gea.

I know people talk about it being a title winning squad, but I think people are forgetting that may be one of the weakest Premier League seasons of all time. It was really poor.

 

[FrankDrebin]

I see this more of a criticism of our ownership than SAF.
SAF clearly had his hands tied on the transfer front. Also pretty certain Fergie didnt want to replace Ronaldo with Michael fecking Owen.

 

[Yagami]

Shifting Tevez for Berbatov was the start, and I love Berbatov. Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez were a great trio and, in the 08/09 season, we hardly ever played them together again. Then not replacing Tevez or Ronaldo with quality.

Some say Berba was the ready made replacement for an inevitable Tevez departure, but I'll never agree with that. We brought in Tevez to compete with Saha and Rooney. Berba was then brought in to replace Saha, and keep our depth in attack top tier. Then we settled after Tevez left.

 

[We need an rvn]

Incredible thread. Another thread to blame Fergie for the current mess. Usual suspects appearing too.

I haven't read the whole thread, but I think if you answer the actual question of the thread, the answer is when SAF and Gill left.

Now I'm not blaming Fergie at all. He's the manager, not the owner or CEO.

It's the owner and CEO who are responsible for short / medium and long term planning. When Fergie left, we lost an aura. When Gill left at the same time, that's when the decline began.

 

[norm87cro]

Im not gonna drag SAF into this because the club invested A LOT since 2013. Im going with Jose s sacking not because he did such a brilliant job but because the player manager power dinamic shifted at this club. With the global exception of Real Madrid the rest of us need a manager, a vision and an established identity of how to play football (Atletico Madrid being an example of ugly but tactical football). Yesterday showed some glimpses of the high press as we forced Villa into a few errors one resulting in a goal

 

[Giggsy13]

When we sold Ronaldo for a record fee and failed to utilize those funds to revamp the squad for another run at a champions league title. The no value years gave city a free run at a host of players like Silva, Aguero and Yaya. Imagine adding them to our established title winning squad. If you gave those 3 truth serum, they likely would’ve picked United if we came knocking at the same time. The Glazers took advantage of the genius of Sir Alex to let the club rot and to let him fix every problem on a shoe string budget. You can argue 2005 is when the club ceased to exist as we knew it, we just ignored it all because we were winning.

 

[Tom Van Persie]

Van Persie was very injury prone for the first half of his career too. I wasn’t at all surprised we only got one great year and one fair year out of him.

I’m not going to rewrite history and pretend it was a terrible signing, because he did arguably carry us to a title. It was, however, a signing Ferguson made because he wanted to maximise his chances of winning the league in the final season, with little regard for the future.

I’m not blaming Ferguson. He was somewhat entitled to focus on the immediate future at that stage of his career.

He was injury prone and we knew it when we bought him but that's why SAF had him on a special training program. If he stayed on we would've got another two good seasons out of him. Moyes ruined him, he didn't have a clue on how to manage his fitness.

 

[Yagami]

Looking at our transfer history post 2005 it was more shrewd signings by Fergie than big investments. Vidic and Evra for example were bargains and not big names. Never any attempt at investing in the midfield other than Carrick in 2006/7 was it?

We signed Anderson and Hargreaves the following season, so I guess, at the time, we thought we were settled long term.

The only other signings after 07/08 we made for the midfield area were Kagawa and, at a stretch, Jones. Kagawa was going to be our 10 behind Rooney in 12/13 but RvP became available, so that didn't happen. Jones was obviously a defender but it seemed Sir Alex viewed him as a Jack of all trades, which is why he played a fair bit in central midfield for us.

 

[Giggsy13]

Blaming Sir Alex yet he’s the only reason the club stood a chance and continued to win big trophies despite being plunged into debt. Sir Alex isn’t given enough credit going toe to toe with Chelsea/Roman despite barely having the backing Chelsea managers were given. An absolute genius. Those blaming him are and will remain complete and utter bellends that should be ignored.

 

[harms]

We were certainly in a relative decline in our later years under Fergie but I wouldn’t say that that decline had doomed us to eventual failure — in a hypothetical scenario of Fergie staying (both with us and in good health), he would’ve started a new cycle just like he always did.

But we failed to replace him, everything with that situation seemed ill-timed (losing Fergie without a top replacement lined up, ideally beforehand and losing Gill in the same summer) and that started our drastic decline.

 

[harms]

If a former KGB agent who falsified documents to steal oil from the Russian people and funnel it to Vladimir Putin hadn't been allowed to buy a little club in London, then we would have won the league even more often in the 2000's.

He wasn’t a KGB agent.

 

[big rons sovereign]

The second Moyes decided to remove an experienced championship winning backroom staff, and replace them with Steve bloody round etc.

 

[micmac]

Our decline started when we got hit 6-1 by City.

 

[RORY65]

The second Moyes decided to remove an experienced championship winning backroom staff, and replace them with Steve bloody round etc.

I've never got this view, appointing Moyes was a mistake but once he was he was always going to bring his own staff (as all managers do). Ferguson was the genius under whom we were successful regardless of the staff regularly changing, do people believe the Moyes era would have gone significantly different if he had kept Ferguson's staff? I mean Mike Phelan has been back for the last 3 years and seemingly done feck all.

 

[FrankDrebin]

The second Moyes decided to remove an experienced championship winning backroom staff, and replace them with Steve bloody round etc.

It was a issue but new coaches always tend to bring in their own staff, plus United shouldn't fall apart completely just because of a backroom change.
And, much as we loved those players under SAF, the story about Moyes taking Rio's chips away just makes the players sound no more mollycoddled than the ones today.
But SAF was a genius with his man management, and Moyes and his predecessors weren't.

 

[Gordon S]

2005.

 

[Leftback99]

It mainly boils down to recruitment. From 2008 we started replacing a world class squad (in pretty much every position) with inferior players.

Since 2013 given the same budget you could have blindly left recruitment to an average Caf poster and the squad wouldn't be in any worse shape.

 

[big rons sovereign]

I've never got this view, appointing Moyes was a mistake but once he was he was always going to bring his own staff (as all managers do). Ferguson was the genius under whom we were successful regardless of the staff regularly changing, do people believe the Moyes era would have gone significantly different if he had kept Ferguson's staff? I mean Mike Phelan has been back for the last 3 years and seemingly done feck all.

I think it would've been different yeah. The squad knew the staff, well. They'd just won the league by some margin and the transition would probably have been a lot smoother had they stayed. Instead they were binned off and replaced with a guy who famously shit in a bag.

 

[Chairman Steve]

While the smartass answer would be 2005, you cant really call a 3 in a row, Champions League finals and semi-finals and fairly great football to watch as part of a ‘decline’.

So I’m going to say the moment we sold Ronaldo as well as when we lost Queiroz for the 2nd time. There seemed to be a shift from being exciting to being efficient in the way we played football, and it steadily started to erode away. The central midfield issues have long been an issue and continue to this day as we saw last night. Hargreaves was permacrocked. Fletcher got ill. Scholes got older, retired and was brought back. Carrick was basically our only bonafide central midfielder we could trust. We used Cleverley and Anderson as our first choice midfielders which is fecking ludcrious in hindsight and it sounded bizarre back then.

The last seasons of the SAF era weren’t that exciting to watch outside of spirited comebacks in my opinion. It was very efficient and relatively conservative football, but because it was SAF, it was given a pass at the time and no doubt still is.

 

[Fortitude]

Rooney questioned the club’s ambition when he saw it was not like for like coming in to replace or uphold the quality of the squad; he got panned for it and called all sorts whilst Fergie’s brilliance kept papering over ever growing cracks. With the league-winning squad he left, what were cracks for Fergie became fissures for mere mortal managers, but I believe that he intended for the new man to remodel the squad as he saw fit so left it as it was; it was not part of the plan for Moyes to gut the coaching staff, however, and that was a fatal blow over any woes with that particular squad.

The Glazers will always be numero uno, but there are specific points in the post-Fergie timeline that sent us down this path; not getting the structure right from the top down being the primary - giving every manager carte blanche to come in with their own ideas, personnel and purchases, which has led to us having a mish-mash of a squad with no identity, but more particularly, no ‘soul’ or commonality, which leads to cliques and breakdowns in communication in the first instance, and complete capitulation and jumping of ships, at its worst.

There are fingers to point at every level, but getting things right at the top is far more important than any player or squad and makes blips remain so instead of cascading into chaos and its fallout like we now have as a bedfellow.

 

[Fluctuation0161]

We signed Anderson and Hargreaves the following season, so I guess, at the time, we thought we were settled long term.

The only other signings after 07/08 we made for the midfield area were Kagawa and, at a stretch, Jones. Kagawa was going to be our 10 behind Rooney in 12/13 but RvP became available, so that didn't happen. Jones was obviously a defender but it seemed Sir Alex viewed him as a Jack of all trades, which is why he played a fair bit in central midfield for us.

Oh yes, the Glazers benefited from taking us over when we had a very strong squad in 2005, with lots of potential. So their lack of investment, from 2005 - 2014 did not become apparent until after the greatest manager in history left.

Selling Ronaldo and signing Valencia typifies how much money we needed to save to clear Glazer debt.

 

[DanielofLeyland]

I believe there is a difference here between 'decline' and 'fall'. It was inevitable that we would see some sort of decline after SAF left. Moyes couldn't manage the same way SAF did and we ultimately fell rapidly. However, we were still competitive in the following seasons. Our league position was inconsistent but we regularly challenged for the Champions League places and finished 2nd under Mourinho. We also won the FA, EFL and Europa league titles during the Van Gaal/Mourinho era. Whilst this wasn't good enough by Uniteds previous standards it was still a side and club that possessed the ability to compete.

I feel our fall came towards the end of the Mourinho era. It was clear towards the end of Jose's reign that he had lost the confidence of the board and subsequently the players. He was a very polarising figure and squad morale was at an all time low. Mourinho was sacked and we hired Solskjaer. This, in hindsight, was an even worse decision. Solksjaer created a squad harmony that, unfortunately, pandered to the will of the players. They were all happy at the club but they became set in their ways.

I have no insider knowledge of this but it seems clearer during the post-Solksjaer reign that the players care more about the provision they put in place off the pitch so much so that the performances on the pitch matter little. Now that Solksjaer is no more and the squad have to adapt to a new style of training and playing there are those who just don't have the mentality anymore to want to do it - they'll all feel as if they are being treated unfairly and unjustly. They will also see players like Ronaldo, a player who wants to win above everything, as a polarising figure because they are used to being told that their best is good enough and not being challenged to do more.

Ultimately, we would always recover from our post-Ferguson malaise if we had a competent board with a vision for success. In hiring and firing we have turned our players into a toxic group more bothered about being 'mates' that being footballers on the pitch for 90 minutes. It shows there is a fine balance between working hard and being supported mentally. It can go one way or the other and we have seen both ends of the spectrum with Mourinho and Solsjaer.

Now we are stuck with a group of players who felt vindicated in not wanting to play for Mourinho and who feel they shouldn't need to do more than Ole wanted because he was a nice guy. This is why we have fallen and it will take a long time to change these group dynamics to find a balance and allow us to compete again. My opinion is purely speculative as I have no insider knowledge of the squad and how they are together - but from what I have seen this is why I believe we struggle.

 

[OlsensHummelBoots]

Where has it gone wrong?

Fergie having his arse in his hands over horse spuunk.

The Glazers.

Fergie not condemning the take over.

Fergie managing the club decline whilst still winning titles.

Not a 'pop' at Fergie but let's call it for what it was.

Special mention to Ed Woodward who was an absolute calamity.

 

[Andersons Dietician]

There is a collection of events but really it started with Fergie seemingly not wanting to build another team and just somehow dragging another title out of let’s be honest an old and quite average squad that needed huge invesment.

He retires and Moyes shows too much respect to the previous regime and didn’t dismantle it ASAP. Another year of poor decision making and panic signings.

2- LVG first year panic signings look what we can do, 2nd year more youngsters and by the end of the year we looked as if some were starting to realise what was required. Personally I think getting rid of LVG when we did was the wrong decision especially for Jose. Should have given him another year especiallly with the signings that were rumoured for the coming season.

3. Jose nothing really needs to be said on this, this was the most ridiculous appointment since Fergie left. Panic buttons were pressed clawing to try and find an identity which was coming under the previous regime but bottled it.

4.Ole he certainly restored some sort of feel good factor but the limitations became apparent once there wasn’t any real structure or improvement in the players or technique.

5.Ragnick is interesting as what he’s best known for takes time to implement which is something he doesn’t have and we’ve seen when we do his way it’s kinda successful but we can’t sustain it and when we step away from his way and look more like Ole ball we just aren’t any good. So it’s like we are stuck in two modes of football and weirdly it’s unlike Ragnick will be here next season but we might or might not be spending time trying to implement his pressing technique.

I personally kind feel like the club really needs to commit to one style of playing football which maybe getting Ragnick in as a director would help us. United need to evolve and it’s all good saying the United way but the United way was winning football matches in an exciting manner. You can still do that being an aggressive front pressing team.

I just feel like the cycle will continue and we’ll flip and flop between ideas until someone gets a clue and sticks to their guns even if it means a little bit of hurt in the short term.

 

[AndyMUFC86]

when saf left

For me it was the second the glaziers took over. SAF papered over the cracks with his brilliance and when he left we were doomed.

 

[AndyMUFC86]

Oh yes, the Glazers benefited from taking us over when we had a very strong squad in 2005, with lots of potential. So their lack of investment, from 2005 - 2014 did not become apparent until after the greatest manager in history left.

Selling Ronaldo and signing Valencia typifies how much money we needed to save to clear Glazer debt.

This hits the nail on the head.

 

[AshRK]

Summer of 2009 when we let ronaldo and tevez go and bought oberton valencia and owen

 

[Lord of Blackhaven]

The OP is spot on that the malaise began under Fergie. Throughout the last 9 years I have always thought we were 1 great manager or 1 great player away from being back. Look at the impact Cantona had on a team who had bottled the league 6 months earlier. But things have gone too far now. With the spending power of City, Chelsea and now Newcastle coupled with the better acumen of Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs with are screwed. Without someone buying the Glazers out we will be scraping for top 6 for the foreseeable.

 

[Ixion]

Im surprised no one has posted this picture yet. Edit: beaten ^

 

[BluesJr]

2009. The only answer.

 

[Ali Dia]

Shifting Tevez for Berbatov was the start, and I love Berbatov. Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez were a great trio and, in the 08/09 season, we hardly ever played them together again. Then not replacing Tevez or Ronaldo with quality.

Some say Berba was the ready made replacement for an inevitable Tevez departure, but I'll never agree with that. We brought in Tevez to compete with Saha and Rooney. Berba was then brought in to replace Saha, and keep our depth in attack top tier. Then we settled after Tevez left.

This is it. Around the time we let Ronnie go and bowed out on Benzema, Hazard etc we went no value in the market and from then on we happily let city pick up excellent players for 40/50 million without any competition. There’s a knock on from that ever since. City have well and truly passed us by from an organisational standpoint and should continue to thrive post Pep. Liverpool are more like what we were. Very reliant on an excellent manager and CEO but a limited budget wisely spent on the right kinds of players. Their important players are right in their peak. Once Klopp leaves I think they go back into the mix with the rest of us.

 

[The Irish Connection]

The Glazers 100%

The frustrating thing is now, we’re arguably 5 players and a top coach away from functioning well and challenging. But they will get 3 and not move enough deadwood on.
We should be shouting from the rooftops about them every chance we get.

I just hope Rangnick can have a big positive influence in the consultant role.

 

[sunama]

When we hired Mourinho is when we killed our resurgence. Everything was flowing well till that terrible man came in.

The last trophies we won were under Jose Mourinho.
Our highest league points total since SAF left was also under Mourinho.
Given the current mess we are in, I'd happily have a manager who can win us trophies and get us a good points tally.

 

[sunama]

The day we hired moyes.

Agreed. The damage he did in 10 months cannot be underestimated.