When exactly did our decline begin?

Probably when we sacked Moyes without giving him enough time. We went into panic mode and are still there. We seem like a club that reacts rather than builds; reacts poorly i may add

Sorry but SAF has been gone for almost 10 seasons.

We can’t keep blaming him leaving. We’ve spent more than enough to have built a title winning team, we’ve just spent it poorly.

No strategy, no long term planning. Chuck money at it and hope it fixes things. Woodwards been as competent as Boris Johnson.

Summer 2009, for very obvious reasons.

Irwin99 said:

The blaming of LVG is wrong and so is the idea that he had much say in the transfer market. I think he even went on record saying "i got my 7th choice of players" in terms of transfer targets. Do you really think a man who coached the Ajax team in the nineties with Edgar Davids and who voted Roy Keane for the Balon d'or looked at Schneidelin and thought "wow, now that's a midfield player I wanna coach". Somehow I don't think so.

Regarding the gutting of the 2013 squad, Jose made a great statement when asked about the players that had left a few years later: he said "where are they now?". Do you think those players from the 2013 squad that were sold went on to have fantastic careers at top clubs? Danny Welbeck, Hernandez, Rafael, Cleverly, Evans, Buttner? The fact that that squad plus Smalling, Jones, etc. won titles speaks volumes about Sir Alex's managerial ability. That squad needed to be gutted after the Moyes debacle showed their true level but it's just a shame the deadwood was replaced by even more deadwood.

The truth is that the late SAF United teams were playing a very static brand of football and the cracks were being papered over for a long time. On this site around that time there was a thread called 'zombie football' and that characterized what a lot of fans thought about the team and how we felt that we were falling behind, especially after the 08 team had conquered Europe. So many match reports from that time always started with the line "United were not at their free-flowing best" that it became pretty laughable and there were times when we were battered at times by smaller teams but always found away to win.

LVG was a big failure at the club but he was the one manager that tried to get United to have more control of games and to improve our way in possession. In no way do I blame him for this sad state of affairs.

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see below….

Ludens the Red said:

oh yeah I’m not blaming LVG per se. His reign imo was just the start of atrocious decision making and spending which is still prevalent till this day. Those above him are to blame for his reign and allowing him that freedom to change the squad the way he did.

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Also, the players you named weren’t necessarily at the heart of the title win but they were good supplemental players with strong characters who all played their part in title wins minus buttner. They were content being squad players and weren’t prone to strops. I get that the likes of rio, veeda and evra were at the back end of their careers but just pulling all of that apart in two transfer windows wasn’t a good idea. What made it worse was they were replaced by mediocrity like Rojo, Darmian and falcao.

Bwuk said:

We’ve been rubbish for a long time. Bruno coming in and being unrreal papered over a lot of the cracks under Ole, until he lost form.

We’ve spend 100m on a RB & CM who can barely control a ball ffs.

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I feel the same happened with RVP. While we were much better than we are these days, the last two season under SAF we were pretty poor in our general play compared to previous seasons.

Only SAF could take that team to the title, the names were all there but the legs just weren't. Honestly think any other manager gets us top 4, maybe.

alexthelion said:

When we became a plc, it laid the foundations for all that was to follow.

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We became a plc originally in 1991 when we listed on London Stock Exchange to Fund OT revamp. Do not see how it led to our decline. And for the likes of Glazers it would have been even less cumbersome to buy a non-plc with limited or even one owner to negotiate and buy-out (as opposed to them having to gradually accumulate their stake, run tender offers, squeeze out etc - since we were a plc in 2005).

Martin Edwards was very eager to sell us to rich owners in the 80s - (including the ones with a history of shady dealings), when we were not plc yet, but the talks collapsed.

If anything, our plc status probably delayed the takeover like the Glazer one in my opinion. We might have been lucky and gotten better owners than them as llc but it has nothing to do with our organizational form per se.

Obviously when the great man left.

Ludens the Red said:

see below….


Also, the players you named weren’t necessarily at the heart of the title win but they were good supplemental players with strong characters who all played their part in title wins minus buttner. They were content being squad players and weren’t prone to strops. I get that the likes of rio, veeda and evra were at the back end of their careers but just pulling all of that apart in two transfer windows wasn’t a good idea. What made it worse was they were replaced by mediocrity like Rojo, Darmian and falcao.

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Well Smalling, Jones, Evans, Welbeck, Rafael were the players that were meant to be the future and not just squad players and I think we can all agree that virtually all of them weren't of the right quality; again look where most of them went and where they are now.

It does sound bad considering all that Sir Alex did but that really wasn't a classic United side he left behind. I agree with people that say the decline started in 2009. We just had some fantastic veterans and a god-like manager to paper over the cracks.

2cents said:

Summer 2009, for very obvious reasons.

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I was going to reply with exactly the same comment.

Tarrou said:

when the Glazers bought us

Fergie managed to paper over the cracks for a while

but selling Ronaldo and replacing him with Valencia says it all

not a top club mentality

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100% this.

Irwin99 said:

Well Smalling, Jones, Evans, Welbeck, Rafael were the players that were meant to be the future and not just squad players and I think we can all agree that virtually all of them weren't of the right quality; again look where most of them went and where they are now.

It does sound bad considering all that Sir Alex did but that really wasn't a classic United side he left behind. I agree with people that say the decline started in 2009. We just had some fantastic veterans and a god-like manager to paper over the cracks.

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Smalling, Jones, Evans, Rafael and Welbeck were great prospects. Every Utd fan at the time wasn’t complaining of those players taking us foward. Fergie did leave good youngsters behind. It’s not his fault they never developed.

It’s the equivalent of saying If you asked any Utd fan 2 years ago,
Rashford, Greenwood, Martial and Sancho was going to be the front line in the next few years, they would have bitten your hand off. Now they would swap them all.

It’s never that Simple.

JebelSherif said:

I assume that 'usual suspects' barb is aimed at me!

So let me retort: another Red Cafe member who cannot accept criticism of SAF whilst moaning that subsequent managers (but not Moyes) have been given 'too much time'... well on that remit SAF would never have been a success at Utd, he'd have been ejected after 7 months (or 3 years), before winning anything.

Fergie became too powerful, he fecked it up for Ole and he will feck it up for whomever the club appoint full-time too. It's also because as @Fluctuation0161 and a multitude of others have said: "terrible mismanagement by the Glazers", but I ask: why are the Glazers even here?

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The Glazers are here because we were a plc. And the value of football clubs was increasing so they knew it would be a cash cow. They managed a leveraged buy it which put debt on the club which should be regulated against (it may even be so now).

When Woodward walked in as CEO, when you are clueless in transfer recruitments and always end up overpaying for a player and placing him on a huge salary, you kill the hunger for improvement in him.

There should be a serious "drain the swamp" move by the glazers, get a competent director of football and a manager and give them the freedom to fix things up, starting from offloading majority of these players out.

GazTheLegend said:

@Kopral Jono our "decline" began the second leagues, F.A.'s and governments allowed disgusting entities and states to sportwash football clubs in England.

feck the revisionism and bullshit you read around redcafe. If the state of Abu Dhabi and their torturer owners didn't fund Manchester City, Manchester United would have won the league LAST YEAR - AND under Jose Mourinho when we finished second then. 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.

Yes our owners are crap and -they- shouldn't be allowed near a football club in England. But how do you compete with a literal country being allowed to own a football club and fund it from the ground up???? What if the USA bought Aldershot with a view to turning them into European Champions and funded them a billion every year. How do you compete with that? That's what our club is up against.

Yes - we failed and yes our owners, managers and players have not been at the level required for a club like Man Utd. But the real reason for our downfall came from outside football and that's a hill I will die on.

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Well said sir about City and Chelsea - this is the point some of us have been trying to make for some time.

Chelsea and Manchester City bought their success quickly by being funded with disresputable money and people who have connections to corrupt private organisations and corrupt government. Chelsea received the benefit of the deals their oligarch made some time before - this goes back to Boris Yeltsin's bargain sale of the Russian national assets and economic enterprises to men who were connected to all sorts of white collar and other criminal organisations

Manchester City of course are lavished with wealth inseparable from another version of oligarchy and its despotism in a different geographical location.
Some United supporters like myself, especially those who remember the club pre Sir Alex, have always said we do not want Manchester United to dominate by being in bed with those kinds of owners. The Glazers aint great but you will find it difficult to put their business matters in the same category as that of Abramovich and the Abu Dhabi regime.

As for the 'sentimentality' issue somebody pointed out regarding Sir Alex's brother and son - that is a valid point but a side issue in United's decline. We are not where we are today because Darren Ferguson had a run in the squad or because Sir Alex rightfully wanted somebody to have his back and whom he could trust absolutely at United. That was his brother - I don't know if he is still alive, I hope he is. Sir Alex' brother did not have the power to recruit most players and he did not select the squad.

And to cap it all off was the appointment of David Moyes who couldn't handle the job and compensated for it by making almost trivial demands into policies, didn't have the character to make use of the support around him and admit he needed help and similar shortfalls in managerial ability yet he was eased into the job. Unlike Sir Alex who had to face down hostile players and staff and plough his way through re-structuring the team with some supporters calling for his head continuously in the re-building phase. And inherited a squad that was nowhere near winning a title while Moyes got a squad full of winners.

Manchester United needs stability above all now - we won't attract the players we need for the right reasons if the merry-go-round of managers continues. And we need to give Rolf the time to re-structure and make the club one that looks worth playing for again at all levels. I can't believe the whingeing about how he is seeing what players can do on the pitch why is why some of them are getting time that some United supporters are getting all worked up about.

It's not hard to understand - we are nowhere near winning anything this year so the new manager has to experiment to some extent and it is better to do this now because we have no chance of the title and most probably silverware too.

Fergie had first-hand view of how effective modern can be when we played those two finals against Pep’s Barcelona. He then somehow thought David Moyes was the right man to carry us forward while City appointed Pep.

When you are at the top you must do everything possible to remain there, but we lost that opportunity. We will now have to wait on the sidelines for our moment.

Agree with some that say when the Glazers took over.

We've been reactive instead of proactive since they bought the club and it will take years to get on to the right path again.

2 obvious dates: selling Ronaldo and Tevez for Valencia and Owen, and (most obviously) SAF's retirement.
Would also add the 2011/12 season and the 6-1 derby defeat, after which I don't think there's been a long spell of pleasing and successful football.

I think there are more big matches/moments marking a decline in every tenure since then: Moyes lost 1-0 at home to Everton early on, then the consecutive heavy defeats to Liverpool and City that finished him, LvG breaking years of tradition by being destroyed by Arsenal, his dire second Christmas coming soon after being joint top, very meek surrenders in early home derbys by Jose, that Sevilla game, and of course his toxic last season, Ole's Europa misadventures against average opponents and the collapse of the "title challenge" last January, and the current run of games starting from Liverpool 5-0.

When we signed Valencia and Owen.

And in the same period the only midfielders we signed were Anderson in 07/08 and Nick fecking Powell in 2012. Neglected the midfield for well over a decade. A chronic problem and weakness under SAF that has carried on ever since.

It began with Sir Alex’s refusal to replace Ronaldo and Tevez with world class players. Then for equally unexplainable reasons he did not improve the midfield for almost 4,5 seasons. Instead of developing a proper structure of the club, handed over the reins on the basis of nepotism to Moyes.

Blablablabla.

Misérabilisme permanent.

The first time we paid a player outrageous wages.

Americanizing the football club killed it.

Kopral Jono said:

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.

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There is an easy answer for the no value in the market argument. Fergie never went for stars outside of the British isles with maybe one or two exceptions (Veron and arguably RvN). The idea what we used to compete for the best players is frankly a fabrication. If we take the equivalent of today with us competing for players with the likes of Real and Barcelona, that just was not the case under Fergie, we never went for the top, top talent in Spain or Italy.

The Glazers era came when Chelsea and later on City started competing with us over the local market. A market we had a monopoly on that was almost Bayernesque. Fergie had the most contacts and established relationships with players and their families before moving for them and here now was a new era with expensive agents and even young local talent being poached with teams able to offer similar if not more wages. So Fergie never really changed his stance, he just had more competition in the market he favored and his main transfer strategy (local, personality, contacts, ...) was simply outdated in the age of world wide networks, agents and data scientists. He still made it work obviously because he was a one off but the idea that he somehow became cheap couldn't be more misguided.

Last couple of seasons under Fergie. The squad was functional and competed with teams on the rise like City but alot of the magic had left the team.

Giggsy13 said:

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.

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When did Fergie ever buy players of that profile? By that I mean, talented on the cusp of becoming top players from La Liga or a Barcelona reject? I genuinely can't name a single player of that profile. Buying players like that require a whole structure around it with contacts and transfer networks world wide. It is why Wenger bought a lot of French gems or why Klopp signed a few players of similar profile from Germany. It is also why most of Fergie's transfers were local or virtually unknown/very young unpolished potential from abroad. Blaming funds for not competing for players we never traditionally went for has absolutely no foundation.

sunama said:

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.

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Trophies like the League Cup and Europa league are a nice memorable day and a welcome addition to the cabinet, especially number wise. Indicative of progress, however, they are not. If you are Atlético Madrid or Tottenham, you don't have the pedigree or name or finances to stand toe to toe with the elite. We do and did under Mourinho, those trophies were only gonna matter if they were matched by the substantial stuff. Is it better nothing? Sure. But for how long? The only indicator of success is how close you are getting on the pitch to competing with the best. Klopp's first years saw a clear progress in points, efficiency and style. It came without winning anything and yet the smart money was on them to build on his work. With Mourinho, it was always going to be a one off. That's not good enough for Manchester United.

I think our decline was always on the cards, was going to happen whenever SAF retired, our player recruitment since then has been abysmal.
We've completely ignored personality and character of our new signings and instead we've been focusing on their ability and stats and numbers, as a result of which we've ended up with players who have very little character and fight in them, they hide at the first instance of pressure, their confidence is paper-thin, they go into their shell and throw a tantrum when a manager raises their voice and calls out their mistakes (speculation), they are entitled millionaires who don't care as much about winning as long as their bank accounts are being regularly credited and they keep getting advert deals.

When SAF signed players, even if they were not world class, those players still performed to the max or thereabouts of their own potential and had the ability to raise their game occasionally for the big games, this current bunch is unable to fulfil their own potential on a regular basis, which is a huge problem because then the entire squad is performing to half of their ability because they don't have a fight in them. These are mentally weak rich kids who couldn't be arsed or just give up quickly.

I think the right question should be more "what did we do not to decline?"

Declining is the natural order of things. You peak and then you decline. Fergie timed his exit perfectly, the cycle was coming to an end like it was circa 2003 around the time Abramovic and Mourinho came in. The way we were set up was definitely not modern, how could it be when the people in charge were there for a thousand years and had their own trusted and proven ways of success? They did their job they way they knew would be successful and thank God to them. But after them, there was no reason we should be successful. We were starting over. The question is therefore what did we do then to make a successful start over? We spent a lot of money, that's about it really.

Bebestation said:

It happened during the SAF era.

Welbeck, Cleverley, Rafael, Ashley Young, Valencia who cant cross, Smalling and Jones, a non all rounded GK in De Gea etc. Players like Scholes, Rio and Giggs retiring almost in the same era. Carrick and Rooney being old. Not replacing Ronaldo initially. Covering alot of it up with RVP signing.

You can't blame SAF after 20 years; but then again I can't necessarily say thank you for the way he left the club either, alongside hardly any sign of a continuous DOF.

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What a car crash of a post!

Welbeck, Cleverley, Rafael were all academy players, De Gea has been one of the best goalkeepers of the PL, and Ashley Young and Valencia were both pretty good signings given the return we got from them.

Ultimately it’s not a complicated answer. The golden generation ended along side the class of 92 and the best manager ever retiring pretty much simultaneously.

You can argue the club should have tried to better prepare in hindsight but the incompetence of the Glazers and lack of forward planning, including an over reliance on SAF to basically do everything, was the issue.

Then there is our coaching, I fail to remember any player who improved after joining us, considering the fact that we're paying 50 60 80 m or thereabouts for players, why is none of them really improving or improving the team when they come in?
Below is the list of players we've signed since SAF retired. How have we failed to get better as a team despite these signings. Questions have to be asked about our coaching.

GK Valdes Romero Grant
CB Rojo Blind Bailly Lindelof Maguire Varane
FB Shaw Darmian Dalot Awb Telles
CM Fellaini Herrera Schneiderlin Schweinsteiger Pogba Matic Fred
AM Mata Mikhitaryan Bruno VdB
WF ADM Memphis Alexis James Amad Sancho
ST Falcao Martial Zlatan Lukaku Cavani Ronaldo

Irwin99 said:

Well Smalling, Jones, Evans, Welbeck, Rafael were the players that were meant to be the future and not just squad players and I think we can all agree that virtually all of them weren't of the right quality; again look where most of them went and where they are now.

It does sound bad considering all that Sir Alex did but that really wasn't a classic United side he left behind. I agree with people that say the decline started in 2009. We just had some fantastic veterans and a god-like manager to paper over the cracks.

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@Josh 76 makes a good retort about this and I agree. Back in 2013 I definitely and a lot of others were of the opinion that those mentioned players had a good future at United. People on here were pretty mad when Welbeck left. And yeah I get none of them went on to big things but they did fine here under Sir Alex.
To me a decline would be a significant change that alters results and league positions going forward. You say 2009 but we would go on to win 2 out of the next 4 league titles. Lost out on one via goal difference and another by a point to a side who scored 100+ goals. I’m not sure how in anyway that is a decline.
Our decline began when Fergie left and then once Van Gaal walked in.

We had the resources to prevent a decline, the league was quite weak after Fergie left for a few years and we wasted that opportunity to bring in suitable talent and a stable team, instead engaging in kamikaze spending and allowing managers too much freedom as if they were Sir Alex.

Theonas said:

When did Fergie ever buy players of that profile? By that I mean, talented on the cusp of becoming top players from La Liga or a Barcelona reject? I genuinely can't name a single player of that profile. Buying players like that require a whole structure around it with contacts and transfer networks world wide. It is why Wenger bought a lot of French gems or why Klopp signed a few players of similar profile from Germany. It is also why most of Fergie's transfers were local or virtually unknown/very young unpolished potential from abroad. Blaming funds for not competing for players we never traditionally went for has absolutely no foundation.

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Good post.

For the club itself it started with the Glazer takeover. For the team(s) it started with SAF leaving. He was the only thing stopping poor club management from rotting the club inside and out.

Squad-wise - 2011ish. Those last few teams won things because of SAF. I don't blame him for leaving a shit squad behind, but he massively over-trusted the abilities of the next manager.

Organisationally, the day SAF and David Gill quit. We tried to shoehorn people who didn't understand football into roles that needed that knowledge and instinct. The rot set in quickly and set in deep, and we've been trying to reverse its effects for the last few years. That reversing attempt has always been two steps forward, one step back.

RC89 said:

I feel the same happened with RVP. While we were much better than we are these days, the last two season under SAF we were pretty poor in our general play compared to previous seasons.

Only SAF could take that team to the title, the names were all there but the legs just weren't. Honestly think any other manager gets us top 4, maybe.

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People keep typing this, about those last two titles being down to 'the great man' as if it was a good thing. Yes, it might have been in the moment, but actually it did long-term damage to the club.

It might have actually been better if he had retired a little earlier, for the person(s) who followed him and for the club in general.

TheReligion said:

What a car crash of a post!

Welbeck, Cleverley, Rafael were all academy players, De Gea has been one of the best goalkeepers of the PL, and Ashley Young and Valencia were both pretty good signings given the return we got from them.

Ultimately it’s not a complicated answer. The golden generation ended along side the class of 92 and the best manager ever retiring pretty much simultaneously.

You can argue the club should have tried to better prepare in hindsight but the incompetence of the Glazers and lack of forward planning, including an over reliance on SAF to basically do everything, was the issue.

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Sure that's your opinion.

Ultimately from 2008 CL final reaching periods - if you think the next 5 years of our team was quality then that's fine and your opinion.

In my opinion we went down a level in those 5 years, which led to an extra level down when SAF left aswell.

Saf leaving us with rio, Carrick, Rooney, Ronaldo, Nani, Hargreaves, evra, vidic etc in their prime

Vs

Saf leaving us with a ready to retire soon rio, vidic, Scholes, Carrick, Rooney, average players like valencia who replaced Ronaldo, young who was average, evra also old and a shadow, de gea who was a single habit player vs VDS who was all rounded, Smalling and Jones, Powell -

the list goes on but if you think the quality was the same between those 2 teams then that's again, just how you saw it.

Theonas said:

When did Fergie ever buy players of that profile? By that I mean, talented on the cusp of becoming top players from La Liga or a Barcelona reject? I genuinely can't name a single player of that profile. Buying players like that require a whole structure around it with contacts and transfer networks world wide. It is why Wenger bought a lot of French gems or why Klopp signed a few players of similar profile from Germany. It is also why most of Fergie's transfers were local or virtually unknown/very young unpolished potential from abroad. Blaming funds for not competing for players we never traditionally went for has absolutely no foundation.

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Are you completely forgetting that we were in for Hazard and Moura but lost out on both deals due to agent fees? Or that we also bought Veron, Ruud, Hargreaves, Anderson Stam and Ronaldo? I have no idea what your point is but we bought big talents from the continent both well known and unknown gems like Park, Vidic and Evra. We just completely shit the bed acting like a big club again during the post-Ronaldo period from 2009-2011, a lot of that having to do with the Glazers damaging debt they put onto the club. We should’ve been investing heavily to replace Ronaldo to stay a force in Europe, that’s what big clubs do, but we sat on our hands while City, PSG, Madrid and Barca loaded up. We fell behind and now we are where we are partially due to that lack of ambition.

Ludens the Red said:

Good post.

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Not really.

Think it has already been said but selling Ronaldo and replacing him with Obertan, Valencia, Owen, Diouf etc. His genius and a decent spine made us competitive and we managed to blag a couple of leagues but in the background, City were laying some serious foundations, whereas we were not.

It's when SAF left, obviously. We won a feckin' league in 2013... so I mean if that's decline, i'd take some of that sweet decline right now.

Also, if SAF had continued to manage us over the next 5/6 years, he obviously would have rebuilt us (like he had done several times before) and we'd have continued to challenge.

So yeah, SAF leaving and bringing in Moyes = Decline

If we're talking this season specifically, it all fell apart when Ole decided to play a clearly injured Harry Maguire vs Leicester.

Theonas said:

I think the right question should be more "what did we do not to decline?"

Declining is the natural order of things. You peak and then you decline. Fergie timed his exit perfectly, the cycle was coming to an end like it was circa 2003 around the time Abramovic and Mourinho came in. The way we were set up was definitely not modern, how could it be when the people in charge were there for a thousand years and had their own trusted and proven ways of success? They did their job they way they knew would be successful and thank God to them. But after them, there was no reason we should be successful. We were starting over. The question is therefore what did we do then to make a successful start over? We spent a lot of money, that's about it really.

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Ask city if decline is a natural order or things. They will have successors in mind already and are already preparing for Pep‘s departure. The excuses your offering up are strange. Why? The reality is we fell behind amongst the European powers after selling Ronaldo and failed to invest the £80 million and more that should’ve went into rebuilding us into a champions league contender. Yes the power had shifted to Spain but that doesn’t mean you stop acting like a big club. Did Bayern sit still? PSG? If we consider ourselves on the level of the super clubs why did we stop acting like one when we had the greatest manager in history?

That failure to invest the Ronaldo funds was seen in our embarrassing champions league defeat in 2011. It was only after that loss and finishing runners up to City in 2012 did we inquire for moves with Moura and Hazard. By then it was too late, city had established themselves as a force and Madrid and Barca were on completely different levels to everyone else. The cold hard reality is that we let this happen, the board, Gill and the Glazers. We had the greatest manager this club will ever see and we took advantage instead of bringing in players that could see us compete for another champions league or 2. Scholes said it himself, he was shocked that he still had a regular place in the squad. Why weren’t we after someone like Silva? We bought Anderson and Hargreaves in the past.