This is the bit that never computed for me. They bought the club and gave the CEO job to some finance guy who helped them with the negotiation. He then proceeded to blow a billion+ down the drain and the owners never batted an eyelid. It took the ESL fiasco to actually take him down.
How is it that an owner with a controlling stake doesn't care that the CEO is wasting so much money? I think it's public knowledge that Joel Glazer was looped in on basically every player transaction and he held the final yes or no. So he's somewhat involved.
More than being leeches (which they definitely are) I think they're just totally incompetent. Trust fund babies that lucked into their fortune and never had to make an honest living being hoodwinked by savvy CEOs / execs covering their own ass. They should just hand over the whole thing to Ratcliffe -- 10x more competent than Woodward.
In my opinion there's a short answer and a long answer to that. Both of whom are right but tackle the issue from different viewpoints
The short answer is that the Glazers tend to be very loyal to those who made them money, they are undecisive and they hate change. Woodward played a key role in helping them find the funds to buy Manchester United. Thus he's considered as someone loyal to the Glazers. In fact, up till this point he's the only non Glazer who owns Class B shares which is amazing considering how zealous they are with those shares. This sort of loyalty was shown to the likes of Murtough as well whose been described as Woodward's fixer.
The longer answer is that United's structure was never good to start with. We succeeded merely thanks to one man ie SAF who was able to tackle so many issues on his own (recruitment, team management, tactics, contract renewals, scouting, hiring of football people etc) and to bring so much success that the rest came easy (ie sponsors etc). Let's start with Edwards. He's lauded to be the man who invested heavily on the stadium and who brought SAF in. That's all true. However he's also the guy who nearly lost SAF simply because he couldn't be arsed to check how much salary managers were being paid at the time. If Graham (ex Arsenal) didn't step in by handling SAF a copy of his own contract then SAF would have left the club. That's not all. Throughout the years his overzealousness with money costed us players like Batistuta and how he believed that the European glory was a nice have as opposed to dominating the local pond. Batigol could have easily won us another CL to the very least.
Kenyon is known for loosening Edward's rigid wage structure. That allowed us to retain Keane and bring the likes of Rio. Yet Kenyon proved to be uninspiring at Chelsea with him messing big time with Kakuta's deal. Pen pusher Gill limited himself in supporting SAF without ever bothering to create a succession plan to the man let alone dragging United's football structure to modern times. When SAF left, Gill did what the Italians call a Schettino and he joined him. The least said about Woodward the better.
Which leads us to Berrata, specifically to Pep's recent rant about him. I don't know too much about the guy but from Pep's reaction the guy is fabulous in his job. A United with a truly excellent CEO who knows his stuff is indeed frightening and something most of us might have never experienced before
