Could we have done a worse job and had worse luck in the post SAF era?

[fergiesarmy1]

Our planning for stability and to remain some bit competitive post Fergie has been poor.
It will be interesting to see how long Madrid will take to shake things up and get back on track.I dont think they will be limping for 6 years like we have.

Their fans and sponsors won’t allow 6 years of disasters with nothing good on the horizon. Probably been a coup de tat by now there.

 

[Nou_Camp99]

Remember after Fergie nearly retired the first time and changed his mind we were told that the club would be ready when that sad day eventually came.

The last 6 and a bit years have been us being ready apparently. Hahahaha. Fecking dread to see how they'd have been had we not been.

Don't see the light at the end of the tunnel either. The club needs to be sold before we challenge for the big two trophies again. Could be another 10-15 years away. Who knows.

 

[RG 11]

Remember after Fergie nearly retired the first time and changed his mind we were told that the club would be ready when that sad day eventually came.

The last 6 and a bit years have been us being ready apparently. Hahahaha. Fecking dread to see how they'd have been had we not been.

Don't see the light at the end of the tunnel either. The club needs to be sold before we challenge for the big two trophies again. Could be another 10-15 years away. Who knows.

We were as far from ready as we could be. Fergie's decision to retire was sort of sudden but we really should've been planning for it every season once he was in his 70s. To make matters worse David Gill bailed as well and left everything to an amateur idiot like Woodward.

Even when Fergie was originally going to retire, wasn't Sven the person club chose to replace him? Fergie used to complain a lot about the transfer policy and wage caps during the previous ownership as well. We just rode the brilliance of the man for two and a half decades while focusing on commerce. The leadership at the club has always been quite suspect when it comes to football matters.

We really should've gone all out for either of Pep, Klopp or Mourinho instead of someone who never won an away game against top 4 just because he was scottish and looked like he works hard.

 

[Striker10]

Not really. It's been a disaster. The scouting, the buying and the idea that one player...will bring us back or that we're not short. People can convince themselves of all sorts but to be Glazers are not winners but people who bought into it and don't know how to recapture it. They're parasites. If you cannot compete and don't have the sense and talk about value...when you couldn't even afford the club to begin with....it's going to annoy the supporters. We're in a bad way because there is no direction. There is no clear vision. No one really knows what we're doing in the market. It would be tough with these sugar daddy clubs..but Moyes, LVG, Jose...disaster. We recovered a little under Jose but we are so short of players it's amazing. We've taken a step towards removing players - so let's see what can be done but even supporters now are eyeing up bargain basement deals. What the hell are our scouts doing?...

 

[RG 11]

• What was David Gill doing in helping us to prepare for SAF’s inevitable departure in his final years?
Why wasn’t there a cohesive plan in place when we knew how basically the whole club was built on him at this point?

• Why weren’t we in for players like D.Silva, Ribery and Aguero whilst focusing on value signings that ended up being more costly in the wrong run, with the amount of money that was spent by the club since, were the Glazers prepared to spend the money we’ve always had, out of fear of things getting really nasty after the Moyes debacle?

• Was there a manager that was a worse choice than David Moyes?
I never understood why it was Moyes and not Big Sam for example, they’ve had similar achievements and experience, the difference was that Sam had a better record against the top 4.

• We couldn’t have done a worse job in rebuilding the SAF team, We’ve spent almost as much as City and how the hell is our squad is in such a state?

• Could we have done a worse job even if we tried?
With the amount of poor decisions we’ve made in that time, if weren’t so filthy rich, could it have gotten us relegated by now?

Owners don't understand football. CEO who is an investment banker is in charge of the our transfer dealings. As long as the balance sheet looks okay, they really couldn't give a feck about the club.

For Woodward, he's going to keep riding us till shit truly hits the fan and then he'll bail on us and go take another top management position (similar to what Gill did tbh). For Glazers, I don't think they care too much as long as the club is attractive enough to fetch them a buyer. They're taking salary and dividends for over 10 years and will profit massively since most of the buyout was leveraged against the club. Once the club is obtainable enough for a buyer, they'll sell. Us being very highly valued by competing for trophies all the time doesn't actually make it easy for them to sell the club though so it's better for them to just pocket the money instead of spending 500m in one transfer window to get us back to the top.

 

[Revaulx]

It's tough to decide how much was down to Moyes and how much was down to the players themselves.

Either way, a return of 7th was criminal.

Rio and RvP were totally down to Moyes.

In his final years SAF had become brilliant (too brilliant, with hindsight) at squeezing the last remnants of life out of old and/or crocked players, by way of careful squad rotation and individually tailored gentle training programmes. Moyes thew all of that out of the window by making them run up slag heaps and playing them twice a week.

 

[Revaulx]

Stopped reading once it said Woodward clearly wants what’s best for the club.

Woodward wants what’s best for him and his bosses.

I’m not sure about this. Was signing Alexis on a massive contract best for his bosses? Lukaku? Di Maria? Rooney’s mega contract?

He’s an idiot who has wasted vast amounts of his bosses’ cash. But presumably he’s done so in good faith.

 

[Schmeichel's Cartwheel]

We've made a mess of it for sure. It's been much worse than I expected. I knew we'd drop off, but I thought 3rd-4th for 3 or 4 years before being serious title challengers. I did not expect 1 top 3 finish in 6 years and being regularly out of the champions league. The drop off has been dramatic and our downfall seems to be accelerating now. Finishing outside of the top 6 is a very real possibility this season.

Moyes and Ole are just bad appointments and had/have no business managing United. LVG and Jose were great managers, but we got them when their methods had been found out sadly. Football evolved and they didn't.

The vast majority of our business in the transfer market has been very poor too. Is there any signing we've made since 2013 that can be called an absolute hit? I don't think there is. You could argue Zlatan, but we finished 6th and he missed tons of chances. As crazy as it sounds, Sergio Romero is probably the closest. When your back-up goalkeeper has been your biggest hit in the transfer market in 6 years you know it's bad.

 

[Impulse]

We'd have been worse off if we stuck with Moyes for his entire contract.

 

[Bastian]

The article is interesting but the comparison with City really bugs me. They are clearly spending more than what is included in their financials. Never once has a player wanted to leave that club since the Arabs became owners. It’s already proven that Mancini was paid two salaries from separate companies, it’s highly likely every player is as well.

We don’t have direction and Woodward is the clear reason for this. The first step to correcting this club is removing him. No manager will be able to succeed with him above them. He’s so bad at negotiating in the transfer market in both selling and buying players. That has ultimately stunted us improving. Buying 3 players this summer whilst selling half the squad just proves he doesn’t have a clue. Dead wood may have been sold but we are fecked when we start playing Europa League, there simply isn’t enough players to cope with 2 games a week.

That article is spot on with its main point: footballing philosophy. And it lays the blame squarely on the owners and Woodward. I agree that the praise of City in general fails to highlight what kind of an operation they are, but in terms of best-in-class recruitment on all levels and having a clearly defined footballing philosophy, they've got it covered to a tee.

Every problem at the club, of which there are so so many, is a consequence of the overall leadership or lack thereof.

 

[Sky1981]

The biggest mistake we made is appointing moyes.

The rest is butterfly effect

 

[Beagle]

When Gill and Ferguson left the club it was setup to win, just needed fixes here and there to keep improving. All the staff under Ferguson knew the winning ways and would atleast keep it going even if the next manager just came in sat in his office chair and played Tetris all day. Moyes comes in and thinks hes the next big thing and fires most of Fergusons staff. This move alone was the one of the worse decisions a manager can make yet alone a club can make.

The board had no idea how to run a club that they left all things to the manager to run, as did Ferguson during his days. The board should have declined Moyes decision to fire the staff. This was the first of many bad decisions that would come year after year until we have reached this state we are in of starting from zero. Instead we could have continued with what Ferguson has handed to us and make small fixes and changes along the way to improve.

Why should he not have brought his own staff in? By giving the job to Moyes, the club clearly indicated he is good enough. It was very natural for him to implement his own approach without having some of Fergie's staff who might have undermined his decisions or they would have been too set in their ways. No top manager will be willing to work with staff inherited from their predecessors. Moyes was a seasoned premier league manager who had long standing ties with his own staff. He was quite right to do bring in those people.

At the end of the day, David Moyes did what he was capable of doing. He finished 7th which was probably his level and he might have pushed for top 6 given a few more years in the job. The mistake of appointing this mid table manager was made by Fergie himself. His biggest mistake by far.

But the downward trend even after sacking Moyes is a more deep rooted problem. This is another mistake by Fergie. That he failed to realize few, if any, modern managers would be able to replace everything that he did for the club. His influence, knowledge, man management ability, player judgement were all exceptional. So the club's structure was understandably dependent heavily on him. I don't think he fully realised how difficult it would be for someone to follow him. The club was not structured like other modernized clubs. It hadn't seen a new manager in 26 years! Fergie's transition could only have been planned by himself and by all accounts he didn't really plan it out well enough.