Ed Woodward 2019 - Until all Arctic ice melts edition

[NinjaZombie]

If Woodward somehow pulls off Bruno, maguire and dybala before the window closes then he deserves a statue outside old Trafford.

Enough with these kind of posts.

He's been in charge of a United for six years and we are floundering. We have a bloated squad full of players who don't deserve their wages. We have not gotten anywhere near to winning the league in years.

feck Ed Woodward's statue. The least he should be doing is buying players.

 

[Renegade]

He's been hardly perfect, but since he took over he's been doing well on the transfer market. Much much better than David "Warchest" Gill did in his last years. It's hardly his fault that the top players he bought didn't work.

Moaners gonna moan, though.

He needs to get us a center back and a midfielder now, at least.

At least Gill could sell players. How the hell is Darmian and Rojo still on the books?

 

[Relevated]

There's an interesting part on evras interview with soccer am where he talks about when Woodward extended his contract without his permission. He says he rang and went mad at Woodward and Woodward replied 'you can't talk like that to me, I'm your director of football'.

If that's what he genuinely believes himself to be then that's probably the reason we're so far behind.


Edit: evra also says that Woodward told some othrr senior players like vidic and ferdinand that they're no longer needed.

 

[Shark]

If Woodward somehow pulls off Bruno, maguire and dybala before the window closes then he deserves a statue outside old Trafford.

Is this a serious post? firstly this isn't looking likely, secondly Woodward has been an utter incompetent disaster on the football side of things.

 

[Shark]

He's been hardly perfect, but since he took over he's been doing well on the transfer market. Much much better than David "Warchest" Gill did in his last years. It's hardly his fault that the top players he bought didn't work.

Moaners gonna moan, though.

He needs to get us a center back and a midfielder now, at least.

What about his managerial signings?

 

[romufc]

Enough with these kind of posts.

He's been in charge of a United for six years and we are floundering. We have a bloated squad full of players who don't deserve their wages. We have not gotten anywhere near to winning the league in years.

feck Ed Woodward's statue. The least he should be doing is buying players.

Ed Woodward gets paid very well to do his "job". So for the last 6 years the team has done so badly, he keeps getting a pay rise for under performing. Now fans think if he does what he is meant to he deserves a statue? No, he is just doing his job, which is to give the manager the best tools to succeed.

 

[ottosec]

What about his managerial signings?

Huh?

Except for Ole, he appointed the best available manager every time.

Compare that to Gill, who in a summer when Mourinho, Klopp, Pep, and Ancelotti were available appointed David fecking Moyes.

I do have a big issue with Woodward concerning managers, though. He failed to sack both Moyes and LVG in time. If he sacked LVG in December, we might have made CL that year.

 

[Thisistheone]

There's an interesting part on evras interview with soccer am where he talks about when Woodward extended his contract without his permission. He says he rang and went mad at Woodward and Woodward replied 'you can't talk like that to me, I'm your director of football'.

If that's what he genuinely believes himself to be then that's probably the reason we're so far behind.


Edit: evra also says that Woodward told some othrr senior players like vidic and ferdinand that they're no longer needed.

Yeah there's the full video in the Evra Interview thread here. https://www.redcafe.net/threads/patrice-evra-interview.449322/

 

[Gehrman]

Huh?

Except for Ole, he appointed the best available manager every time.

Compare that to Gill, who in a summer when Mourinho, Klopp, Pep, and Ancelotti were available appointed David fecking Moyes.

I do have a big issue with Woodward concerning managers, though. He failed to sack both Moyes and LVG in time. If he sacked LVG in December, we might have made CL that year.

TBH I think apart from Moyes, Woodward has been trying to do the right thing. Hiring the biggest proven managers to fill in after Fergie. Unfortunately he fecked off the best one in Klopp by trying to sell Old Trafford as Disneyland. It's easy in hindsight to say that LVG and Mourinho were not the right fit for us, but they had both won everything before especially Mourinho although he was coming off his worst season ever.

 

[Alabaster Codify7]

Safe to say dybala is Woodward facination than Ole and phelan's target?

Hmmm. I can see where you're coming from.

For me, there is something very uncomfortable about the Dybala situation. We haven't been after him all summer, but now he's been offered, we're going to take the opportunity.

Does that not sound a bit like the Sanchez situation?

"When a player like that becomes available, you do what you can to get him....." type thing. As in, has it been considered if he'd even fit into Ole's philosophy? Or he is too big of a name to turn down?!

 

[Sunny Jim]

Huh?

Except for Ole, he appointed the best available manager every time.

Compare that to Gill, who in a summer when Mourinho, Klopp, Pep, and Ancelotti were available appointed David fecking Moyes.

I do have a big issue with Woodward concerning managers, though. He failed to sack both Moyes and LVG in time. If he sacked LVG in December, we might have made CL that year.

That bolded part is not true. Its been reported that we approached all of them but for various reasons they coudln't/ wouldnt join us. Basically moyes was 10th choice.

 

[Patrick08]

Hmmm. I can see where you're coming from.

For me, there is something very uncomfortable about the Dybala situation. We haven't been after him all summer, but now he's been offered, we're going to take the opportunity.

Does that not sound a bit like the Sanchez situation?

"When a player like that becomes available, you do what you can to get him....." type thing. As in, has it been considered if he'd even fit into Ole's philosophy? Or he is too big of a name to turn down?!

His agent is talking to Woodward in London office, the sporting director is negotiating in London office, the player is talking with Juventus manager on his plans about him, but no one is talking to Ole from Dybala's side about how he plans to use him or if he suits the style or not.

 

[Alabaster Codify7]

His agent is talking to Woodward in London office, the sporting director is negotiating in London office, the player is talking with Juventus manager on his plans about him, but no one is talking to Ole from Dybala's side about how he plans to use him or if he suits the style or not.

Why would you be surprised at this if it was the case? It's not like we haven't made similar poor decisions in the transfer market before.

 

[jasT1981]

Even Paddy Power are mocking us now

https://twitter.com/paddypower/status/1156882796226498561

Tweet

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[KiD MoYeS]

Even Paddy Power are mocking us now

https://twitter.com/paddypower/status/1156882796226498561

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Paddy Power have taken the piss out of us, and every other club, since they signed up for Twitter.

 

[C'est Moi Cantona]

What about his managerial signings?

Of course, 'it's not his fault virtually all the players we have signed have been crap, it's the managers', well he signed the managers, 'well it's not his fault they are crap', well who's fault is it? Because this doesn't seem to happen at other clubs on the scale it does at ours, and Ed has been in charge to oversee all this, but all he seems to have got is pay rises for failure on the pitch, which much as big sponsorship deals, and a having a healthy ebitda is nice, is all I really care about.

 

[He'sRaldo]

Even Paddy Power are mocking us now

https://twitter.com/paddypower/status/1156882796226498561

Tweet

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No doubt after trawling through the forums and seeing all the moaning. We fans need to sell ourselves better at times.

 

[marktan]

When does Ed get back from holiday?

Seriously though he's a smart guy, in terms of our team we do need Maguire, Bruno and Dybala - a defender, a midfielder and an attacker (ideally a RW though). Ed's probably stalling so that we bring in one big marque signing right before the transfer window closes - rather than singing one early and then fans agitating for the other two as well. Pure conjecture but I can't see otherwise why these deals take so long to conclude, when Real Madrid did about ten signings a month ago.

 

[romufc]

When does Ed get back from holiday?

Seriously though he's a smart guy, in terms of our team we do need Maguire, Bruno and Dybala - a defender, a midfielder and an attacker (ideally a RW though). Ed's probably stalling do that we bring in one big marque signing right before the transfer window closes - rather than singing one early and then fans agitating for the other two as well. Pure conjecture but I can't see otherwise why these deals take so long to conclude, when Real Madrid did about ten signings a month ago.

I think he returns on the 8th August. Due at Carrington at 4pm, in time to try and negotiate a deal.

 

[groovyalbert]

Get. On. With. It.

FFS.

 

[Crustanoid]

Utter incompetence once again from Ed.

 

[AlexUTD]

Ed - Specialist in failure

 

[hungrywing]

You have to assume he's got to be held in a fair bit of contempt in front-offices all across the sport.

 

[always_hoping]

I have little of no confidence of Woodward pulling off these transfers. How he's still over transfers and contract dealings is proof if ever needed how poorly ran United as a club have been for the past 6 years.

 

[Adisa]

Failure.

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[Josep Dowling]

Hmmm. I can see where you're coming from.

For me, there is something very uncomfortable about the Dybala situation. We haven't been after him all summer, but now he's been offered, we're going to take the opportunity.

Does that not sound a bit like the Sanchez situation?

"When a player like that becomes available, you do what you can to get him....." type thing. As in, has it been considered if he'd even fit into Ole's philosophy? Or he is too big of a name to turn down?!

This is spot on. An expensive luxury player with no thought about where he will fit into our team. For me he’s a great player but if he doesn’t fit why buy him.

I have said a million times you look at our best side.

De Gea

Shaw
Lindelof
Smalling
AWB

Pogba
Matic
McTominay?

Martial
Rashford
Mata?

Where do we need players from that. CB, CM and RW. We haven’t been linked to a CM or RW all summer which shows to me the board and management are fecking clueless about improving this team.

We need to stop trying to sign big names. I would have been happier if we signed Ndombele and Malcom. At least they slot into first 11 formation Solskjaer has tried to play in his short period as manager.

 

[Patrick08]

There's an interesting part on evras interview with soccer am where he talks about when Woodward extended his contract without his permission. He says he rang and went mad at Woodward and Woodward replied 'you can't talk like that to me, I'm your director of football'.

If that's what he genuinely believes himself to be then that's probably the reason we're so far behind.


Edit: evra also says that Woodward told some othrr senior players like vidic and ferdinand that they're no longer needed.

Is this WWE character Vince Mcmahon we are talking about?

 

[Crustanoid]

He is the human embodiment of Syphillis

 

[Crustanoid]

Failure.

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Fvcking total moron

 

[bdspeedy]

We will find out in the next week whether Eddie is Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck.

 

[vidic blood & sand]

If the reports are true about Leicester demanding £90M for Maguire, then I can understand why United would back away.
But if the reports are also true about Spurs tying up a deal with Sporting about a deal for Fernandes, well

 

[oz insomniac]

Waking up early to check to see if anything concrete done under Teflon Ed in th transfer market to strengthen the club. Yet again, no conclusion as the window begins its decline into closure, it's so familiar under Woody , that enjoyment in supporting the club is eroded a little more.

There used to be a sense of fun and expectation in supporting Utd, particularly under SAF. There is little chance us older fans will walk away, but the younger generation I guess won't have the same passion and could well drift away.

If the hierarchy doesn't get their act together it will be another waster opportunity, the club that can do things others can't, is losing its way under the Glazer/Woodward direction, want to be proved a pessimist and signings eventuate, but little confidence in that happening . Hope by next week things have turned and Man Utd look like a vibrant and active club again and can compete with the top 4.

 

[golden_blunder]

Failure.

Tweet

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I wish people would stop posting this completely out of context. Edited to make it look like he said that

 

[Im red2]

Fantastic club hijacked by a bunch of money grabbers.

 

[elmo]

Think this is evaluated as: If a player is released on a free, then he needs replacing which is transfer fee and wages. Hence it is cheaper to offer a new contract to x player than buying a player and pay his wages. The issue is that the ability and suitability of said x player are not what drives the decision.

Which is fecking stupid considering some of the players he re-signed literally don't need replacing because they hardly play at all.

 

[Nights]

That bolded part is not true. Its been reported that we approached all of them but for various reasons they coudln't/ wouldnt join us. Basically moyes was 10th choice.

Yet Gill, the omnipotent CEO prior to Ed couldn’t convince any of those other candidates to join United? You know, the Biggest club in England, European powerhouse, perennial champions of England.

I’m not a big fan of Ed and he’s made some serious errors in judgement such as giving Mou a contract extension; but the caf seems to have extreme double standards ie. player signs and plays shit. Must be Ed’s fault and not the player/manager/coaching staff. Yet if the the player plays well, must be all down the player/coaching staff.

People want him to sign everyone quickly yet they whinge at the prices we pay. If you rush, then you pay the premium, especially after the mess Mou left us in.

 

[VJ1762]

An article from one of my favourite journalists in England, Barney Ronay, where he muses about United trying to recreate faded glories without a semblance of a plan.

There was an interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 this week about the notorious Portuguese man o’ war jellyfish. The man o’ war is of course the alpha of the jellyfish world, the big swinging tentacle of the deep ocean trench, not to mention the only jellyfish most people have heard of besides the ones that appear on English beaches in spring looking sad and dead and reproachful, surrounded by bottle tops and cigarette butts.

Except it turns out the man o’ war isn’t a jellyfish at all. It is instead a kind of co-operative, a fusion of many small lifeforms into one large, successful stinging thing. The overall effect is a high-functioning mini-society of cells and organs and venomous pincers, the marine equivalent of a furiously angry rolling maul in a 1980s rugby union international, all eye-gouges and V-signs and furious Scottish oaths. In the programme the man o’ war was presented as a successful quirk of evolution, the survival of the collective as opposed to the individual, sustained by that shared culture and purpose. And also as a metaphor for modern city life with its many diverse, interlinked, self-sustaining parts.
In fact the man o’ war works just as well as a metaphor for professional football clubs. Or at least for those clubs that like to mythologise themselves, to talk of an enduring club “culture”, some vital collective identity that must be honoured and nourished for the team to prosper – the Barcelona way, the Yeovil Town way. The parts may die and fall away. But the colony, the collective, the indispensable spirit endures.

It is a way of understanding the past that has clung most notably to Manchester United, clouding not just issues of team-building and executive appointments, but the club’s basic sense of its own happiness. The latest summer of rebuild has continued to grind on this week, with something epic in its sense of stasis. This a club that always seems to be trying to get back to something, to find the door it came in through. There is a way of making things work, but it seems to be tied to finding the old patterns, swimming the same way, a culture that must be rebuilt to look the same.

The presence of Ole Gunnar Solskjær as manager is the most obvious current symptom, the kind of appointment you might have expected from a seven-year-old with access to Google, but not necessarily the chief executive of one of the world’s largest football clubs. Darren Fletcher has since been talked up as a possible director of football. Rio Ferdinand is in the mix. Why not Chris Eagles, Lee Martin, Clive Tyldesley or drop-kicked Crystal Palace fan Matthew Simmons?

Meanwhile Solskjær has stuck to the same narrow cultural view that got him the job in the first place, to the extent that he already looks like a kind of novelty appointment, a Britpop version of the real thing, sat in the back of his black cab, Paul Scholes up front tipping his bowler hat, talking with grating certainty about doing things The Manchester United Way, about Manchester United being different, playing up the echoes of Fergie time, the old, dead pointless glories.

It is a delusion that continues to gum the works. This week there was further confusion over a social media video of Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford showing off their messy room on holiday. Imagine Bryan Robson’s reaction to that tangled bed linen. What would 1908 and 1911 title-winning manager Ernest Mangnall say about that bloke pretending to have sex with his pillow? The colony is unravelling. The present continues to betray the past.

Whereas in reality this is all entirely misguided. The idea that some innate winning culture exists, some golden thread within these ever-changing commercial beasts is in itself a myth, and one that United are far from alone in following. Elite level football is shot through with the idea of cultures and “philosophies” and DNA. Frank Lampard’s possible return to Chelsea has led to much frowning speculation over whether the philosophy of Frank Lampard will fit with the philosophy of Chelseafootball club (it, you know, probably will).

Look properly and there are few periods of success in any sport that haven’t involved junking much of what went before. The opposite is closer to the truth: chuck out the chintz, tear apart the colony. Matt Busby’s time at United was built on rejecting the brutal culture he’d found as a player and building something else. Alex Ferguson had to spend five years helping the whole place walk off a mind-bending hangover before he could go forward. Arsène Wenger didn’t recreate The Arsenal Way, he binned it completely.

Still, it isn’t hard to see how this kind of myth-making gains a foothold. Supporters want to believe in the idea of a calling, a culture, something innately right and good. It is intoxicating. It mixes memory and desire. We all want to be told the past was great, that it will rise again, that it will taste just the same.

Meanwhile for the owners of a club like United, intent on nothing else but sweating the asset, success is less important than the maintenance of a brand, retaining that core, deeply wedded support. Let’s face it, United would probably reappoint Ferguson if they could, just for the partner-buzz, the revenue uplift, the social media eyeballs.

There is no sense of any hunger for a proper plan while the business thrums on. In the meantime the past will continue to cloud the future. The clubs leading the way will continue to become more effective machines. And Manchester United will continue to linger in its own timeline, clanking shut the doors on the DeLorean, cramming the furnace with coal, creaking out across the prairie once again in pursuit of the year 1985.

The article is a month old, so apologies if anyone has posted it beforehand.

 

[klayton88]

I 100% legit think we've half arsed attempted to go for these latest linked players, knowing full well we won't get them or pay the demanded fee so the day after the window closes we'll hear things like 'won't be held to ransom' 'volatile market' 'no value in the market'. These latest rumours I'm convinced are a save face for Woodward and club when they fail to deliver once again. I legit see no signings happening. It's become too predictable.

 

[RG 11]

Has proper potential to be worse than 2009 when we lost Ronaldo and signed obertan, Owen and valencia.

 

[Jim Beam]

Has proper potential to be worse than 2009 when we lost Ronaldo and signed obertan, Owen and valencia.

We still had a monster team then.