Redplane
( . Y . ) planned for Christmas
Finally I know what it must be like to hang out on the Barca or Real forums.
Carry on.
Carry on.
I feel the same way on waiting. It's just tough because there aren't many links to players right now. Season is starting for us in a couple days. If we had Bruno earlier in the winter I guarantee we would have gotten more points.Just because the window is still open, I'll wait to pass judgement. But gosh, the stench of incompetence is thick in the air. If we finish with only VDB signed, after the momentum we garnered at the end of last season, then I'm not sure there'll be any point in ever expecting us to get back to the top under this ownership. We'll just be a top 4 chasing club, serving only to pad their wallets. But like I said, I'll wait 3 weeks to judge...
Good point. I personally think our brand is not increasing in value or attraction. We have been spending enormous sums just to stay in the top 4 race. Could Woodward have spent more wisely (Like FSG and Pool) and actually won trophies - a far superior rate of return?Is he, though? We've spent incredible amounts of money on both transfers and wages and have very little success to show for it, especially compared to what you'd expect from a club of our stature, and a club with our expenditure.
Even if we look past the fact that we've overspent on handfuls of garbage players in the last seven years, the money received from consistently playing in the Champions League and just being a competitive and marketable club would have probably outweighed the extra expenditure required to get to that level, especially long term. Kids growing up today aren't looking at our club any more, like they used to 10-25 years ago. Compared to Liverpool, City, Real Madrid, Barca, PSG, Bayern and Dortmund we don't have as many star players, we're not as entertaining to watch, we're not winning the big trophies and we're not as fun to play as on FIFA, and the result of that is that less kids are growing up as United fans nowadays. Sure, we're still pulling in fortunes on sponsorship deals, but it's off the back of the work done during the Fergie era that caused throngs of kids, such as myself to fall in love with the club and the football that it played, and not because Woodward is such a savvy business man. That gravy train is going to slow down if we don't get our act together quickly. The fact that we lose out on a big chunk of the Adidas money if we don't qualify for Champions League shows how important performance is from a financial perspective, and if Woody's just going to sit there with is hands in his pockets while our closest rivals are in full-on Arms Race Mode we're basically throwing more money down the toilet without even having any new players to show for it.
At the end of the day, Woodward is doing a pretty average job of generating short term profits, but if he'd had the brains to hire better people to deal with player and manager recruitment we would probably have spent less on transfer fees and wages, while performing better as a team, which in turn would have allowed Ed to negotiate even better sponsorship deals because of our increased exposure and marketability. It's all hypothetical, of course, but does anyone honestly believe we're even close to maximizing our profitability under Ed? If the answer is no, he's not doing well for his employer.
"Woodward said: “I don’t like the fact that, in the list of 25 players in the Ballon d’Or, we’ll have Robin (van Persie) and Wayne (Rooney).There's absolute no evidence what so ever of that being true
Obvious as that. There is a reason why no club (except Chelsea who had a transfer ban and got 140m or so for Hazard) are spending big money.Strange to say, but in this moment is important to not spend big money, because in 6 months you could get players with 50% discount with a probably incoming new lookdown during this winter
50% discount is a bit much. Do you really think Sancho will go for 50 million in Jan/next summer. Just don't see it happening. You could save 15 odd million but then again other clubs could also go for him pushing the price up or lowering our chances. I'm not convinced by the drastic impact of Covid on prices. Would Havertz normally cost 150 million? I don't think so.Strange to say, but in this moment is important to not spend big money, because in 6 months you could get players with 50% discount with a probably incoming new lookdown during this winter
Then why waste the whole summer pretending to purchase a 100m player? Surely the club could have easily bought cheaper alternatives like Perisic, Telles etc and sold some deadwoods to improve the overall quality of the squad. I think your point would have been valid if the club decided against 100m purchase but strengthen other areas. The season is starting this weekend and so far nothing has been done apart from vdb.Strange to say, but in this moment is important to not spend big money, because in 6 months you could get players with 50% discount with a probably incoming new lookdown during this winter
There is still time before the window closes. We don't need any new players to beat Crystal palace or Brighton so the season start is relatively straightforward.Then why waste the whole summer pretending to purchase a 100m player? Surely the club could have easily bought cheaper alternatives like Perisic, Telles etc and sold some deadwoods to improve the overall quality of the squad. I think your point would have been valid if the club decided against 100m purchase but strengthen other areas. The season is starting this weekend and so far nothing has been done apart from vdb.
Whilst I agree to a.point, it can be a false economy, i wouldnt scrimp and bargain for every last penny at the cost of providing the best service or product I can. If you make your core product/service the absolute best it can be profits will follow.You've mentioned in previous posts that you are a business owner yourself, right?
If you owned United and had zero emotional attachment, how would you operate?
Would you not squeeze every bit of discount on the transfer and agent fees? Negotiate personal terms that are in line with long term budget? Delay costs to the absolute latest?
I also don't like it but my rational side completely sees the logic and agrees with it.
If we don't get our targets, I assume they were out of financial reach and made no sense considering our budget limitations (we do have such, contrary to popular belief). And I don't think settling for "second-best" targets and buying players just for the sake of buying players, will do the club any good.
I really can't understand why so many people are struggling with this concept. This new collective outburst is really quite bizarre. Is it some sort of Covid related outpouring of pent up aggression and frustration or something?There is still time before the window closes
It’s literally insane that the club is able to remain competitive with those kind of numbers. We all kinda know the situation, but when you see the visualization...
Again, Woodward doesn't control the football side of things.Yeah, like you. You have feck all evidence for your standpoint.
Let's have a look at the cold, hard facts. Zero PL titles under Woodward, Zero CL titles under Woodward. We won the PL the season before he came in. Now we're nowhere near. 5 managers later, might I add.
They're the facts.
I was thinking of all the high level trumpeting and how long it takes to get results. But you are absolutely right!In that there's a massive cock involved?
You do realize this is literally months after he took on his new role of CEO? Have you bothered to read his more recent interview with UWS fanzine?"Woodward said: “I don’t like the fact that, in the list of 25 players in the Ballon d’Or, we’ll have Robin (van Persie) and Wayne (Rooney).
“I don’t like the fact that there are consistently more players from Spain on that list.
“We as a club should be aspiring to have the best players playing for us. We’ve had that in the past. We’re in for players if the manager wants to be.
.........
Asked if United would lose a player like Cristiano Ronaldo to Real in the future, he added: “We won’t lose on price.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ma...oodward-insists-manchester-united-6251411.amp
Right. It's not Woodward famously said these things. It is just managers and not him also that was interested in bagging galacticos......
"I want everyone to know that everyone at the club, not least me, is aware we are not where we need to be right now, relative to the standards we set ourselves.
Recruitment isn't everything, but it's pretty close. You have to get that right and we haven't done that consistently enough in the past. I want to try and explain how we have evolved it. We have changed the recruitment structure so that it doesn't look anything like it did a few years ago. We have invested a lot. We're confident that we have a disciplined process that works. That's partly evidenced by what happened in the summer, but we need to judge over a period of time.
We've added scouts, increasing from 12 to 60, including academy scouts for greater breadth and depth. That allows us to act quicker when someone emerges. We've also put a big investment into our own software system. It's a bespoke system, not off the shelf. We looked at the size of our data and video analyst teams. We've realised that we needed to invest there and we've increased that by three or four times. We've also taken the chief scout role and evolved that, adding other people who can watch live games and recommend players.
The decisions related to recruitment are all taken by football experts. My involvement is signing off the money. The manager has a veto on a player - we would never sign a player the manager wouldn't want because he wouldn't play him. But we also feel the recruitment department, the football experts, should have a veto too.
The system wasn't set up in the right way. Twelve scouts reporting to one chief scout was more set up to say no — too many exceptions to the process were made historically while this was being fixed. We also have to hold our hands up and say that recruitment wasn't at its best in recent years. We feel that we now know who our best scouts are. The idea is to recruit in a closed environment, rather than listening to the press or getting distracted by conflicting agents' claims. We try and make cold decisions based on information.
I've got no interest in holding onto power. I like to delegate as much as I can. I'm not making day-to-day football decisions and there's not a huge amount for me to give up. I don't get involved in recruitment like people think I do. There's a myth that I look at YouTube and choose players. I don't. Having an eye for players is an art. I have no interest in doing that. I just want to have a disciplined process because if you are spending a lot of money on a player you have to make sure you get more right than wrong.
Where I get involved is that I have to sign off the money, yet when you have target one, two or three from your process I feel fine going after the number one target and, if it's not to be him, then number two or three. I learn every day; it's an unbelievable club, the biggest in the world. The scrutiny in the last 12-14 months is a reminder of that.
As for regrets, of course I have some. I can't say some. I also regret the communication early on around the commercial success. They were statements in earnings calls about the financial strength of the club. People have listened to that and decided we don't care about the football side. I want people to feel comforted that this is not the case.
One [regret] is how that quote [performances not effecting commercial side] came across — what I meant was that sponsorship are long-term deals. They don't go up and down based on playing performance."
Then we also have another bloke at OT telling the scouts that a players dad is too fat, that players like Bruno give the ball away too much etc.Don't know why we are all so worried about missing out on Sancho, when Woodward has made it perfectly clear in the past that United have an absolutely world-beating scouting system at their fingertips.
Rest assured, we will have people in every corner of the globe feeding player information back to the superbrains at Carrington. Indeed, just like last summer, we will surely have a shortlist of 800+ players for that right wing position - Ed told us this is how we work. I look forward to seeing who the top class alternatives are...
I don't think there is significant evidence to prove that buying early leads to better product. If anything, Bruno coming in late in January serves as proof for the opposite.Whilst I agree to a.point, it can be a false economy, i wouldnt scrimp and bargain for every last penny at the cost of providing the best service or product I can. If you make your core product/service the absolute best it can be profits will follow.
In my opinion what we are witnessing is not strategic caution but a failure of ambition. It stretches credibility that the executives who have consistently made wrong choices for United have suddenly become strategic geniuses.There is still time before the window closes. We don't need any new players to beat Crystal palace or Brighton so the season start is relatively straightforward.
Being cautious in this economy is the right move.
This tells you exactly what is wrong with the running of the club. We are a cash cow for the ownership that are making bank.
I guess that entirely depends on how liberal you are when defining 'competitive'It’s literally insane that the club is able to remain competitive with those kind of numbers. We all kinda know the situation, but when you see the visualization...
Not on Woodward, Glazers sign the cheques.We've left ourselves handicapped yet again compared to our rivals. Well done Ed.
Agreed.This summer now has disaster written all over it and what a massive shame it will be. I know people are likening this to 2018 but to me it’s entirely different. At that stage I wanted Mourinho gone, he had sunk money into a pit with nothing to show for it and we still played horrible football. Now I just feel we are so close, I feel with even 2 more great signings we can compete for the title. As it is there is still reason to be excited by the season but the club will have taken all of our momentum away.
May as well give up and look forward to relegationWe've left ourselves handicapped yet again compared to our rivals. Well done Ed.
Yep, we are only playing friendlies this year.It's not a competition
It’s on all of them. Bunch of cnuts.Not on Woodward, Glazers sign the cheques.
Have they been outspent by Leeds and Aston Villa too?Finally I know what it must be like to hang out on the Barca or Real forums.
Carry on.
Iv no doubt the Sancho deal cash situation is the Glazers fault. However Ed should be held accountable he should work with Ole for cheaper alternatives rather then Sancho. Wasting all this time with one player and leaving the squad weaker is his fault. It’s literally his job.Attention needs to turn to the Glazers. This guy is a nobody, he only does his masters bidding.
I can't for the life of me think Ole a) only wants to be Sancho and that's it - he won't accept any other right wingers and b) Only wants to buy a right winger and that's it.... so unless we're completely broke (which would be a whole other issue) then Ed clearly has to be held accountable.Iv no doubt the Sancho deal cash situation is the Glazers fault. However Ed should be held accountable he should work with Ole for cheaper alternatives rather then Sancho. Wasting all this time with one player and leaving the squad weaker is his fault. It’s literally his job.