Its not all Woodward's fault…(don't hurt me)

[Alabaster Codify7]

Basically, this guy is our DOF. He just won't officially name himself that, publicly, because he knows what sort of furious backlash that would cause - because he literally doesnt know a single thing about football, and it would confirm to us fans that our DOF isn't actually interested in the football side of things, just making money and business.

It also explains why we haven't hired one. We already have one, and he isn't going to make himself redundant by replacing himself.

Club is fecked. Completely fecked, top to bottom.

 

[johanovic]

Its easy to spend money poorly, lots of clubs do it irrespective of the manager. We do know from comments in the press by the managers and the club that our club was unable to land the players on the manager‘s shortlists. They had to look beyond. The club also bought players the managers didn’t necessarily want, which is why so many big signings rarely played. You’re thinking money spent is backing. It isn’t. It’s just money spent.

"Money spent is not backing the manager it´s just money spent" Are you serious? "We don know from comments in the press by the managers and the club that our club was unable to land the players on the manager‘s shortlists" So you are also stating that Lukaku,Matic,Lindelof,Sanchez,Fred,Dalot,Pogba,Mkhitaryan,Bailly,Ibrahimovic,Martial,Schneiderlin,Depay,Darmian,Schweinsteiger,Di Maria,Shaw,Herrera,Rojo,Blind,Falcao,Mata and Fellaini were all signed by Woodward personally and with Moyes,Van Gaal and Mourinho not wanting them. I´ve read some strange things on this forum but this must be in the top 5 of it. To this day no player is signed by UNITED unless the manager approves it.

 

[r3idy]

The buck stops with Woodward for this mess. Simple as that. The Glazers are absentee landlords. They don't give a flying fig but do you know what, we know exactly where we stand with them. We make the profit, they take their money and we get around £80m to spend a year there or thereabouts.

Woodward though is completely different gravy. He is supposed to be this business genius who can turn water into wine and feed the 10,000 from two loaves of bread and a few fish. Is he that good? My opinion is that Man Utd is a money-printing machine globally. He literally could not get that wrong if he tried. However, his deficiencies are plain to see where football is concerned.

Dealing with Agents: No matter if you can't out muscle your competitors by the sheer brute force of transfer bids and wages, why on earth would you go to the press and say 'Man Utd can do things in the transfer market, other clubs can only dream of' or put it another way Hey Mr. Mendes and Raiola, here's an invitation to strip us down and bend us over on every deal. If it's not him and it is Matt Judge who is making these awful transfer decisions then he should have a clear vision to fire him.

Contract Renewals and spiraling wages: So let's take a look back at Pogba and De Gea soap operas over recent seasons. Both you can argue are in that category of top world-class players. Next thing Alexis Sanchez rocks up on his reported £350k- £450k a week. Next thing Phil Jones and Ashley Young also sign extensions with increased wages. So if you are DDG the first thing you will be saying is for the past few seasons I have won more games in net than what Sanchez has scoring goals, I want to be the highest earner. Then if you are Pogba, you are thinking, I'm a world cup winner, just won the Europa League. Utd is dishing out new wages for bang average players, therefore, I Want to be the highest earner. Woodward sees customers we view ourselves as fans. Sanchez (See Falcao, Di Maria, Scheweinsteiger before him) was a vanity buy to sell shirts. So not only did Woodward feck over some of his best players at the time by signing Sanchez, he fecked himself over as well. He (or if you want to be sympathetic to him) has allowed the club to let wages spiral out of control.

We can call City all we want for Oil Money but at least they are responsible for their wages and tie bonuses to actual performance on the field.

Recruitment policy

- Paying more for Fellaini than what his release clause was.
- Not recruiting in areas we need strengthening and over recruiting in areas where we had cover.

Lack of vision from the top.

Won't accept his own shortcomings

Any good leader will know there own strengths and weaknesses. Yes, he can go and broker a deal for the latest Noodle Franchise in Japan but can he see that there are disjointed and coherent recruitment and retention policy. Are we managing players into the first team set up (Daniel James) or managing players out of the squad (Replacement for Herrera). Everything stinks of crisis management and putting out fires. Again you look at City. David Silva's replacement bought two years ago and he is already ripping up tree's. It's seamless, it's professional. We sell Lukaku which for me was 100% the right thing to do but not to replace was irresponsible because all it takes is one or two injur....................oh wait.

The club is in dire need of a Techincal Director / Sporting Director / Director of football whatever you want to call it. If nothing else to identify in an objective way when players are on the downward trajectory and how you manage to replace them. But no this guy just gives fluff through co-ordinated press briefings. 'Man Utd are seriously looking at'.............................'Man Utd are reviewing facilities as part of a long term blah blah'................................'Man Utd are considering'.....................It's just words, hollow words, and no action.

What he fails to see is that if the club get it right ON THE PITCH then the Benjamins will keep on filling the till.

I firmly believe the majority of our problems fall at Woodward's desk. Either through his own deficiencies, ego or lack of clear thinking.

 

[sugar_kane]

He should take the blame for the crap manager hires and lack of a DOF - 100%.

However, I don't like the way how the likes of LVG and Mourinho are absolved of blame. They had us playing shit football and recruited terribly. In the case of Mourinho there were lots of other ways he was damaging the club as well.

Even if they didn't always get their main targets (which club does?) they were given decent budgets and they wasted them.

 

[Amerifan]

"Money spent is not backing the manager it´s just money spent" Are you serious? "We don know from comments in the press by the managers and the club that our club was unable to land the players on the manager‘s shortlists" So you are also stating that Lukaku,Matic,Lindelof,Sanchez,Fred,Dalot,Pogba,Mkhitaryan,Bailly,Ibrahimovic,Martial,Schneiderlin,Depay,Darmian,Schweinsteiger,Di Maria,Shaw,Herrera,Rojo,Blind,Falcao,Mata and Fellaini were all signed by Woodward personally and with Moyes,Van Gaal and Mourinho not wanting them. I´ve read some strange things on this forum but this must be in the top 5 of it. To this day no player is signed by UNITED unless the manager approves it.

You’re conflating successful purchases with unsuccessful ones while completely missing my point.

Have a good day.

 

[Amerifan]

The buck stops with Woodward for this mess. Simple as that. The Glazers are absentee landlords. They don't give a flying fig but do you know what, we know exactly where we stand with them. We make the profit, they take their money and we get around £80m to spend a year there or thereabouts.

Woodward though is completely different gravy. He is supposed to be this business genius who can turn water into wine and feed the 10,000 from two loaves of bread and a few fish. Is he that good? My opinion is that Man Utd is a money-printing machine globally. He literally could not get that wrong if he tried. However, his deficiencies are plain to see where football is concerned.

Dealing with Agents: No matter if you can't out muscle your competitors by the sheer brute force of transfer bids and wages, why on earth would you go to the press and say 'Man Utd can do things in the transfer market, other clubs can only dream of' or put it another way Hey Mr. Mendes and Raiola, here's an invitation to strip us down and bend us over on every deal. If it's not him and it is Matt Judge who is making these awful transfer decisions then he should have a clear vision to fire him.

Contract Renewals and spiraling wages: So let's take a look back at Pogba and De Gea soap operas over recent seasons. Both you can argue are in that category of top world-class players. Next thing Alexis Sanchez rocks up on his reported £350k- £450k a week. Next thing Phil Jones and Ashley Young also sign extensions with increased wages. So if you are DDG the first thing you will be saying is for the past few seasons I have won more games in net than what Sanchez has scoring goals, I want to be the highest earner. Then if you are Pogba, you are thinking, I'm a world cup winner, just won the Europa League. Utd is dishing out new wages for bang average players, therefore, I Want to be the highest earner. Woodward sees customers we view ourselves as fans. Sanchez (See Falcao, Di Maria, Scheweinsteiger before him) was a vanity buy to sell shirts. So not only did Woodward feck over some of his best players at the time by signing Sanchez, he fecked himself over as well. He (or if you want to be sympathetic to him) has allowed the club to let wages spiral out of control.

We can call City all we want for Oil Money but at least they are responsible for their wages and tie bonuses to actual performance on the field.

Recruitment policy

- Paying more for Fellaini than what his release clause was.
- Not recruiting in areas we need strengthening and over recruiting in areas where we had cover.

Lack of vision from the top.

Won't accept his own shortcomings

Any good leader will know there own strengths and weaknesses. Yes, he can go and broker a deal for the latest Noodle Franchise in Japan but can he see that there are disjointed and coherent recruitment and retention policy. Are we managing players into the first team set up (Daniel James) or managing players out of the squad (Replacement for Herrera). Everything stinks of crisis management and putting out fires. Again you look at City. David Silva's replacement bought two years ago and he is already ripping up tree's. It's seamless, it's professional. We sell Lukaku which for me was 100% the right thing to do but not to replace was irresponsible because all it takes is one or two injur....................oh wait.

The club is in dire need of a Techincal Director / Sporting Director / Director of football whatever you want to call it. If nothing else to identify in an objective way when players are on the downward trajectory and how you manage to replace them. But no this guy just gives fluff through co-ordinated press briefings. 'Man Utd are seriously looking at'.............................'Man Utd are reviewing facilities as part of a long term blah blah'................................'Man Utd are considering'.....................It's just words, hollow words, and no action.

What he fails to see is that if the club get it right ON THE PITCH then the Benjamins will keep on filling the till.

I firmly believe the majority of our problems fall at Woodward's desk. Either through his own deficiencies, ego or lack of clear thinking.

While I doubt he had personal involvement in most of this, as CEO Woodward is responsible for the organization’s shortcomings, no question. We are told things are improving internally. We’ll know if and when they do, because it will be reflected in results on the pitch.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

Investment Banker

He's a fecking Compliance Administrator.

 

[Red Dreams]

The Stretty needs to walk out in protest today.

 

[Adnan]

Say what now.
Think you may have replied to the wrong post.

I agreed with your post, then proceeded to add my own thoughts.

 

[Aouer-United]

To me

It's mostly Gills'fault for underinvestment in scouting network, our recruitment is arguably responsible for the decline of United.

By the time Ed woodward take over, it was too late and he couldn't turn it around, he gave €800m to LVG and Jose to spend on players, many of them turn out to be shit.


I don't think Ed Woodward is good enough but he's not to blame for our decline, it's Gills that started it first then Ed Woodward couldn't turn it around. We need a CEO who can turn it around and make the right decision even if it doesn't suit us well.

 

[tjb]

We have real issues when it comes to negotiations. We spend weeks and weeks trying to get transfers during the transfer window despite the fact that we talk about it throughout the entire season. Missing opportunities to sign impactful players. It's clear now that we do not actually ruin players, the players we have been buying have simply not been good or consistent enough. From the outside looking in, we seem pretty disjointed. Having so many difficulties dealing with agents, where other clubs around us don't seem to have their issues publicized in this regard. Fergie and Gill may have been good at handling these agents and anticipating the right signings, but woodward's current regime does not seem this way.

In regard to the footballing side of things, it is impossible to excuse him. What is clear from every transfer is that Woodward plays a heavy hand in both our negotiations and transfers. This was particularly clear when Mourinho was in charge as he made references to Woodward handling these transfer issues for him. It now feels like every single transfer we conduct is difficult. In the current position we are in, we need to sign as many players as we can in as little time as possible in a way that does not disturb any of the chemistry the players that will stay has, but significantly increases the quality of the players we will have. Our squad has players that would not be starting in championship team. We should be signing more players that meet the quality of the squad we want to have. and if some of the players we sign do not, we should have discipline to sell them or if they are useful, use them within the squad. For a team in the position that we are in, and despite the message that we consistently get from the club, there seems to be no sense of urgency. Everything seems a bit too cautious and difficult. We have players consistently playing in our starting xi that would not start for everton. That is a problem a club with as many resources as we have should never experience and should have quickly taken care of. A well run club immediately takes care of areas where they are weak, sometimes even anticipating potential weaknesses, and where they fail, recovering by quickly eliminating the error or replacing the need. In our case, we let our issues fester. Seeming like reluctant and unplanned spending rather than adding a positive piece that would increase the success of our on the pitch outcome. If tottenham can sign players like eriksen when they did, how can a club that makes as much money and with as much brand recognition as we do consistently fail so miserably at building something better than this.

 

[tjb]

To me

It's mostly Gills'fault for underinvestment in scouting network, our recruitment is arguably responsible for the decline of United.

By the time Ed woodward take over, it was too late and he couldn't turn it around, he gave €800m to LVG and Jose to spend on players, many of them turn out to be shit.


I don't think Ed Woodward is good enough but he's not to blame for our decline, it's Gills that started it first then Ed Woodward couldn't turn it around. We need a CEO who can turn it around and make the right decision even if it doesn't suit us well.

The squad Moyes inherited had lots of potential. If planned and executed in the right way, utd could have gotten away with signing two or three players at the time while still remaining competitive. I do not blame ed or moyes for not signing a good centre back, as Fergie had hyped up both Jones and Smalling, and noone really knew how far Vidic and Rio had fallen. However, when knowledge of this deficiency was recognized, we made no real effort to sign a centre back capable of fixing this problem. Instead signing centre halfs that were clearly not of united quality for low cost pricing. It took us 6 years to sign a centre back with the quality to actually play for us, that says a lot. The same thing happened in regards to our midfield, we signed a centre midfielder in Fellaini that obviously did not have the quality to start alongside Carrick. We were consistently getting dominated for years, scouting and signing low cost or players with lower reputations yet expecting them to develop and achieve fantastic things without evidence of them doing that prior. We have not signed a right winger in 9 years, despite the fact that we have needed one for the past 6 years. You cannot blame a guy who left a company 6 years ago for not fixing issues that could have been sorted out immediately after he left. Woodward is completely at fault for where we are now. Every manager wants good players. I can blame the manager for using good players badly. But when the club has been bereft of good players for so long, and the man in charge of recruitment and scouts has been at the club for over 6 years, even if his role is not to scout, find and negotiate for good player, has got to take full responsibility. He has the power to make changes on the things he does not conduct himself and has consistently failed to fix those problems.

 

[Lentwood]

All of our problems are 99% on Ed.

Ed refuses to appoint a Director or Football and therefore the onus is on him to dictate the footballing strategy, which has been nothing short of absolutely chaotic

 

[Suedesi]

Ok sorry for the long post. Summary – Woodward is an idiot but so are the rest of them.

Well Woodward is the common denominator in our 7 years of downward spiral. The buck stops with the CEO. He's the one overseeing the club from a commercial and footballing stance. It's silly to blame former managers when Woodward appointed them in the first place, and they're no longer in the picture - Woodward is.

 

[Andersonson]

Well, when you appoint 4 managers who all fail its your fault.

And when you let them use 800m and still fail its on you for making bad calls.

 

[Leftback99]

Only the Glazers can stop him, everything else about this mess football wise traces back to his decisions.

The Glazers are happy because they are making money, it basically comes down to whether they think they could make more with someone else in the role.

 

[Ford_M19]

Ed's just their Gofer. Clearly he's working to their targets. We can shout and scream at him but he's a symptom of disease.

 

[Adnan]

Ed's just their Gofer. Clearly he's working to their targets. We can shout and scream at him but he's a symptom of disease.

The buck stops with the owners and not Woodward. It's the owners who have let this fester as long as it has. And you quite correctly point to the disease rather than the symptom.

 

[Zoo]

Get the feck out Ed

 

[mariachi-19]

Has to go or be removed from his role as CEO and back to chief financial officer.

 

[Snow]

I agree to some point.

Ed made money available to Moyes, LvG and Jose it’s not his fault we spunked hundreds of millions on shite.

It's literally his and his buddy's fault. They are the one negotiating fees, they've been overpaying for players and then not backing the manager properly after it goes tits up. Ed Woodward and his shadow buddy (forgot his name) are the only common threads in our horrendous downfall since SAF retired. Players and managers have come and gone but they are still here in charge of money and decisions and they are still doing a horrible job. OP is wrong, a lot of this is Woodward's fault.

 

[Castia]

It's literally his and his buddy's fault. They are the one negotiating fees, they've been overpaying for players and then not backing the manager properly after it goes tits up. Ed Woodward and his shadow buddy (forgot his name) are the only common threads in our horrendous downfall since SAF retired. Players and managers have come and gone but they are still here in charge of money and decisions and they are still doing a horrible job. OP is wrong, a lot of this is Woodward's fault.

I don’t believe Ed is pin pointing targets that’s the various managers mess from previous years. If the players were successful nobody would care how much Ed paid.

 

[Snow]

I don’t believe Ed is pin pointing targets that’s the various managers mess from previous years. If the players were successful nobody would care how much Ed paid.

He gets a lot of names. The players that we've bought might not have been 1st or even 2nd choice for their respective position. That may or may not have been Ed's fault but he's the one who's signed the players on those big fees and wages which makes it progressively harder for us to buy players that we want.

 

[Fox_Chrys]

Looking at it as an outsider.

Your club doesnt have a modern structure, which would be a Director of Football, and a proper scouting system.
Also your training ground has been surpassed by other clubs, even ourselves a much smaller club will have a better training ground then you next season.

So yes I would say he has been a failure because he has failed to put a proper football management structure in place at your club. This structure would improve the problems you mentioned.

 

[Castia]

He gets a lot of names. The players that we've bought might not have been 1st or even 2nd choice for their respective position. That may or may not have been Ed's fault but he's the one who's signed the players on those big fees and wages which makes it progressively harder for us to buy players that we want.

Ed admittedly knows little about football if somebody has given him a name to sign it will either be the manager or scout, he does the finances and contracts fair enough.

 

[Snow]

Ed admittedly knows little about football if somebody has given him a name to sign it will either be the manager or scout, he does the finances and contracts fair enough.

Knowing little about football is not a good thing when you're in his position and refuse to hire people around you that know something about football. Instead he hired a buddy from university who's resume was bank finances.

You think his contracts have been fair? The wages are ridiculous now.

 

[RG 11]

The guy is woeful at negotiations (wages / transfer fees / contract renewals) and seems to micromanage quite a bit (wouldn't release funds for Mourinho in his last season). I've never understood how the narrative that it's impossible to sign players in January has come from either. He has no vision and doesn't understand his own shortcomings either (other wise he would have appointed a football man as DoF).

Sure, a better manager would mask his shortcomings to an extent but he should be the public enemy number one in the eyes of united supporters.