Why he hasn't used VdB is quite confusing, who by the way was playing as a AM and in a double pivot for Ajax in huge games in the UCL . VdB is a player who has fantastic spacial awareness and is superb at beating the press which is something we could really do with. And regards how the signing came about? Then I'm not gonna speculate and will instead point you to Solskjaer himself, who has made it clear that no signing will be made without his blessings.
Our recruitment in the past 7 years? Let's start from David Moyes. Moyes was appointed at a time when he was succeeding one of the all-time greats in Fergie. David Gill the then CEO also jumped ship after neglecting the academy for many years and leaving it in a very poor state. Woodward replaced him as the CEO and carried on with the manager model that saw Fergie bring great success to the club. So we had two new faces in key positions at a gigantic club, but both men had very little experience. We only had one fulltime scout (Jim Lawlor) which was a reduction from the two fulltime scouts we had under Fergie after his brother Martin Ferguson also retired along with him.
Moyes was then reported to have asked about data on potential incomings and the rest of the research that goes along with it, and he was told that all the information was in Jim Lawlor's head. So do you now understand the job Woodward and Moyes stepped into, was much harder than what was anticipated because after losing a legendary manager like Fergie we also had very little to fall back on. And the chap who's to blame for all this is none other than David Gill.
Moyes as much as we can all criticise the job he did at the club, did one good thing, which was to get the ball rolling when it came to adding a bunker style data centre at Carrington which was similar to the one he used at Finch Farm when he was Everton manager, which brought our club a significant upgrade which would be improved upon year by year. So what we saw in the summer market in 2013, was a club who had lost its driver (Fergie) and was being steered by two chaps (Woodward & Moyes) who didn't know the way.
Moyes then brought in John Murtough in 2014 who was working as the Premier League's head of elite development at the time to fix the issues at the club. The issues were significant because our scouting network was completey out of date and almost non existent when compared to other clubs. This was the mess both Woodward and Moyes inherited from David Gill, who as the CEO just rode on Fergie's coat tails.
Van Gaal then came in and and it was reported he was shocked at how 'unbalanced and broken' the squad was. The academy restructuring was taking place at the time with Murtough, Lawlor and the rest working to bring us up to date in that regard when compared to our rivals, who we had fallen years behind. But the issue was that we carried on with our approach of giving the manager total control in the transfer market and we brought in more dud signings due to trusting the manager to lead the footballing department. Schweinsteiger, Blind, Depay, Rojo, etc were signed without the say so of the scouts. Rojo was signed due to him impressing Van Gaal's analytics team after the Dutch were defeated in the world cup semi-final v Argentina, according to Van Gaal himself. Di Maria and Falcao were also signed due to Van Gaal name dropping one and citing the other players goal scoring record as to why he should be signed. But when he was sacked, he left a parting gift in the form of Marcel Bout who was the opposition scout during LVGs tenure and was later appointed as the head of global scouting in October 2016 where he assigns the scouts on their mission(s) around the globe and they report back to him.
Mourinho then replaced LVG and was backed heavily but his signings left a lot to be desired. It was also reported by highly reputable journos that he was using his own personal scouts to sign players and we ended up with several average players who should never have been signed for the money it took to bring them to the club. But the penny finally dropped with Woodward and he finally took notice of the clubs recruitment department which had grown exponentially since Fergie retired and it was the likes of Bout, Lawlor and Murtough who put paid to Mourinho's autonomy in the transfer market, hence Mourinho throwing his toys out of the pram.
So how can you blame our recruitment department when the manager is leading the football department and is signing players due to trusting scouts who are independent from the club he's working for?
Most big clubs recruit from with in the organisation because it's the sensible thing to do. If you have a network of scouts who are among the best in their field, then all you need is someone to give them direction which Marcel Bout is doing since he was appointed as the head of global scouting in October 2016. So when the club say, it's a 'evolution not a revolution' then look back to when Fergie retired and we only had one fulltime scout to what it's grown to over the years. So when you question the last 7 years, you're missing the ever evolving structure that has been created in those years and the key people that have been brought to the club to create it.
