He put in place a scouting network which is described by the guys at TGG (link you've provided) as being very impressing as far as the personnel that have been brought in to make up the scouting network, which has been put into divisions domestically/Europe/world with figure heads at the top. He's also created a data science department from scratch, which we never had, shockingly for me.
How much input do you think the data science guys have had in our signings? I think clubs like Liverpool / City are light years ahead of our data department. I've read papers released by both clubs that deal with game state, expected possession value, expected threat etc etc and they went way beyond player signings already. My impression of the United "data science" is a football manager like database where you have a list of players you can filter by attribute and watch some clips of them (e.g., find fullbacks whose xA per 90 > 0.8 and show some highlights). A lot of it is still very manual, relying on human decision making.
Likewise we made changes to the scouting network but it remains to be seen how well it worked. We did get Bruno (no top clubs interested in him when we signed him) and tried very hard to sign Haaland and Bellingham (again Dortmund were the only ones in the running there and weren't very well known when we tried to sign them), so maybe things improved.
I would love to have a discussion with anyone who wants to discuss our football structure in a civilized way. I'm actually very optimistic regarding the current structure and believe it's helped us improve the football side from the youth to the first team. But the guys heading the recruitment structure, shouldn't be made to work with a manager but rather a head coach IMO.
Likewise. My assumptions before the season started were that Woody and co were kind of incompetent when they first started out but learnt a lot of lessons from the school of hard knocks and throwing all that out and getting new people in will be futile.
But given the whole Ole fiasco (new contract in the summer, not sacking him after the 5-0, not having contingency plans at all, missing out on Conte, pretending to show a backbone by not bowing to pressure and still bucking and sacking Ole in the end, not using the international break to find a caretaker manager etc. etc.)
I think they are fundamentally incompetent and I'd be more than happy if we go get outside expertise.