Did we miss out? He rejected us.
We did. Or more accurately, Woodward did by running the club so poorly that for years it’s been a no-brainer for players like Bellingham to go elsewhere
but at least sit down with United to see if they could get some better wages out of it.
Simply imagine he’s still at Birmingham and we went for him now, with a coach who has an unassailable record of playing youth and a staff with a football-oriented approach clearly in the beginning stages of firing up.
It’s not difficult at all to imagine that both Haaland and Bellingham would have been here if it weren’t for Woodward.
People bringing up - I’m not saying this is you - how “we offered them more money than Dortmund and they turned us down” are very ironically missing that that’s exactly why they turned us down. From the player’s perspective, that Woodward approach is just “More money is
all you’re offering me in place of good coaching and a coach who I know is going to play me.” (Likewise, Raiola wouldn’t have been able to propose that release clause to us if we’d been in tip-top shape.)
Plus, within the profession, there would have been stigma attached to that money, not least of all association with Woodward, who by then was notoriously incompetent within the footballing world.