What is this obsession of having a football guy at the helm as CEO? City ceo is an mba who started in a similar role to woodward and arnold at barcelona, chelsea's ceo is a telecom executive who once headed vodafone, Liverpool's ceo under whom they transformed the club was a video game guy before joining liverpool, CEO's job is to increase commercial appeal and monetise the company not to play football manager in real life whatever woodward might have thought. Even David Gill was an accountant.
The problem with woodward was the idiot had delusions of grandeur and unlike others who understood the fact that they didn't know much about actual football and hired or promoted people who did understand it, he decided he knew best and plodded on crapping his pants every step of the way. Everything we are hearing about arnold makes me think he clearly has learnt what not to do from woodward, ofcourse it could all be bs and he'll be another woodward, but let's atleast give him a chance shall we.
Nobody is saying we should hire Ryan Giggs as CEO, but we should be looking for the best football directors out there. Instead, the Glazers gave it to somebody with no track record in sport just because they helped you buy the club and then when his position become untenable, decided to hire a carbon copy from within the club who happens to be his old uni mate.
Let's take the examples you've given.
Man City - Soriano
A decade of experience at Barcelona as vice president and CEO, and is supported by several of his Barcelona team who city also poached and people like Brian Marwood as an MD who has worked as an executive in either football or sports for decades since he retired as a player.
Chelsea - Laurence
Before being hired by Chelsea he worked as the director of the largest sports company in Canada which owns hockey, football, basketball teams. They've also had Emenalo as their technical director and the Iron Lady now. Clearly a setup that allows them to chop and change managers every season but still keep the consistency and vision from above to achieve footballing success.
Liverpool - Hogan
Worked for FSG for over 20 years across their various sports enterprises in various roles. Again someone with pedigree in sports as an industry. Supported by the likes of Edwards, who has experience at Spurs, Portsmouth etc etc before being hired by Liverpool.
Let's hope you're right and Richard Arnold has been sitting back quietly and being overruled by Woodward and has learned exactly how not to run a football club as CEO. It's not exactly inspiring though is it? Our fresh start after our worst period in the modern era is going to be spearheaded by a bloke who is already part of the failing regime, and has exactly the same background as the guy who has led us to disaster.