The decline started when the Glazers bought the club, but they are not the sole reason we are in this mess.
I'm unsure if many football fans, or even all United fans, fully grasp the financial impact of the Glazer takeover.
United had zero debts and were a very profitable club with immense power in the transfer market by 2005. The Glazer takeover plunged the club into so much debt that between 2005 and 2010 we paid £75m every year in interest payments. I think again, sometimes it's difficult to grasp how much money that was then. This was 2005, Wayne Rooney, potentially the most exciting talent in World football, had just sold for £20m + £5m add-ons. Cristiano Ronaldo had just cost us £11m. Vidic and Evra cost us a combined £11m and Michael Carrick cost us £18m, all around this time. Just imagine what an extra £75m every year could have done for our squad.
Now, because we did have a fantastic squad full of proven winners and young talents like Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, we actually embarked on a very successful period on the pitch between 2005 and 2010, but we squeezed every last drop we could out of the team and squandered any advantage we had.
By the time SAF retired, the loans had been restructured but the squad was in urgent need of major surgery. In the 12-months between SAF retiring and LvG taking over, we lost Evra, Vidic, Ferdinand, Giggs and Scholes. Rooney was already regressing, RvP was in his 30s, Carrick and Fletcher both struggled on for another year but had their best years behind them. Park and Nani had also gone, and all of a sudden the squad began to look very short.
What compounded these problems was that because of our success we hadn't evolved as a football club. We had been so reliant on one man that there was no structure in-place to ensure continuity between managers. The scouting department was so bad Moyes was in shock at what he found. An accountant with no experience of being involved in football at any level was put in charge of overseeing the football side of the business. It was a recipe for disaster. We finally had some money to spend again but no idea how or where to spend it.
On top of all that, and a huge factor often missed by your average football fan, was the new multi-billion pound TV deal signed in 2013/14. Sure, this meant United had more cash, but it also meant our PL rivals were now richer and more financially stable than they had ever been. This made it all but impossible to sign players at a decent price from other English clubs. Times gone by, the majority of our big signings had come from English teams. Cole, Yorke, Sheringham, Carrick, Berbatov, Ferdinand, Keane, Pallister, Bruce, Irwin, Ince etc...
It was lazy but effective method of signing players. You knew roughly were you stood with these players as they were unlikely to have too many problems adapting. We also had the safety net, for a long time, of knowing we could afford to let the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Michael Carrick test their mettle at Leeds and Tottenham before signing them. It just isn't viable now. We should almost forget about signing players from the PL UNLESS there is some kind of contractual situation we can exploit. To quote SAF, there genuinely is "no value in the market" when it comes to English players, because our rivals have no motivation to sell.
So, plenty of issues, mainly stemming from Glazer debts/Glazernomics, poor continuity planning, failure to adapt to the changing landscape and having non-footballing people making decisions.
One of the reasons we never get anywhere is because we as a fanbase are still obsessed with managers, because we had one of the best of all time. We seem to fail to understand that the success of a Pep or a Klopp is only possible because of the world-class support they get from Begiristain or Edwards. We think that every new bloke who steps foot in the dugout will be the saviour, when in reality the ships captains are still headed directly at the iceberg and all our managers are really doing is rearranging the (vry overpriced) deckchairs.
Excellent post. The first line of your message is sums it up well. IMO, timing and forward-planning are two significant factors that are often overlooked.
The two go hand-in-hand. But there's a few key milestones that have fractured the club beyond repair in its current state:
SAF & Gill Retiring (2012 - 2013)
SAF & Gill retiring at the same time was a horrendous mistake. I have the utmost respect for SAF but surely he owed it to the club to give them at least 12 months to plan for his retirement and the succession plan?
If we believe what was briefed to the media at the time, SAF told the club his decision in
April/May, which meant United were on the backfoot to find a replacement. After things had gone south for Moyes, we found out that that both
Guardiola and
Ancelotti had been sounded out for the United job prior to Moyes taking over. Ultimately both managers rejected the job as they'd already committed to other clubs and United were left with a third or fourth choice manager.
Gill shouldn't have been allowed to retire at the same time as SAF. It's bad enough that we lost the greatest manager ever, but the icing on the cake was our most seasoned executive walking out at the same point. Woodward has dragged his departure out for the last 10 months, Gill didn't even bother to give us half of that time when he left. If Woodward had spent some time shadowing Gill, I believe we would've avoided some of the early mistakes he made.
I have the feeling that there's probably more to this than what was briefed to the press. Maybe it was a case of both SAF and Gill being pushed out of the club, or they may even seen the writing on the wall with the Glazers. Who knows. Either way it's merky.
Moyes & Woodward Learning On The Job (2013 - 2014)
I won't go into detail here as most other posts have covered this point. The fact the club have recently briefed they felt the
let Moyes down during his reign says it all. In hindsight, Woodward's incompetence, the dated football structure and the weight of the SAF glory days meant that any manager would've been doomed to fail.
Slipping Standards & Indecision (2014 - 2019)
The rot might have grown its roots with the Glazer takeover, SAF retiring or Woodward's promotion to CEO, but for me the real damage was done in this period. And to this day, we're still paying for the mistakes that were made.
'Standards have slipped' seems to be everyone's favourite buzzword and it's often used to criticise the players. But in truth, standards slipped at the very top of the club and that's trickled through right down to the players and coaching staff.
In our hayday, United were the best at forward-planning. Whether that was getting rid of players at the right time, signing world-class talents or embracing trends in football, we were the club to emulate. Admittedly, this can be attributed to SAF's genius and the respect and authority he had earnt at the club.
But in the period from 2014 - 2019 we quite frankly became a laughing stock. And perhaps the perfect example of how not to run a football club. In spite of a chaotic recruitment strategy, Woodward was allowed to retain his authority and continued to lead our recruitment efforts. In any other football club, or even any other business, that level of incompetence would have resulted in him getting sacked. But for some reason he was able to keep his job.
During the Woodward era, we've been notoriously slow at making decisions. And I'm not just talking about transfers here. Almost all aspects of the club were left to rot (academy, scouting, playing staff etc) and needed to be rebuilt. The archaic structure needed tearing down, but the speed at which we did it was unacceptable.
Remember how long it took us to hire a sporting director? Remember how long it took us to sack LVG even though the writing was on the wall? It all comes down to the incompetence of Woodward and co and their lack of conviction when it comes to making the big decisions.
