When exactly did our decline begin?

When the Glazers arrived. 2005.

When they arrived the squad was strong, or was developing to its peak in 2008, it only got weaker as the Glazer years went on.

The real answer is always when the Glazers arrived because it changed the whole dynamic of the football club. That said, our 2007-09 peak was aided by big yet shrewd investments to the squad, sanctioned by the owners.

It remains a mystery what really happened behind the scenes during the 'no value in the market' era. I despise the owners as much as you do, but in this instance my hunch has always been that Fergie really believed that there really was no value in the transfer market. The question now is if this had been indeed the case, was it because the great man had started to lose his edge in the market as @MoskvaRed point out? Or like I said was it simply a case of him not seeing where football at the highest level was heading? We'll never know.
 
This would be logical if finishing third was the extent of our decline. We have managed to finish in top four, four or five times in the last 8 years. City being a monster of a team doesn't explain that. We have our own issues and those are far more detrimental to us than City and Chelsea.
we finished second twice in the last 5 years to that club, NOT third. Football isn't played in a vacuum. If we had won those two leagues, would anyone be talking about a decline? Again, it's a hill I will die on. If Newcastle win the league in ten years, is that because the rest of the league is in "decline"? It's just one of those things. We allow states to fund clubs, this is what happens to the other clubs in that league. Is every club in France in a decline because PSG are a disgusting front for a bunch of pieces of shit that will build their empires on the deaths of what amounts to modern slaves?
 
we finished second twice in the last 5 years to that club, NOT third. Football isn't played in a vacuum. If we had won those two leagues, would anyone be talking about a decline? Again, it's a hill I will die on. If Newcastle win the league in ten years, is that because the rest of the league is in "decline"? It's just one of those things. We allow states to fund clubs, this is what happens to the other clubs in that league. Is every club in France in a decline because PSG are a disgusting front for a bunch of pieces of shit that will build their empires on the deaths of what amounts to modern slaves?
It's not cast in stone that if we simply remove City then we are Champions in those years. If City don't grow maybe Arsenal keep their key players from early on like Nasri, maybe it's Liverpool that buy Aguero and Yaya Toure or Pep goes to Arsenal. Football people that made City prosper just don't disappear if you remove City.

The fact is that City have nothing to do with us spending a billion on sh*t, they didn't prohibit us from spending millions on dud after dud for over ten years. It's on the Glazers and their flunkeys.
 
I think there was a combination of factors. Malcolm Glazer dying. This put his money grabbing kids in charge who couldn't see the old adage you need to speculate to accumulate. Chelsea coming to the fore buying bigger than anyone before and then City really pushing the boat out. The Glazers then started spending, but unlike City and Chelsea no behind the scenes setup on the football front. Instead a banker who knew feck all was given the reins after Fergie and Gill left. Then we had a scattergun approach to new managers. We are finally putting football men into position to run the football side, but this is from a catch-up position and may take years to come to fruition, as the other teams are not standing still either.
 
I think there was a combination of factors. Malcolm Glazer dying. This put his money grabbing kids in charge who couldn't see the old adage you need to speculate to accumulate. Chelsea coming to the fore buying bigger than anyone before and then City really pushing the boat out. The Glazers then started spending, but unlike City and Chelsea no behind the scenes setup on the football front. Instead a banker who knew feck all was given the reins after Fergie and Gill left. Then we had a scattergun approach to new managers. We are finally putting football men into position to run the football side, but this is from a catch-up position and may take years to come to fruition, as the other teams are not standing still either.

Great points and summarisation.

i feel a lot of people under estimate the bolded part. Looks like we have another season outside top 4 with less revenue but still debt repayments and dividends to pay. Other clubs like Chelsea, Man City and Newcastle are simply not handicapped like this. They also have ambition to win everything whereas the Glazers ambition is top 4 money.

I don’t see any possible way to reverse the decline, maybe we could perhaps stabilise around top 4-7 but that is in a best case scenario.
 
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.
brilliant post
 
I want ask when our decline will end? been torture to watch us throw these years.
 
I remember us getting absolutely schooled by Bilbao under Fergie so a few cracks were appearing then.
 
Yeah it started when the Glazers arrived, we just didn't notice it due to the team Fergie had built and he himself

To this day we still haven't had a back 4 as good as Neville/Ferdinand/Vidic/Evra and we haven't had a midfield as good as Scholes and Carrick and while they're hard shoes to fill players have been out there we could have got (most of the time for non record fees as well)
 
I want ask when our decline will end? been torture to watch us throw these years.

I doubt anytime soon, even with the team we have now people expected a title challenge but not necessarily a win such is the level of competition in the league and look what's actually happened we're down in 7th looking the worst we ever have done post Fergie

Scousers were a 30 year wait so we're likely onto something similar
 
The Glazers taking over is probably the starting point for everything but Im going to say the summer of 2009 is when things went to shit. Up until then under the Glazers we had actually spent a massive amount on quality like Nani/Anderson/Hargreaves/Carrick/ Evra/Vidic and Berbatov. (Berbatov was the english transfer record at the time wasnt he?)

But in 2009, we sold Ronaldo who was simply irreplacable on his own and left Tevez go when we should have signed him 6 months earlier. We then replaced them with Valencia/Oberton and Owen. I shake my head still just typing that. We should have reinvested instantly in the likes of Robben/Ramos but we didnt and it cost us. Not downplaying the 2 further league titles we won after that (should have been 4 damn it) but at that point in hindsight you can see it was a lot to do with Fergies magic.

Then with City and the likes of Klopp/Guadiola football moved on and we got left behind because we werent even in the same race as others.
 
It started in 2005 when these parasites took over. Fergie just hid it well and worked miracles despite them selling Ronaldo and only giving him Michael Owen on a free and Antonio Valencia as replacements.

The club got a terminal disease in 2005. We won't ever be back to that same club again until they go.
 
The decline began the moment the Glazers got their filthy hands on the club. Feck every single one of the them, scumbags the lot of them.
 
Started when we sold Ronaldo in 2009 with no replacement. Fergie managed to keep us competitive for a few more years but the damage had been done over that 5 year period.

Rooney, Giggs and Scholes were coming to the end of their careers. We still managed to bring Scholes back for 6 months. Vidic, Evra and Ferdinand were all coming to the end of their career as well, and none of them were replaced.
 
If you ask me it started with SAF becoming sentimental. As Keane puts it

"People said [Ferguson] always had the best interests of Manchester United at heart. Darren Ferguson [his son] won a medal. He was very lucky.

“[Alex Ferguson’s] brother was the chief scout for Manchester United for a long time. I’m surprised his wife wasn’t involved in the staff somewhere.”


Then this sentimentality was extended to his former players with guys like Scholes and Giggs remaining with United till their nearly 40s. Sir Alex was against Gaz retiring and Gaz had to force the hand by calling the retirement himself when it was evident that he was finished. Sir Alex also chose his successor, the incompetent David Moyes.

To achieve that Sir Alex needed absolute power which explains why United's football structure was that of a club stuck in the 90s. That left a power vacuum when Sir Alex left with no football person sitting at board level. The Glazers were devastating to this club, they had no idea of football, they had no intention to learn and quite frankly they only cared about money. They saddled us with a mountain of debt and the incompetence of David Woodward who was given far too power on football matters.

Today's United is the result of this mess. We have the remnants of the United way (Fletcher and Phelan), Moyes way (Murtough), LVG way (Bout), Ole's way (Cleggy, Pert, Ramsay etc) and Woodward's way (Arnold, Judge etc). Different styles, different philosophies but all specialised in one thing ie failing.

I think we're beyond repair at this point. We've got a heavily unbalanced and huge side, with players being on ridiculous salaries who want out while still earning the dosh. The Glazers simply lack the financial clout to commit itself to the very painful restructuring United need and quite frankly there isn't the talent needed to make sure that it would succeed this time round. We need new owners with lot of ££££ and a true passion for football.

Darren Ferguson won a medal in '94 didn't he? Or around that time. I don't think that's the best example of Fergie's sentimentality affecting the team, he won a few things after that. Same goes with his brother. It worked pretty well I'd say.

Ultimately there is no starting point. You can say it started in Fergie's last couple of years but there's been plenty of time and money since then to sort things. It's just a case of one bad decision after another.

The manager is the most important individual at a club. Until we get that right we'll continue to struggle.
 
Since SAF left. We cannot even buy a couple of midfielders which will not break the bank now.
Zakaria = 6 million
Kamara = 10 million
Haidara = 30 million
Kessie = 30 Million
Any 2 of these would be great. I would settle for one right now.
 
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2009-2013 was when it became obvious. Yes we were still competing at the highest level, but cracks were apparent in many of our games, especially in the last 2 years. The loss of great players combined with the lack of/poor investment was frustrating.

Think the club believed that fighting off a Chelsea era was enough to sit by and let City catch up, next thing you know it’s Chelsea, City and Liverpool leaving us in the dust.
 
The real answer is always when the Glazers arrived because it changed the whole dynamic of the football club. That said, our 2007-09 peak was aided by big yet shrewd investments to the squad, sanctioned by the owners.

It remains a mystery what really happened behind the scenes during the 'no value in the market' era. I despise the owners as much as you do, but in this instance my hunch has always been that Fergie really believed that there really was no value in the transfer market. The question now is if this had been indeed the case, was it because the great man had started to lose his edge in the market as @MoskvaRed point out? Or like I said was it simply a case of him not seeing where football at the highest level was heading? We'll never know.
The same Fergie that was happy to pay £28m for Veron and £19m for Van Nistelrooy in 2001, and then the following summer £30m for Ferdinand in 2002, suddenly thought paying £30m for Hazard in 2011 was bad value? Doesn't make sense. The 'no value in the transfer market' came from the Glazers. The club didn't have the cash to both service the Glazer debt and compete for the best players at the same time, hence the 'no value in the transfer market line'. It was just an excuse for a lack of investment.
 
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.

Good post that and agree with lots of it. Particularly the point about the interest payments those first 5 years. Easy to forget how high they were.

All I'd disagree with is the importance of the manager and the influence he has. If anything the post SAF era should show us what happens when you get the wrong guy in.

LvG, Mourinho and Ole, they've had the same opportunities and support that for example Klopp has had. They just got it badly wrong.

The guy who really got shafted by the club was Moyes, even if he wasn't good enough. That first summer and season after Fergie was where any manager would have struggled. Fellaini and Mata. Ridiculous.
 
Our decline started the day Sir Alex left. If you look at the title races pre-Pep, you can't tell me Sir Alex wouldn't have won at least 1 or 2 more titles. He had an aura and ability to get fantastic levels out of not fantastic players. Even under Glazernomics he was successful. Can you imagine the Glazers had given Sir Alex as much leeway to add to the squad as someone like Van Gaal was given?

Sir Alex was a manager, not a coach, which is why it all fell apart when he left. He was our director of football. He oversaw the scouting, he watched academy games and knew which players were the best prospects. He decided the buying and selling policy. He decided the contracts policy. At any other club there's a bunch of people doing these different roles, reporting to a sporting director.

Losing him and not replacing the sporting director function has led the club making stupid decisions, handing out idiotic contracts, buying random good players instead of buying players that compliment each other and will make a good unit. If you could go back in time and just convince Sir Alex not to quit OR, if he's determined to quit, to get a top class Sporting Director to come in after him, things would be so different.

Ironically, we don't even have a top class Sporting Director. Murtough has never been a Sporting Director before. He's another one learning on the job. Can't believe its been a decade and we're still f'n about with sticking plasters. Look at City? Wanted success went and got Soriano and Tkixi. Best guys to help you run the football side. United have turned down guys like Luis Campos, who have been there and done it, cos clearly we're not interested in the best man for the job but the right man for the owners.
 
When Woody took over. Enough money was spent post Fergie's retirement but woody has mismanaged the whole thing, from hiring the wrong managers to not having a clear football structure. It's as clear as day for me.
 
As soon as Fergie and Gill left, and the identification of winning mentalitys in potential recruits stopped........
 
The signing of RVP seemed like a real change in direction that never made sense to me until Ferguson announced his retirement. It was basically a decision to maximise the chance of winning back the title that season with no regard for the years to come.

Van Persie played his first game for United just turning 29. Lewandowski was 29 at the start of 2017, Benzema was 29 in 2016, Ibrahimovic was 29 in 2010, to give a few examples, it could have been reasonably expected that Van Persie would be good for 3-4 years, given his amazing technical ability, that he'd adapt to be an all-round or support striker. His decline was sudden and unfortunate.
 
Post-Ronaldo. In many ways Fergie keeping the side both competing for and winning the highest honours in those years was one of his greatest achievements. And yet we never adequately replaced Ron's quality after he was sold and the slow but sure decline in the quality of our play has its origins in this period.
 
Our decline started the day Sir Alex left. If you look at the title races pre-Pep, you can't tell me Sir Alex wouldn't have won at least 1 or 2 more titles. He had an aura and ability to get fantastic levels out of not fantastic players. Even under Glazernomics he was successful. Can you imagine the Glazers had given Sir Alex as much leeway to add to the squad as someone like Van Gaal was given?

Sir Alex was a manager, not a coach, which is why it all fell apart when he left. He was our director of football. He oversaw the scouting, he watched academy games and knew which players were the best prospects. He decided the buying and selling policy. He decided the contracts policy. At any other club there's a bunch of people doing these different roles, reporting to a sporting director.

Losing him and not replacing the sporting director function has led the club making stupid decisions, handing out idiotic contracts, buying random good players instead of buying players that compliment each other and will make a good unit. If you could go back in time and just convince Sir Alex not to quit OR, if he's determined to quit, to get a top class Sporting Director to come in after him, things would be so different.

Ironically, we don't even have a top class Sporting Director. Murtough has never been a Sporting Director before. He's another one learning on the job. Can't believe its been a decade and we're still f'n about with sticking plasters. Look at City? Wanted success went and got Soriano and Tkixi. Best guys to help you run the football side. United have turned down guys like Luis Campos, who have been there and done it, cos clearly we're not interested in the best man for the job but the right man for the owners.


Excellent post and description of the fundamental issues we face.

I highlighted your last sentence in bold because I feel as though that is the absolute crux of all our issues.

Our decline hasn’t been accidental or through mismanagement although it could appear that way. Our decline has been a managed strategy by the Glazers to target top 4 instead of winning. There is no interest in trying to win the premier league, the glazers have absolutely no intention of even trying to financially compete.

People will say but but but they spent so much…. There is so much more investment required in a club than just playing staff. They haven’t spent anything on our facilities, our stadium or the backroom structure and staff as you identified. No interest in the clubs long term health at all, it’s all about short term gains for them.
 
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.

This is an excellent summary.

I would actually go a stage further back, so in fact the current problems at Utd. go back 20 years - and are likely to continue for another 20.... See:

https://www.goal.com/en-ph/news/how...ake-control-of-man/15kf9x1h3xy8a1gakygb2unhd6

from which is this telling section:

"But how did it come to this?

Some would argue it all started with a horse. 'Rock of Gibraltar', to be precise. Legendary United manager Sir Alex Ferguson believed he was a part-owner of the champion stallion; Irish businessmen John Magnier and JP McManus disagreed.

“I think if that particular discussion over the horse had never taken place, we could be watching a very different Manchester United today,” football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells Goal.

“If that relationship had remained amicable, then Manchester United might not have been sold.”


I can't understand how people can comfortably sit in a stand called after SAF, once they know this....
 
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.
 
I know this has been discussed to death but at the moment I don't see light at the end of this mediocrity tunnel, so I want to get a general consensus from this forum on this. Our failure to properly replace Ronaldo? Sometime during the 'no value in market' years? When Fergie left and picked Moyes as his successor? Letting Gill go at the same time as Fergie? A combination of said unfortunate events?

If you ask me, the 'no value in market' years marked the start and we're still seeing the effects until this very day. Fergie failed to identify the direction of where football at the highest level was heading, dare I say uncharacteristically so since he was typically so good with adapting to the times, by questioning the sustainability of the whole buying success trend at the time. The board finally realised that one has to spend to win silverware around the time Moyes left but by then the rot has already set in, and coupled with Woodward's sheer incompetence in the transfer market, the rest is history.
Moyes and Woodward being hired
 
Our decline started when Alex Ferguson decided to reduce his own success down to "time and patience" rather than his managerial genius.

"I'd also like to remind you that when we had bad times at the club, all the staff stood by me, all the players stood by me. Your job now is to stand by your new manager. "

Those 2 sentences have caused the club a lot of damage. The club and it's fanbase latches onto every manager we get. We don't have the ruthlessness and objectivity that drives the standards and success at the likes of Madrid and Bayern. Instead all we have is, that you need to back a manager and it'll eventually just work out. Instead, continuously backing managers and not cutting our losses at the right time has meant we've sunk down year on year. Top 4 rather than being the minimum is now the target. Winning trophies rather than being a requirement is now a bonus. Not getting embarrassed by our rivals is now a good result.

We've sunk our own standards of success to justify the way we work (i.e. we're the club that gives managers time).
 
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I didnt forget them but player personnel-wise everything went to shite when we appointed Mourinho. Its like we gave up on our current talent and went for shite like lukakku and sanchez.

We also shouldn't be worrying about titles without a good foundation at United. Whats the point of winning the odd Fa cup when you cant do it consistently because you have no long term strategy? Mourinho was the downfall of United because he wasnt a long term strategy. It was all win now and personal accomplishments then move on. We are still paying for that right now while he has changed teams 3 times since he left us.
Dude, LVG did the mass culling that got us into the mess. Letting go of squad players we should have kept.

There was a distint lack of height in the team that mourinho addressed and a lack of physicality in the midfield which was addressed. Mourinho appointment had to happen as we needed to see how it would go. He wasnt wrong when he said Martial and Pogba needed to go. Or when he said he would have kept hernandez, welbeck, raphael, evans. All who were ditched by LVG.

But theres so much hatred towards Mourinho that it blinds people. As as club we went from one extreme to the other. LVG and Mourinho, tactically as good as they get. To Ole, tactical novice.

In Ole's defence he did a good job of trying to cleanup a squad that was a mixture of fergie, moyes, lvg and mourinho signings. Mistakes were still made by him i.e. maguire for £80mil, VDB etc.

To blame mourinho soley for the issues is overlooking the glazers, moyes, lvg, ole etc. There were mistakes made by many people.

To fix the foundations takes buy in from the very top, hopefully when RR moves into his consultancy role he can help the club do that.
 
The decline happened when we sold ronaldo and went on to recruit valencia, owen and obertan and was also then relying on a semi retired Scholes, 40 year old giggs, gibson cleverley and Anderson to partner carrick in midfield.

In terms of recent years it was when we handed ole a permanent contract, such an awful decision that has seen us go on our longest run of years without a trophy and losing any resemblance of a winners mentality within the club which we still had when LvG and Mourinho was here.
 
2008 UCL final aftermath. Since then it’s been a decline which just accelerated post Sir Alex departure but the seeds were planted post 2008. We became more short termist and the standards began to drop.
 
Great points and summarisation.

i feel a lot of people under estimate the bolded part. Looks like we have another season outside top 4 with less revenue but still debt repayments and dividends to pay. Other clubs like Chelsea, Man City and Newcastle are simply not handicapped like this. They also have ambition to win everything whereas the Glazers ambition is top 4 money.

I don’t see any possible way to reverse the decline, maybe we could perhaps stabilise around top 4-7 but that is in a best case scenario.
Yes. It may happen that we finally get it right despite the Glazers. If they were to say to Arnold you can spend x for players and y for their wages this season, then Arnold passed this onto Murtough/Fletcher to get the right players in, without any input (unlike Woodward), then we might stand a chance. If we get a manager picked to play the way Murtough/Fletcher want to play with the players bought for this way of playing, we may stand a chance. Klopp, for example, showed the way he wanted the team to evolve from the off, without the results. We will have to go down this route. If after a season we can see a gradual improvement of style, tactics, in game managment and we finished 6th, we should give another chance.
 
Our centre midfield has not been addressed since Ferguson was here.
 
The whole Glazers's value stuff. If it weren't for Fergie we would've seen this earlier.

Or not at all.

So the question is, do the fans accept the current state (and for how long) whilst they still have the memories of the 90s and noughties to look back on?

What happens when those memories fade, what happens when most of the people in Old Trafford have only known the races for the top-4 not the top-one?

P.S. Can people please stop moaning about the Glazers - who was running the show when they joined the party?

In 1912 when the Titanic sank, people blamed the iceberg, but actually it was the Captain's fault for ploughing on at full speed, even when ice-warnings had been sent. After the ship sank, did people say - oh but Captain Smith was a great Captain for 26 years previously, so we shall ignore that last cock-up? No, they did not.

Think on people.
 
2009 when we failed to replace Ronaldo and our midfield, thankfully saf was good enough that it didn't deter us from winning 2 more titles.
 
2009 when we failed to replace Ronaldo and our midfield, thankfully saf was good enough that it didn't deter us from winning 2 more titles.

Luckily in 2021 a replacement for Ronaldo was found.....

(Can you replace yourself that is?)
 
Moyes failed to being in key players to rebuild, and we're still trying to undo the damage some of LVG's signings did. We can even go further back to the secular decline that happened when we sold Ronaldo and didn't really replace him.

To be honest, I've never felt less joy watching United. But in a way, I'm glad it's happening. We've had mediocre players and poor managers for a long time now, but we've finally thrown so much money at it that we've ended up with a good team on paper. We have some real WC players and it's still not working.

Under Ole, and Mourinho, it was always "Let him build the team, we'll get results with better players etc". Clearly that's not the case. We need a different approach, a complete reboot from top to bottom. The players we thought were good, are nowhere near the level. This squad is overrated, bloated, overpaid and full of whingers to a degree that I've never seen.

So where do we go? Rangnick isn't doing the job on the pitch, but maybe he's just what we need to sanitise that dressing room. It always felt to me like Ole pandered too much to the players. Lingard, Martial, Pogba, Rashford et al. got so much leeway because they were 'good lads'.

People talk about all the players wanting to leave, this reported group of 11 such as Mata, Henderson, DVB, Martial, Lingard and whoever else. To me it's a blessing in disguise, along with Pogba. We've been holding onto hope with these players for far too long. We stand yo gain nothing holding onto them, but it will finally force us to act in the transfer market to replace them.

We'll look back on this period as definitive I feel, either in terms of turning a corner or kick-starting another failed regime under Arnold instead of Woodward.