Who/what in your opinion is currently holding the club back?

[Mercurial]

There is no clear division in responsibilities. Ed Woodward who is clearly not a football man does not want to relinquish his power over everything. There needs to be a proper football committee and a director of football who should work independently in the footballing matters from the CEO and only involve Woodward when it comes to financing.
Too much involvement and influence of former players is also becoming detrimental. They clearly have connections inside the management and they try to influence from outside. That is why it is very important for United to have a strong manager of right profile with no past connections with the club. Both Poch and Conte fit that profile. Also for DoF both Berta and Mitchell have the right profiles. But it all depends on board and Woodward how soon they realise their ineptitude in footballing matters. All we can do is hope.

Conte is an instable charachter, probably not what we need after all the turmoil years!

 

[padzilla]

It's pretty obvious it's Woodward, who is obviously acting on the orders of his paymasters, who is the biggest problem. He needs to overhaul the footballing set up of the club but it's not going to happen because he likes the limelight too much but is out of his depth when it comes to anything that isn't a commercial decision.

 

[Ryan Bobson]

Glazers , quite simple

 

[rcoobc]

Glazers and Woodward.

 

[Nytram Shakes]

Glazers and fans (despite this sounds harsh). Glazers don't have ambition to make us title challenger again. All they care is CL spot. At the same time fans are obsessed with long term projects and old days. So Glazers can put club's legend as a coach and fans are happy. That coach will put kids on the pitch and fans are happy again. Glazers have peace and nobody is making pressure on them.
Titles....who needs titles when we have our kids and our Ole.

I sort of disagree with this, we have spent over a billion pounds since Fergie left, only Man City have a higher net spend in that period, we have the highest wage bill in the premier league. That shows ambition. The problem isn't the ambition the problem is the appalling management of squad building that goes back before Fergie left.

 

[Crashoutcassius]

It's clear that our major weakness is lack of strategic direction at the top and a lack of urgency for signing players. Ole is giving us good direction but we start all over again if and realistically when he is gone. The urgency thing ... Most other clubs seem to find a way to wrap up targets and two summers in a row we have let our main targets run into the next window, putting the manager under pressure. Find a way to deal with it

 

[Buster15]

Many people are saying the owners and Woodward. And to a degree that is understandable.
But as far as I am concerned, the biggest issue is down to the coaching.
Many good players come to OT and seem to stagnate.
Very few actually improve.
And our team play like a group of individuals.
When you compare our team with others, we don't operate as a unit.
Our tactics largely depend on a few individuals.
And not as a fully functioning unit.

Are we really a well drilled and we'll coached team?
Are we really greater than the some of our parts.
In my view, no.

 

[Fahad Jawaid]

Our scouting network and guys negotaiting contracts.

Honestly i am reading we are interested in Brooks and they are asking for 35 to 40m. I believe no club can afford 30 to 40m range squad players. If we sign Sancho our first team is very competitive, what we need is a cover for fullback position another midfielders as a cover for Matic and possible another Cb.

What we needed this summer like every summer was ruthless approach like Juve or Bayern. They ensure the players that are not needed their contracts are terminated (Higuain and Khedira) Or atleast the players are threatened they then actively try to move.

With us all our squad players like Mata, Jones and Lingard are all happy just to let time get by and they will get another contract in the hope to sell them for some value while no club wants to pay a dime for them.

Our scouting firstly is shambles, i can't believe there are no backup wingers available in Europe except Brooks or Cam or Full backs. A perfect example is we could sign Espanyol Captain Marc Roca for 15m. But we would never do that and allow him to move and establish and then pay 50m for him.

We need Smalling, Chicharito, Park, da silvas type signings as squad players who are good enough to come in and not let team down. Whereas now we have squad players our own manager does not trust enough to use them, he would rather run our first team players to the ground then use them.

Lastly the guy negotiating our contracts needs to be fired asap. All our squad players on 100 to 120k a week. Infact even Henderson who has never played once for Utd first team is getting 120k. It makes it impossible to shift them and we get nothing in transfer fees sometimes even wages are partially covered by us which is shocking.

 

[Nytram Shakes]

Our scouting network and guys negotaiting contracts.

Honestly i am reading we are interested in Brooks and they are asking for 35 to 40m. I believe no club can afford 30 to 40m range squad players. If we sign Sancho our first team is very competitive, what we need is a cover for fullback position another midfielders as a cover for Matic and possible another Cb.

What we needed this summer like every summer was ruthless approach like Juve or Bayern. They ensure the players that are not needed their contracts are terminated (Higuain and Khedira) Or atleast the players are threatened they then actively try to move.

With us all our squad players like Mata, Jones and Lingard are all happy just to let time get by and they will get another contract in the hope to sell them for some value while no club wants to pay a dime for them.

Our scouting firstly is shambles, i can't believe there are no backup wingers available in Europe except Brooks or Cam or Full backs. A perfect example is we could sign Espanyol Captain Marc Roca for 15m. But we would never do that and allow him to move and establish and then pay 50m for him.

We need Smalling, Chicharito, Park, da silvas type signings as squad players who are good enough to come in and not let team down. Whereas now we have squad players our own manager does not trust enough to use them, he would rather run our first team players to the ground then use them.

Lastly the guy negotiating our contracts needs to be fired asap. All our squad players on 100 to 120k a week. Infact even Henderson who has never played once for Utd first team is getting 120k. It makes it impossible to shift them and we get nothing in transfer fees sometimes even wages are partially covered by us which is shocking.

You can't terminate contracts, we could threaten all we want, but unless a player violates their contract in some extreme way we have made an agreement to pay them for the period of the contract and are legally bound to honour it. The only way you can get rid of players like that is if you pay them to leave like we ended up doing with Anderson and Sanchez.

 

[giggs-beckham]

A lack of modern footballing structure at the club, which leads to poor/overpriced transfer business and coaching not up to elite standards.

Completely agree.

 

[jesperjaap]

Can point the finger of blame in several directions, Judge, Woodward, Glazers, managers.

For me the driving factor between all of these factors has to be the recruitment and transfer dealings in general though. As others have pointed out we have the second highest net spend in the league so we are either buying the wrong players, over spending on players, selling badly to balance the books or buying the right players and coaching/managing them badly.

I think there are elements of truth in all of the above. How many even on paper great signings have we made since Fergie retired, even before they have arrived you could almost count them on one hand. We have also already seen Mourinho and Van Gaal complain about not getting the players they targeted. It is barely disuptable we have held on to several players too long before selling and also sold these players for poor fees (correlation with contracts given of course). Then there are also very few players we have signed that have actually improved significantly while at the club either.

It does seem to be something we are trying to change with the purchases last year and targeting more quality youth players. But we still over paid for both Maguire and Bissaka and trying to change that this summer is obviously the wrong time with Sancho being the main target.

I do think our selling of players has been just as bad as purchasing though as we should have sold several more players almost every summer than we have done, this would have enabled us to buy an extra signing possibly each season as we havent made enough buys either.

With all this in mind, personally though the accountability of blame can be widespread, I would blame Judge and Woodward as money has been spent but our speed in the market and negotiating seems to be very poor for a club of our standing both inwards and outwards transfer wise.

 

[Martialfc]

Honestly all I think we need is a RW like Sancho (someone who can beat a man). Let’s be honest AWB whilst brilliant defensively is shocking going forward.

In addition, our LB Luke Shaw is also shocking at going forward and crossing a ball. We do have Rashford who can take on a man but he looks a different player since his injury. So a fully fit Rashford could do some damage from the left.

I feel that if he had a winger who could get down the byline like Sancho it would make a drastic difference to our attack. We just need a right winger and some cover for Matic.

I’d think two signing in RM and CDM would galvanise our team like VVD and Alison did for the scousers.

 

[Infra-red]

Senior management are to blame - specifically, Joel, Avi and Ed. They hire everyone else, including our underperforming managers and our clueless player recruitment team.

The three of them have turned following United into a largely joyless experience.

 

[0161_UNITED]

I’ve felt like it’s our wage structure much more than our “transfer policy” in general. Whenever I look at the players we’ve brought in post-SAF, it’s always amazing how many of those players just imploded here, there was some really bad luck involved.

I often wonder if the club/manager doesn’t try to shift players that don’t play or are obviously not United quality, or if we just can’t shift them because of the wages they are on. I’ve always felt our wage structure just makes it so much harder to shift a player that’s not working out, and then we’ve compounded that problem with some frankly absolutely bloody ridiculous extensions ... Jones, Rojo (insert your greatest hits here).

it’s a vicious circle we’ve created, where we end up extending underperforming players rather than replace them because it’s so expensive to bring in replacements (because to replace them we have to pay transfer fees, agent fees AND fit the replacement into our wage structure). I’ve always wondered, did our managers really want to extend some of these players or did we just do it because it’s cheaper than bringing in a replacement?

There are players (Lingard, Mata) where if they were on lower wages, quite a few of us wouldn’t have a problem with keeping them as squad options. Every team has and needs squad options: Even those clubs some of you are insanely jealous of like City, Liverpool, Chelsea. What differentiates us from them is that they usually try to shift the ones that are redundant, they certainly aren’t extending them, and didn’t put them on eye watering wages.

 

[Denis79]

All clubs hit a slump sooner or later, so that's normal. How long they struggle depends a lot on the people running the club however.

 

[SungSam7]

We seem to take 1 step forward and 3 steps back, the club gave OGS some money last summer to strengthen the team, he gets top 4 and now they seem to withdraw any money to try close the gap. This is all happening while Chelsea have signed 4 or 5 players almost in the same time frame. We will more than likely miss out on CL football come this time next year and the board will blame OGS and not the lack of signings!

 

[Mibabalou]

aditya_reds thinks its the glazers


good vid too

 

[RedViv]

You could have an argument that owners should invest everything that they make off from the manutd brand , they invest back into the club related matters.
Having said that, as far as i am concerned, the matter solely lies with ed and team as there never seemed to Have been a coherent plan on how we want the future to pan out . i feel club mgmt is looking at someone who can come in and replicate fergie , but that seems next to impossible.

 

[Kopral Jono]

Ultimately, the owners and Woodward. I also happen to think the culture of sentimentality amongst us fans (for instance the deification of the 'United way', whatever that may be, by some of us fans who happen to be of certain influence in the club) is holding the club back big time.

 

[Adnan]

Ultimately, the owners and Woodward. I also happen to think the culture of sentimentality amongst us fans (for instance the deification of the 'United way', whatever that may be, by some of us fans who happen to be of certain influence in the club) is holding the club back big time.

The United way is playing proactive football and that was abandoned when we appointed Moyes. Getting back to the United way and making it the criteria going forward is what will see us return to the top IMO. But the club hierarchy have to stamp their authority on the club and make it a prerequisite that we adhere to such a philosophy which will see us target a specific profile of player and coach. Then once that is established we should make the recruitment department independent from the headcoach which would provide stability in the chosen approach even if the coach is fired.

The Glazers are completely to blame for our malaise post Fergie. They have made significant funds available but those funds were largely wasted by people they employ. They quite simply haven't held people responsible for the mess we got ourselves in and there doesn't seem to be any accountability which is why things have been left to fester for so long.

 

[Strelok]

Imo the Glazers.

Their ultimate objective is to make money, not silverwares nor beautiful football. With our super large fanbase they don't need any of those to make money anyway.

After they squeeze out the last drop they will just sell the club. It didn't cost them much in the first place anyway. I still remember they bought United for £790m but with £660m debt in the club name. So barely £130m was their money. How much United would cost now? At least £3bn I think.

Has any club with such owners win a big silverware? No I guess. And I don't think there'd ever be one.

P/s: I forgot we did win big silverwares under the Glazers. But imo it was because the sheer brilliance of SAF. And the market and football back then was very different. Plus someone like SAF, imo was a one time wonder and won't happen again. Especially in the current circumstances.

 

[jackal&hyde]

Many people are saying the owners and Woodward. And to a degree that is understandable.
But as far as I am concerned, the biggest issue is down to the coaching.
Many good players come to OT and seem to stagnate.
Very few actually improve.
And our team play like a group of individuals.
When you compare our team with others, we don't operate as a unit.
Our tactics largely depend on a few individuals.
And not as a fully functioning unit.

Are we really a well drilled and we'll coached team?
Are we really greater than the some of our parts.
In my view, no.

Martial, Rashford, Fred, Matic, Shaw are just some of the players that improved a lot under the current coaches. Maybe in the past this was a problem but not anymore.

A bit of a weird thread since for the first time in years we are moving in the right direction in all departments, from recruiting to coaching players to improve on an individual level. It's now on the owners and Ed to bring in that extra bit of quality the team needs.

 

[Feed Me]

Glazers and their cronies.

End.

 

[MDFC Manager]

Imo the Glazers.

Their ultimate objective is to make money, not silverwares nor beautiful football. With our super large fanbase they don't need any of those to make money anyway.

After they squeeze out the last drop they will just sell the club. It didn't cost them much in the first place anyway. I still remember they bought United for £790m but with £660m debt in the club name. So barely £130m was their money. How much United would cost now? At least £3bn I think.

Has any club with such owners win a big silverware? No I guess. And I don't think there'd ever be one.

I just find it ironic that we actually started winning nothing once we started spending big money.

 

[buckooo1978]

the Glazers x 100

 

[Strelok]

I just find it ironic that we actually started winning nothing once we started spending big money.

P/s: I forgot we did win big silverwares under the Glazers. But imo it was because the sheer brilliance of SAF. And the market and football back then was very different. Plus someone like SAF, imo was a one time wonder and won't happen again. Especially in the current circumstances.

I just edited my post.

Imo we did spend but not enough and not smart enough. And our structure is not football prioritized but profit prioritized. Imo at any club which is serious for silverwares Ed would be long gone or restricted to commercial matters only. And our board wouldn't be from entirely non football people.

Football is very competitive, especially for top silverwares. Even clubs which are dead serious about big silverwares and spent fortunes couldn't win. Like PSG or City with their CL dream. So how a club half ass about big silverware would win anything? Very unlikely imo.

 

[White Fury]

It all comes down from the owners. People already said it, man Utd is not run as a football club but as a business.
Proper football clubs are Baynern Munich, Barcelona, Real Madrid their main objective is to be best in the world and win everything no matter the cost.

Man Utds objective is to stay relevant in the financial and marketing world, get top 4 for TV money, sign new sponsors, things like that are more important than winning trophies. Glazers have no ambition to take us to the top, they may be good at other businesses like real estate,shopping malls and stuff (which I doubt it, I think Malcom Glazer single handedly build the family fortune and his kids are incompetent and just leeching), but they are bad at running a football club.

Also its worth to mention the boardroom chuckle brothers Ed Woodward and Matt Judge. Both Incompetent at football matters.

 

[Skills]

Mentality.

We are a huge club with the following and financial power that matches the likes of Madrid and Barcelona, but with a fanbase and club culture that has the mentality of Everton.

We could have a manager that finishes 4th for the next day 20 years and our fanbase would be perfectly happy with that irrespective of how much we spend. It's 'too harsh to sack him'.

The lack of expectation feeds into the passiveness of the board.

 

[Judge Red]

Manchester itself doesn’t help. It will turn Messi into a depressive has-been within weeks.

Am I being flippant? I’m not entirely sure but Di Maria would probably back me up...

 

[red4ever 79]

I am so disgusted with the way the club is run, there is no point banging on about it anymore.

 

[superdry]

Manchester itself doesn’t help. It will turn Messi into a depressive has-been within weeks.

Am I being flippant? I’m not entirely sure but Di Maria would probably back me up...

Di Maria is a "children of the night" looky likey and not to be trusted.

 

[Maticmaker]

For the first time in a while we have a recognized first X1, that on form can give most teams a game; however beyond that first X1 we are struggling to find depth in the first team squad.
That's what is holding us back and it doesn't seem likely we can improve the squad much beyond recruiting one new player per window and on best estimate we need at least four such players.
Why that should be so is open to debate, but once its clear United are interested in a player, the price and possibly other barriers go up!

For me this is the key issue and the solution has to come from the top, but is there enough expertise at the top? Would for example a DoF add to that expertise or would they become another voice crying in the wilderness, when the Enterprise (of which the football side is only part) real business is making money for its shareholders. Being a multi-billion enterprise has its drawbacks in that everyone wants to charged you top price and with the current (Covid inspired) restrictions, the ability of any organization to keep up its cashflow is going to be difficult.

 

[redshaw]

Bad decisions, constantly. Like a bad stock trader, they lose 80-90% of trades and struggle to make a good decision and have poor timing. We've spent a billion but it's been squandered on poor players and management. Fergie going leaves a large chasm to be filled and we haven't come close to dealing with it, I'd argue we've done worse than an average of others that could spend a billion.

Things may be turning in the right direction, we'll have to see. We're like a large vessel lost at sea, it's a long way back and those steering the ship might have to acknowledge they're unable to do the job or learn how.

 

[patty123]

Many people are saying the owners and Woodward. And to a degree that is understandable.
But as far as I am concerned, the biggest issue is down to the coaching.
Many good players come to OT and seem to stagnate.
Very few actually improve.
And our team play like a group of individuals.
When you compare our team with others, we don't operate as a unit.
Our tactics largely depend on a few individuals.
And not as a fully functioning unit.

Are we really a well drilled and we'll coached team?
Are we really greater than the some of our parts.
In my view, no.

So who are you leveling that at ? As you can leave ole out (as much as it may or may not kill you too) and there's no point including dozy Dave as he only got his boy from Everton, so these top players have all come under supposed top top managers and stagnated, like mata, rvp, Angel, Alexis, Fred to a degree but has improved a fair bit under Ole, Pogba, Mkhitaryan, Depay, Martial, Lukaku.

Ole has gotten the players he got in playing well and even ones here who stagnate under the so called top top managers lvg and jose, like Martial, best case to use.

So that's two top managers and major winners that haven't being able to get the best out of "good players" with different coaching teams and styles, ever think it time to start look at these "good players" and the clowns ed and glaziers who gives them stupid high wages as the reason they "stagnate" ? Long term contract, wages you get no where else, where's the motivation coming from to improve or play at the level that got you here.

 

[Relfy]

The root cause of the arguments will always come back to the Glazers no matter how anyone tries to dress this up. They own the club and therefore are responsible for installing the right people in the right positions. Woodward for example may well be a brilliant commercial salesman when it comes to obtaining large financial sponsorship deals, which as we know is a part of the business, however he has little knowledge of the game or its workings and therefore should not be tasked with managing recruitment. He may not wish to relinquish his hold on that aspect of his job but he should never have been entrusted with it to start with.

We'll end up talking about this until we're blue in the face, but we all know we need a proper football department, which manages the acquisition of players, squad management, contract renewals and scouting. In my eyes we need a Director of Football first and foremost as well as a Technical Director. We need to be able to identify targets, move on them and secure them at a reasonable price. We need to manage the contracts we award for new players and renewals. We need to move players on where we can, which is tied into the previous point about their contracts and therefore their wages - these need to be reasonable so we can shift players on. This department would report into Ed Woodward as CEO, just the same as they would in any organisation. Woodward maintains his gravitas as being CEO for Manchester United, but we have qualified people doing the work that he has not been able to do to the required level.

The Glazers are successful business people. Ed Woodward is also a successful businessman. These are people who should recognise that the football side of the business is failing, and with better management to this part of the club they could improve their balance sheet, which is their ultimate goal at the end of the day. The issue for me is that this is being neglected. It is clear as day that there is an issue but nothing is being done to rectify this, and therein lies the issue, the Glazers are failing the club by not acting and this harms on field performance which is all we as fans really care about.

We will continue to have transfer windows where we do little business, and then a story will be leaked about a DoF to calm people down, and within 2 months it blows over again. Rinse and repeat. People are however dumb to it as they keep falling for the same line. Until the day comes that we actually appoint someone in that position I for one will never believe it will happen.

 

[Strelok]

The root cause of the arguments will always come back to the Glazers no matter how anyone tries to dress this up. They own the club and therefore are responsible for installing the right people in the right positions. Woodward for example may well be a brilliant commercial salesman when it comes to obtaining large financial sponsorship deals, which as we know is a part of the business, however he has little knowledge of the game or its workings and therefore should not be tasked with managing recruitment. He may not wish to relinquish his hold on that aspect of his job but he should never have been entrusted with it to start with.

We'll end up talking about this until we're blue in the face, but we all know we need a proper football department, which manages the acquisition of players, squad management, contract renewals and scouting. In my eyes we need a Director of Football first and foremost as well as a Technical Director. We need to be able to identify targets, move on them and secure them at a reasonable price. We need to manage the contracts we award for new players and renewals. We need to move players on where we can, which is tied into the previous point about their contracts and therefore their wages - these need to be reasonable so we can shift players on. This department would report into Ed Woodward as CEO, just the same as they would in any organisation. Woodward maintains his gravitas as being CEO for Manchester United, but we have qualified people doing the work that he has not been able to do to the required level.

The Glazers are successful business people. Ed Woodward is also a successful businessman. These are people who should recognise that the football side of the business is failing, and with better management to this part of the club they could improve their balance sheet, which is their ultimate goal at the end of the day. The issue for me is that this is being neglected. It is clear as day that there is an issue but nothing is being done to rectify this, and therein lies the issue, the Glazers are failing the club by not acting and this harms on field performance which is all we as fans really care about.

We will continue to have transfer windows where we do little business, and then a story will be leaked about a DoF to calm people down, and within 2 months it blows over again. Rinse and repeat. People are however dumb to it as they keep falling for the same line. Until the day comes that we actually appoint someone in that position I for one will never believe it will happen.

Agreed.

However imo it's not like they can't see. The issue is so obvious that most of the fans could see it. Are they smart people? Definitely. Of course they can bloody see it. So why the issue has been dragging on for years without any slightest indication or concrete effort to solve it or even to improve the situation? I forgot how many times we've heard of a new DoF or such.

Imo the reason is really simple. They view this as a business. And business is all about profit, revenues minus costs.

Our revenues as any club are generates mainly from:
1. Commercials sales.
2. TV rights.
3. Advertisements and sponsorships.
4. Match days.
5. Players sales.
6. Competitions prize money.

1, 2, 3, 4 is decided by how big the fanbase. We can forget 5.
6 is actually just a small percentage of the whole revenue even you win the treble.

So basically winning titles doesn't bring you much money while spending to win title cost you fortunes, big ones. The costs outstand the gains. Even taking into consideration of sales boost or revenues from new fans. We're talking about hundred of millions here.

As long as they still view this as a business and care for profit than winning titles they'll stick to the current model. It's provides them what they want, money. Why change something is currently working?

 

[Bilbo]

We are competing against clubs whose owners have and still are putting a lot of money into those clubs. Our owners are taking money out of the club. This levels the playing field and puts more importance on decision making, and because we have been so poor at recruitment for the past few years we've allowed those clubs to catch and then overtake us.

Woodward is the CEO and so he must be held accountable for that. We still have enough financial power to compete if the right decisions had been made.

 

[Strelok]

We are competing against clubs whose owners have and still are putting a lot of money into those clubs. Our owners are taking money out of the club. This levels the playing field and puts more importance on decision making, and because we have been so poor at recruitment for the past few years we've allowed those clubs to catch and then overtake us.

Woodward is the CEO and so he must be held accountable for that. We still have enough financial power to compete if the right decisions had been made.

Yeah you're right. Clubs like Chelsea, PSG City are another reason for this mess. Ours view the club as a business, and theirs basically a hobby and an advertising tool. You spend money on your hobby/advertisement but you will want to earn money with your business. Their ridiculous spending made players prices gone through the roof.

Imo our model would still work in a theoretical fair world. Where clubs spend on what they earn. But FFP is a joke so ... Well imo we have only two hopes. A new sugar daddy or a new SAF. Otherwise it'd be a bloody miracle for us to compete with those.

Liverpool is an interesting case, they went to the top without a big sugar daddy. I think they got lucky with Klopp. Or with some competent ones at the top. Probably both. But I don't know much about them, their owner, their CEO or their board etc. to have an opinion about.

 

[Shark]

Ed Woodward has been the only real constant throughout all of this. He's the common denominator.

 

[hungrywing]

Yeah you're right. Clubs like Chelsea, PSG City are another reason for this mess. Ours view the club as a business, and theirs basically a hobby and an advertising tool. You spend money on your hobby/advertisement but you will want to earn money with your business. Their ridiculous spending made players prices gone through the roof.

Imo our model would still work in a theoretical fair world. Where clubs spend on what they earn. But FFP is a joke so ... Well imo we have only two hopes. A new sugar daddy or a new SAF. Otherwise it'd be a bloody miracle for us to compete with those.

Liverpool is an interesting case, they went to the top without a big sugar daddy. I think they got lucky with Klopp. But I don't know much about them or their owner to have an opinion about.

Their owner is extremely intelligent/savvy - think literally the polar opposite of the Glazers in every way.

One of the pioneers of data-anaylitics in sports in American Baseball, for example. And by extension, very possibly a huge influence in the eventual usage of said methods in football.