Solskjær... on borrowed time + board/ownership issues
- Thread starter Robbo
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Caporegime
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Whilst I agree with what you say accountability of the people above the manager is rarely questioned hence leading to things like this. Someone like Woodward would have been out the door years ago in the normal corporate world but now they are in a sticky situation now because the fans will not turn on a club legend. It was different with Jose.
Thats the thing, this is the normal corporate world. Woodward has done a fantastic job of bringing in money to United and making the brand more valuable. Our performance on the pitch should have tanked our marketability and value but it hasn't. The Glazers have made a killing on United and due to the way they bought it, there is almost 0 risk to their wealth now no matter how bad United get.
Most football clubs are not run for profit, they are run by people who love football and the money men are usually controlled by people who care about the football. That means that they have a primary focus that benefits the club, not the owners looking to making money.
Why would he? The Glazers have no interest in Utd as a football club, they only care about making money and Woodward has literally made them billions.
The biggest concern that I would have if I was a Utd fan would be the possibility of the Glazers deciding that trying to compete at the top of the PL is no longer the most profitable business decision. Utd have the biggest wagebill in the League and biggest net spend over the last 5 years or so and still face the prospect of missing out on the CL. A point could come where Utd's board decide that spending over £100m more than Arsenal on wages and averaging over £100m net on transfers per season no longer makes sense. Cutting the yearly spend on wages and transfers by £150m wouldn't cost the club nearly the same in revenue - as things stand it wouldn't cost them anything as you're regularly missing out on the CL and commercial revenue has stood still for years.
Caporegime
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What Woodward has done is live off the past. We are still making money now but cannot continue without results or we will end up like Arsenal etc. All the deals he made were based on Ferguson's and Gill's legacy.
Our value has tanked. We are living off deals which were setup on the basis of past glories (Chevy and Adidas). When they will come back to renewal we will not get as good deals. I am sure our revenue would be a lot higher if we were in Cities or Liverpool's position now.
As you have stated the only way we are going to get out of the mess we are in is if someone comes in and buys out them out.
Some of the stuff you're writing simply isn't true adam. When Utd floated, back in 2012(?), the share price was $14. It's now around $19. In fact other than a brief spike in 2018, the share price has never been above the $18-21 range. The stuff about Woodward and Utd's commercial success is also somewhat overplayed - Utd have a huge commercial team which isn't even headed up by Woodward. The value of Woodward to the Glazers, is down to him divising a way for them to buy the club and retain it without having to stump up huge amounts of cash of their own. For years Utd were juggling finances, constantly refinancing various loans and bonds and it was Woodward that was the brains behind it all. The Glazers now own 90% of a club valued at over $3bn and it cost them nothing because all the money they put in at the start has been recouped from selling 10% of the club and through dividends they've received over the years.
Of course your revenue would be higher if you were more successful on the pitch but as Utd have shown, you don't always see a return on the investment you put into the side and a point may come where the Glazers settle for 3rd-6th place and cut back on wages and transfer expenditure because right now you're paying out figures of a team challenging for Leagues and CL's but without getting the results on or off the pitch.
Of course your revenue would be higher if you were more successful on the pitch but as Utd have shown, you don't always see a return on the investment you put into the side and a point may come where the Glazers settle for 3rd-6th place and cut back on wages and transfer expenditure because right now you're paying out figures of a team challenging for Leagues and CL's but without getting the results on or off the pitch.
Ed Woodword
Never bought us a fox in the box
He is lucky we never took a poo in his letterbox
I think this is the reason why people aren't happy with Woodward or the Glazers. Forget the debt, forget the money they have taken out of the club. They have basically been playing fantasy manager with United but Woodward is not good at it. There is no reason why he couldn't deal with everything on the non-football side but he clearly likes being involved. We have spent a lot of money since Fergie left. There is no avoiding that. They haven't closed the purse strings. The problem is that they have lurched from one manager to the next and never seem to have any plan. They pay for "marquee" signings who clearly come for the money or are past their best.
Caporegime
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It will be interesting to see how Bruno Fernandes turns out but if he does come good it will make you wonder why we didn't get him in the summer. Especially if we miss out on top 4 and he could have swayed it if he had been in earlier on. That would be all on woodward then.
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There are signs our transfer policy is improving though, so while the past has sucked there is some hope in that department. The biggest flaw for me is the appointing successive managers who share nothing in common stylistically. If Ole does leave/get fired then that is the next area to improve on.
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No it wouldn't. There is nothing to suggest that we wanted Fernandes in the summer and Ed said no.
They've made mistakes, no doubt about that but it's not been as cynical as you make out. It's not a case of them playing football manager, it's a case of them being naive. For years Utd were able to plod along and regularly qualify for the CL and challenge for titles with little input from the board and owners through the work of Fergie but also the lack of competition at the top of the table. I'm sure I wrote this before but Fergie was effectively a director of football that handled match days - he managed that by leaving training to others, where as your modern manager is a coach that handles match days and leaves the director of football stuff to others. Utd's decline has been because of a perfect storm of so many factors - losing Fergie from both a match day manager pov and the overall running of the football side of things, losing Gill and his knowledge and ability to negotiation with clubs and agents (how many times was Woodward played in the early years?), much greater competition for the top 4 spots and this all came at a time when Utd were about to pay for a lack of investment in the side from the previous 5 years.
Utd have lacked a plan and paid for it but Woodward/the Glazers have to be involved in making that plan and the overall running of the club. Obviously there's a wider point about the owners however as things stand they own the club and have the ultimate say over how much money is spent and how it's being spent. You cannot appoint a DoF, give him a budget and he then has free reign to do as he likes because if he doesn't bring instant success then the money men will start questioning why he spent £50m on an 18 year old/30 year old. Woodward and the owners need to decide on a plan from a financial point of view (budgets, age range of potential signings etc) and then build a team or appoint a DoF that works to that plan.
Genuine question, in what respect do you see your transfer policy improving? Whether spending £130m on Maguire and AWB represented good value was obviously highly questionable but at least you could say that Utd put some sort of policy in place in the summer, focusing on younger british players as opposed to the scatter gun approach of before. But the Fernandes deal, given that he was available all summer and you didn't move for him, makes it look like you've gone back to the old way of just reacting to what's going on around you. If Fernandes was a carefully scouted and throught through target, who Utd were convinced by then why didn't you make your move in the summer? Who knows, maybe there's something we don't know but from the outside it just looks like Utd didn't really know what they were doing in the summer and or now and they've made the move because you find yourself 6 points behind Chelsea in the race for the CL spots.
It could equally be:
a) They didn't have the money readily available in the summer, having spent the thick end of £140m and recouped less than half of that.
b) The ongoing injuries and uncertainty surrounding Pogba has forced their hand in needing a creative, goalscoring central midfielder.
a) They didn't have the money readily available in the summer, having spent the thick end of £140m and recouped less than half of that.
b) The ongoing injuries and uncertainty surrounding Pogba has forced their hand in needing a creative, goalscoring central midfielder.
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We've stopped buying short term makeweights just because we need a position filled. The signings genuinely seem to be more thought out and if the right player isn't available then we'll wait. The official line is we weren't convinced by Fernandes in the summer but after more time watching him we've decided he's the right player. Given how Ole had only been at the club for a short period in the summer it's possible he hadn't been on the club's radar on Jose, he didn't play with a 10 after all.
a) They're not likely to be paying more than £20m up front and Utd's quarterly accounts to the end of September showed over £140m cash in the bank. The money was there to buy him in the summer had they wanted to.
b) There's probably something in this but this is ultimately the reactionary stuff I'm talking about. Pogba's wanted to leave for over 12 months now and I'm sure Utd would have known that one way or another he's likely to be gone by the end of the season. If Fernandes was identified as the man to replace him then why weren't they proactive in getting him in the summer, even only to prevent him signing for somebody else? Afterall, he was being whored out all over Europe in the summer and had anybody bit, he'd be gone by now.
I really disagree with your summer signings being thought through. Utd needed a RB and a CB and then just went out and signed whoever they thought was the best for today and who was least likely to massively flop. Nobody is convincing me that Maguire is or ever looked like being a CB good enough to be the main man at a side that's aim is to win League's and CL's and his performances this season have backed that up. He's going to prove to be an incredibly expensive makeweight and an example of how Utd should have been braver and prepared to wait until a genuine top class CB was available. I always feel harsh criticising AWB because he's very good at what he does but it's no different with him either. He's a very good one v one defender but he's just far too limited on the ball for a side that aims to be dominating games week in week out.
As for Fernandes, that line just feels like the club trying to find a way of justifying what they're doing. I'm not sure what he's done in 6 months that he hadn't proven already. Who knows though.
Caporegime
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I disagree with AWB. He does need to work on his forward play but just watching him last night and recently he has been beating players and getting crosses in. Being at Palace whilst helping his defensive game he hasn't had time to work on offence.
Obviously his defensive play is second to none and he is no where near as good going forward as taa but he is easily the best right back I have seen since that season Valencia had 4 years ago.
Obviously his defensive play is second to none and he is no where near as good going forward as taa but he is easily the best right back I have seen since that season Valencia had 4 years ago.
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Defensively AwB is ridiculous. The number of tackles he makes that are either high risk or perfectly timed is crazy. Going forwards I think he just needs a little more confidence to attack gaps and beat a man. There were 4-5 times last night where there was a gap for him to exploit that would have taken him into the box and in on goal but he didn't go for it.
With the right coaching he would be much better offensively.
With the right coaching he would be much better offensively.
You can work on his positional play, because as good as he is defending in 1v1's his positioning is suspect at times but you can't coach him to be a better footballer, at least not to the level required. He lacks the technical ability to ever become a top class attacking fullback. Sometimes you watch him and he's having to steady himself before he'll attept a pass.
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He does looks a gangly but that's just because his legs are like tentacles. He was making some good touches last night. He just gets a little bit lost in the final third sometimes as he is not used to it
.I am sure watching TAA week in and week out makes the whole league of right backs look average.