PBP: EPL - Everton FC vs Manchester United FC - Apr 21, 2019 [R]

We absolutely should have hired Poch. But the problem runs far deeper than manager. Woodward is the problem.

 

Woodward is the problem. Starting to wonder if any manager would succeed with Woodward at the helm, trying to be the DoF. Maybe Poch would, but when you consider that every manager has failed (granted, those guys before obviously had and created issues of their own) and Woodward is the one constant with all of them, Poch or anyone else feels for that matter hardly like a lock to fix our problems.
Ole will more than likely be a failure as well. Unless things change above him and Woodward finally takes a step back when it comes to footballing decisions, and a competent DoF is hired to work alongside Ole. Then and only then, he'll have a chance. Ole may have limitations but I still trust his passion and desire to do well at the club, to being able to do a good job in the end.
But it just will not happen with things as they are currently: I have zero doubts about it at this juncture. Woodward, to his credit, is a great businessman: he knows how to make the club money hand over fist. That and making money available to the football men, should be his only focus going forward.

 

The structure of the club is the problem, Woodward being a major part of it. It is oftentimes unclear who decides which purchases are made. We can make a list of the club’s buys in the years since Ferguson and it is easy to assign whether it was a club buy or a managerial buy. That is something that needs to change.

The club has had some issues since the days of “no value in the market” and “like a new buy.”

 

Obvious it's Woodward or someone else at the top having final say on transfers since Jose claims his targets were vetoed.

 

We still bought guys that Ferguson wanted years after he was gone. Not saying he still has influence but I find it hard to believe that Woodward scouted Herrera or Shaw.

Those big name buys, though, totally seem like Woody buys.

Does the club still have a board?

 

Possibly but I still think Woody is the final stop right now. The only ones above him are the Glazers it seems.

 

Woody wants to be Gill so bad but he is not. If he had an ounce of self-awareness, we would have a DOF in place with a 3 year plan to win a treble.

 

I am not disagreeing in anyway with you or JC7 but it does my head to think a club as big as us is structured that way. It makes no sense.

 

I agree. But it was structured that way before with SAF and Gill, but it worked so nobody questioned things. So much of who we were before revolved around SAF. We've failed to evolve into a modern club since SAF left and instead expected Woody and whoever is manager to fill the SAF/Gill roles. It hasn't worked at all.

 

I have said this before but I feel that what a lot of us came to follow was SAF football clu. They thought that just plugging people into those positions was all that was necessary.

Fergie was the whole institution. But football clubs run that way don’t work, especially because of the modern players.

 

Agreed. Even SAF/Gill were struggling to adapt to the changing transfer market with the increase in oil rich clubs and greedier agents.

 

Spot on. We should have done like Barca and facilitated SAF's move from the touchline to the sky of. Mind you he did chose Moyes and that was a bad decision but maybe he should have been DoF.

 

We can only hope that after 6yrs of largely unmitigated failure, Woodward will have finally learned his lesson, will put his own ego aside and follow thru on his proclamation to adopt a more modern structure for the club.
I'm guessing there are clubs in Europe that are still ran like ours, but I can't think of any tbh, be it in England or anywhere else. Even lesser clubs have gone the way of a DoF or someone similar between the top exec and manager, in charge of football related matters..
It's either that or we'll see the club fall further and further behind.

 

It should be painfully evident just looking at the CL semi-finalists!

 

We need to look no further than the Prem itself: even clubs such as Leicester, Everton, Wolves among others are ran differently than we are. We are dinosaurs in that regard.

 

People have to stop peddling this BS. A great businessman doesn't;

- sign that insane deal for Sanchez (he gets the same bonus for just getting selected as Lindelof and Herrera get paid in total)

- only ever get targets at buyout clauses

- reward failure (Rojo contract extension, Mou contract extension)

- give the club a monster wage bill with journeymen like Rojo, Smalling, Jones signed up to long term contracts on big money

Under Gill he did some good work on sponsorship deals as commercial director, however he has been chief exec for nearly 6 years.

His business acumen should be judged against that role - and as such as a businessman at chief exec level he is a failure.

 

We'll just agree to disagree: Woodward, as stated, is a failure when it comes to football related matters. Don't think anyone will argue that point. However, it's equally foolish to ignore or discount all the things he's done and keep on doing elsewhere.
We were well off and doing pretty well prior to him becoming Chief Exec, but he's taken the club to a whole other level and we're not just the one of the most profitable clubs in football, but in all of sports.
Someone else perhaps might have done the same, but we still can't discredit what he's done all the same. I have no issues with him still running all non footballing operations and delegating those to someone more capable in that area.

 

Our profitability will quickly drop once we're mid table. Get Ed OUT of the football side.
Most of our players are not MUQ. However, the weekly tweaks of the lineup have been bizarre and reek of inexperience.
Blame can be equally spread.
It's gonna be a few long seasons ahead. We will come out on top in 10 years.

 

True. If Ole gets the credit for the string of wins, then he also deserves some of the blame. Or then the winning steak had nothing to do with him as well as the current run of trash form.

Even before the losses started stacking, the players started looking dead on their feet. I think that some of the shift in training methods has had an effect on the players. But who knows.

 

Yes, but things are very different the last few games. Today, coaching staff sat motionless, not communicating or even looking at each other.

 

First off, every midfielder we have must be able to play both sides of the ball.

 

Good of you to accept it. Now go find another club.

🗣 “Nothing worked for us today. I, who am the most experienced player in the team today, did not play well. We can’t blame the young lads. I was the biggest problem.”

- Nemanja Matić. pic.twitter.com/OwE8GA1J4a

— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) April 21, 2019

 

You are giving too little credit to the guy who made it easy to do the big deals with Adidas in 2014 (10 year deal) & Chevrolet (2012/2017) - that is SAF who built the brand we are still trading off. Football has grown massively, in particular the tv income you cant credit Ed with all that.

This is almost some “captains are the best football players” level of argument - we are a big club so “Ed is a great businessman / chief exec”.

So most of what we have now was sown over half a decade ago.

You need to stop judging him as a commercial director - we have one of those Richard Arnold who took over from Ed in 2013.

Judge him as Chief Exec ...

Chief Exec is strategy, direction and results. The balance sheet you should be looking at are the “assets” that 6 years of Ed Woodward has given us and the money it will take to service the Sanchez, Rojo, Smalling, Jones etc over the next 4/5 years.

Also dont forget the Falcao, Di Maria, Schweinsteigers along the way and all the rainbow chasing with the likes of Ramos etc.

Ed Woodward's six year reign as Chief Exec has been a failure - fact.

 

You can keep trying to put words in my facts or distort my views to further your argument, but I am fully on board and have maintained consistently that Woodward has failed when it comes to the football side of things. It is a fact, one that no one is disputing. I'm certainly not denying or forgetting either that his job has been facilitated by the work and accomplishments that SAF, Gill and before him the likes of Martin Edwards and Kenyon have done at the club.
But the fact remains that, despite some of the bad deals he's responsible for from the footballing side, strictly looking at things from the financial and commercial side, Woodward has been anything but a failure.
It might have been straightforward and obvious that he was able to take advantage of the work of those who came before him and circumstances of the times (league tv deal among others), yet he still managed to grow the club to a level it had never reached before. One, I might add, that no other club in England, even those who have been massively more successful than us on the pitch, are nowhere close to us at this time. The numbers bear that out...
It's pretty clear and easy to recognize that this success might not be sustainable over time without long term success in terms of on the pitch results. Yet, I will not discredit Woodward for the work he's done to grow the club into the massive powerhouse it is today from a financial point of view.
He has failed when it comes to the football side of things and as such I am a proponent that he needs to cede some of that power to men more qualified to handle that side of the club's business. But he has done pretty well, regardless of the circumstances, when it comes to the financial side of things.
As such, his reign is very much a mixed bag for me: when it comes to non football related matters, he has done well (by arguably surpassing what was expected from him in that department), but he has failed in what is arguably the most important side to us fans and that is the football side and on the pitch results.
That is why I have consistently maintained that I am fine with him retaining his role, as long as his focus is keep on growing the brand and be the caretaker of things from the financial side. But when it comes to football matters, those responsabilities need to be assigned to someone who is qualified to assume them.

 

So this wasn't a bad dream after all?

Not sure if I should laugh or cry.

I am depressed.