We're in constant contact with agents and scouts, so most of the leads were warm.
If you had 5 deals to complete with 2 or 3 different warm leads for each deal, and you only completed two of those, you'd get the sack. Particularly if you left your contractor with three gaping holes in their organisation.
Mourinho doesn't decide on market value. Woodward does, because he's the money man.
Jose only says what position he needs filled and hands over a list (this has been explained by him and many other sources numerous times).
Ed couldn't complete the deals that a plethora of other team negotiators could. United have the money, so that's either because Woody did a worse job than them at gauging market value. Or because he did a worse job than them at negotiating.
That's way to simplistic though, different clubs, different players, different situations.
I'm pretty confident if I was given a list of 5 things to buy from a list of say 8, and the prices being asked were astronomical, I wouldn't be given a blank cheque book to ensure I got those 5 things.
If Ed had paid £75m on Maguire then he would have been pilloried on here, that isn't the going rate for a defender of his calibre, that is a world record fee for an above average player.
You can't compare Ed's job to yours, because whatever you trade in, I'm pretty confident it has little similarity to the football world, that lives in its own unique bubble.
Ed literally can't win on the caf, he overpays, then he's been 'bent over', he stands his ground, then he should be sacked.
The only way Ed satisfies you, is if he buys everyone on Jose's list, for peanuts.
Most people are laughing at Chelsea and previously Liverpool for the amounts they've spent on goalkeepers, you can't have it both ways.
Ed's job is to decide what makes the most financial sense for the club, when all things are considered. If not paying world record fees for defenders that aren't the best in the world makes the most financial sense, then that is what he will do.
You forget, this isn't the same as a normal job, where those above instruct you to buy xyz. Here Ed is asked by those below to buy xyz, whilst being instructed by those above to ensure it makes the most financial sense.
We don't know how long the lists were, who were on them, how much was asked for each player, how much we offered.... So we really aren't in any place to judge.
Obviously if he offered £20m for Alderweireld then he wants sorting out, as that is clearly out of touch, but if he offered £60m for Alderweireld and it was rejected that really isn't his fault.
I'm not going to reply again, I only have one post left after this, and to be honest we've probably derailed the thread enough as it is.