Ed Woodward | Groundhog Day Edition

Samid

He's no Bilal Ilyas Jhandir
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After his house was attacked he miraculously managed to turn things around. Delivered Bruno, said/did the right things during the pandemic, he was winning the PR battles and the team was winning on the pitch. It seemed like a beautiful redemption arc. But with the transfer window open there's that feeling of deja vu. Obviously it's early days and our season isn't even over but the lack of urgency is a familiar story. We just never do signings* the easy way.

So is he actually on the road to redemption or is this pretty much groundhog day?

*football player signings
 
I've got no faith in him/the glazers whatsoever. Remember when we finished 2nd and we bought Fred and Dalot in the hope of closing an 18 point gap to City :wenger:
 
Samid said:
After his house was attacked he miraculously managed to turn things around. Delivered Bruno, said/did the right things during the pandemic, he was winning the PR battles and the team was winning on the pitch. It seemed like a beautiful redemption arc. But with the transfer window open there's that feeling of deja vu. Obviously it's early days and our season isn't even over but the lack of urgency is a familiar story. We just never do signings* the easy way.

So is he actually on the road to redemption or is this pretty much groundhog day?

*football player signings
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You will have your answer in May, nothing else matters, really.
 
It is a weird one with our board. We have a nett spend of £70/80m per summer for the last 4 seasons.

Buying Bruno in Jan has meant our summer budget is no longer there. Sancho would be exceeding the budget that we wont be able to get any other player in.

I think we are waiting for a few players to be sold before saying yes, lets go ahead with Sancho. I may be wrong, I hope I am wrong but thats the feeling I am getting.

We got rid of Sanchez - brilliant.
We trying to get rid of Smalling
 
Samid said:
After his house was attacked he miraculously managed to turn things around.
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I take this to mean you're advocating another attack on his house.

And - yeah - if it lands us Sancho, I'm all for it.
 
romufc said:
I think we are waiting for a few players to be sold before saying yes, lets go ahead with Sancho. I may be wrong, I hope I am wrong but thats the feeling I am getting.

We got rid of Sanchez - brilliant.
We trying to get rid of Smalling
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Where is all the selling activity then? We need ten times more news/rumours on selling players if it is to be believed.
 
Alemar said:
Where is all the selling activity then? We need ten times more news/rumours on selling players if it is to be believed.
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We do not know how to sell. I don't know why but it seems that way.

Other clubs like Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, City all manage to get rid of their deadwoods.

Liverpool got rid of 4th choice CB Lovren for £11m with no issues.

We cannot get rid of Smalling who some say was the best defender in Serie A for £15m..
 
I don't think he is personally dealing with transfers. BUT he needs to get people in that are not so amateur in the field. Another problem which lies at HIS feet is he's over the years shouted from the roof top about how we can pay this and that for players. He's not a great footballing CEO, business wise as everyone knows he's the dogs bolloks.

Glazers don't have any input with day to day running of the club. They don't make any calls on anything they own it and thats it.
Yes you could say they should sack Woodward for not doing his job properly, but in their eyes he is.
 
fezzerUTD said:
I don't think he is personally dealing with transfers. BUT he needs to get people in that are not so amateur in the field. Another problem which lies at HIS feet is he's over the years shouted from the roof top about how we can pay this and that for players. He's not a great footballing CEO, business wise as everyone knows he's the dogs bolloks.

Glazers don't have any input with day to day running of the club. They don't make any calls on anything they own it and thats it.
Yes you could say they should sack Woodward for not doing his job properly, but in their eyes he is.
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This simply isn't true though. Joel Glazer has direct sign off on incoming players, and he talks to Ed Woodward on the regular. He supposedly even spends eight hours a day working on United from an office in DC. To say that the Glazer's aren't also culpable for years of mismanagement is palpably false, and gives the impression that everything hangs on the head of a small cabal of execs reporting to Woodward.

I'm not a huge fan of Woodward, never have been, but like everything in football; it's a team effort.
 
We don’t know how to sell or buy. We give new contracts to duds. We give mega deals to players on the way down or who don’t really want to be here. We pay average players more than what top players get at other clubs. We’ve the second highest wage bill in football yet we are in the EL and our squad still needs loads of work.

Bruno papered over the cracks for now but even in that same window we scrambling around till the dying seconds to Ighalo done. Not an organised or efficiently run club at all.

he’s still the same old Ed but he’s got the Bruno bounce and I’d imagine he’s being quite smug about that. Everything just feels flukey to me with him which I won’t get into here again. He’s the luckiest man in the world to still somehow be involved on the football side of things at a club of our size.

Edit and Sancho is contracted till 2023. Nice one Ed. They’ll crumble eventually in a few years when you’ve got that 120 million
 
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Made a thread about praising Woodward and Glazers. It got closed because the fans don’t want to hear the truth. They have been redeem for awhile. Only a few big club spends as much as we do and that is thanks to our board. Woodward is doing his job properly and is still getting big advertisements even though we have had little success. Moreover, giving our manager a cheat code with lots of funds to play with. The guy who handles wages and financial transactions though and our managers are more of the problem the past few years.
 
I really can't blame Woody on this Sancho deal. He's a great player but why is our main priority a RW who's going to cost upwards of €100 mil when Greenwood is only going to get better with more game time.

I'd rather spend that on Ndidi, Telles, Kubo and Diego Carlos. Ndidi might be tough to get but his agent is on record saying if we're in for him, they will force the move out.

We shouldn't spend like Barcelona; who've spent ridiculous amounts on Griezmann, Dembele and Coutinho to no avail. We need to spend like Bayern Munich - go for the players who will improve us without necessarily being marquee.
 
The club has obviously been poorly run since Ferguson left (we've hired managers with no coherent plan, we've routinely had one of the three highest wage bills in the world yet been irrelevant in terms of major competitions and we've often been very slow to get deals done) but I think in fairness the situation this summer was always going to be very difficult so I'm not sure the fact that we've not done a deal for Sancho, who I do think we will get but would also understand if we couldn't stretch that far due to the financial hit of the pandemic, is a stick with which to beat Woodward or the owners.
 
Amadaeus said:
Made a thread about praising Woodward and Glazers. It got closed because the fans don’t want to hear the truth. They have been redeem for awhile. Only a few big club spends as much as we do and that is thanks to our board. Woodward is doing his job properly and is still getting big advertisements even though we have had little success. Moreover, giving our manager a cheat code with lots of funds to play with. The guy who handles wages and financial transactions though and our managers are more of the problem the past few years.
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just because we spend a lot doesn’t mean we spend well. At all.
 
Amadaeus said:
Made a thread about praising Woodward and Glazers. It got closed because the fans don’t want to hear the truth. They have been redeem for awhile. Only a few big club spends as much as we do and that is thanks to our board. Woodward is doing his job properly and is still getting big advertisements even though we have had little success. Moreover, giving our manager a cheat code with lots of funds to play with. The guy who handles wages and financial transactions though and our managers are more of the problem the past few years.
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If you compare our gross spend to other clubs, it is on par or below par with the big clubs around Europe.

The fact that those clubs get value from selling compare to us.

Woodward and Glazers are a shit show.
 
Now looks like he has messed around too much and the sancho deal is off, today is the deadline and i just read a dortmund official just released a statement saying "he'l play for us next season, thats final" - Michael Zorc
 
Irwin99 said:
I've got no faith in him/the glazers whatsoever. Remember when we finished 2nd and we bought Fred and Dalot in the hope of closing an 18 point gap to City :wenger:
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To be fair if he'd have listened to Mourinho we'd currently have a defence with Boateng in it and our front 3 would be Willian Perisic and Lukaku.
 
Am I the only one that thinks Ed is now a bit of an iconic figure. I’m hoping he’s going to bring out his own clothing line or something. Rather buy that than JLingz
 
I get that this is frustrating, alongside Maguire and Bruno being extremely obvious signings, Sancho is perhaps the most obviously needed player since we spent big on Rooney.
 
Irwin99 said:
I've got no faith in him/the glazers whatsoever. Remember when we finished 2nd and we bought Fred and Dalot in the hope of closing an 18 point gap to City :wenger:
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Yep. All the talk around Sancho but where are the other signings we need?

We need squad depth more than ever, not onky because our backup squad is shite. But also because post COVID there is pretty much no rest or pre season after Europa.
 
The club management and owners don't have the right ambition to go and properly compete. Sancho is a perfect example. We have a clear run at a world class generational talent in a position of dire need, and it looks like we'll miss out on him because we don't want to pay whats required. Bullshit that we can't afford it.

Now is the time where we need to kick on and aggressively strengthen the team. Liverpool won the champions league in 2019 and premier league in 2020. City won the premier league in 2018 and 2019, and are favorites to win the champions league in 2020. Chelsea is spending aggressively to bridge that gap and getting top talents. What the feck are we doing in response? Backing out on signing Sancho when we'll never have this good a chance at him again? fecking ridiculous. Pay what is needed and bring him in.
 
“We can do things in the transfer market that other teams can only dream of, apart from agreeing a fee for Jadon Sancho. That can get fecked.”
 
No Love said:
“We can do things in the transfer market that other teams can only dream of, apart from agreeing a fee for Jadon Sancho. That can get fecked.”
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It's beyond me why fans still throw that back at him, at the time of much uncertainty it was surely what the majority of fans wanted to hear.

And he's backed it up since, and then some.
 
I'd love to know why all of our transfers turn out to be such an epic social media saga yet when other clubs go in for big players, boom its just announced as done more often than not.
 
redmanc said:
I'd love to know why all of our transfers turn out to be such an epic social media saga yet when other clubs go in for big players, boom its just announced as done more often than not.
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Incompetence. This has been the case for a long long time.

Look at the record since Fergie retired.

Missed out on Thiago, Fabregas, Bale, Perisic and many more

Look at what we paid, £50m Fred, £30m Depay, Fellaini after his release clause expired, Juan Mata £40m, Matic £40m.

We are not run properly, simple as that.
 
pcaming said:
Can't believe this nonsense is coming up cause he doesn't wanna spend 120 million crazily...
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I’m not sure about the thread but spending 120 million on sancho isn’t crazy at all. Stop peddling that nonsense. He’s quite clearly one of the best players in the world and the price tag reflects this.
 
MaxiPaxi said:
I’m not sure about the thread but spending 120 million on sancho isn’t crazy at all. Stop peddling that nonsense. He’s quite clearly one of the best players in the world and the price tag reflects this.
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It is considering there’s a global pandemic going on and that no other club is in for him because of the fee demanded.
 
redmanc said:
I'd love to know why all of our transfers turn out to be such an epic social media saga yet when other clubs go in for big players, boom its just announced as done more often than not.
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the club seem to court it for media presence. Its an absolute drain every window
 
romufc said:
We do not know how to sell. I don't know why but it seems that way.

Other clubs like Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, City all manage to get rid of their deadwoods.

Liverpool got rid of 4th choice CB Lovren for £11m with no issues.

We cannot get rid of Smalling who some say was the best defender in Serie A for £15m..
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Yes but the don't overpay them in wages like us and they're ruthless.
 
In this market and considering the pandemic implications, structuring a deal with Addons makes complete sense.

£100 million for sancho £60 million upfront makes sense I would think.

If Dortmund don’t want to play ball then move on. We have a strong team we need a few more additions, not a problem.

We’ve missed out on Hazard, Nasri, Sneidjer, Lucas before because of fees, not the end of the world if it happens again, as much as I want him.
 
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Red00012 said:
It is considering there’s a global pandemic going on and that no other club is in for him because of the fee demanded.
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The pandemic has already been taken into the account considering dembele went for more money 3 season ago, a player who was far less accomplished than Sancho. The fact that we’re only ones in for him doesn’t give us any leverage since Dortmund are quite happy to let him stay and Sancho isn’t agitating for a move. €120 million is a fair price for Jadon Sancho, it’s not Dortmund’s problem if we can’t afford/unwilling to pay it.
 
Class of 63 said:
It's beyond me why fans still throw that back at him, at the time of much uncertainty it was surely what the majority of fans wanted to hear.

And he's backed it up since, and then some.
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Let's hoist him upon our shoulders. The man who plays poker with mirrored sunglasses on.
I do think he deserves a break if he can get Sancho over the line with one or two other no fuss signings. Now is the to time to strike and get competitive.
 
Cashmore8 said:
Now looks like he has messed around too much and the sancho deal is off, today is the deadline and i just read a dortmund official just released a statement saying "he'l play for us next season, thats final" - Michael Zorc
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Theres no deadline except a transfer deadline.
 
Although I've defended Woodward in the past, failing to land Sancho will be a monumental feck up that will cost us for years to come. He still has time to get it done. No real challenger to signing an elite English RW talent from a smaller selling club. He has a golden opportunity to buy a lot of goodwill with everyone, really.
 
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