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Manchester United Stick With Ed Woodward
| Published: 6th May 2020 20:37 |
Ed Woodward is not the most popular man in Manchester. The executive vice-chairman of Manchester United has been the public face of the club's failings in recent years and has become the focus of protests and anger from fans over what's been perceived as a poor recruitment strategy and a reluctance to back managers in the transfer market. While the more corporate boardroom members of most Premier League clubs manage to live their lives in relative anonymity, Woodward has become the face of the hated Glazer family from a public relations point of view at Old Trafford, and the role has brought with it a focus that has made his life a misery.
A mood of disenchantment that had been growing for at least two seasons boiled over into unpleasant scenes last January, when a small crowd of Manchester United fans located Woodward’s house and traveled there to protest against his stewardship in front of his own home - the place where his wife and children live. Expletive-laden songs were sung. Threats were made. Most disturbingly of all, flares were thrown at the building. Under the circumstances, nobody would have blamed him for walking out on both the role and the club - but it now appears that he’ll be remaining in his post for the foreseeable future.
Part of the reason that United fans are so unhappy with Woodward is that he's fulfilling several roles within the club, some of which he appears to be unsuited to. First among them is the role of a Director of Football - a figure who directs transfer policy within a club. Being a Director of Football is a little like playing best UK online slots, but doing it well. If you can get all the symbols (for 'symbols,' read 'players') of an online slots game to line up in the correct order, you'll win big money. Obviously, there's no guarantee of success - if there were, online slots companies would be considered more akin to charities - but a Director of Football is generally someone who has a football background, and can work with a manager on a football level to identify prospects and agree upon areas where improvements might be made. Woodward, for all of his achievements in other areas of life, is not a football man.
It should be noted that not only does Manchester United not have a Director of Football now, but the club has never had a Director of Football. In terms of the way that most leading Premier League and European clubs are run, the hierarchy and set up at Old Trafford is antiquated - and the long tenure of Sir Alex Ferguson is partially to blame for that. Ferguson would never have tolerated anyone else having a say in footballing matters at the club. He personally oversaw recruitment, and he told the chairman and the board what he needed and when he needed it. When he left, subsequent managers found themselves working without the same level of support that they found at their previous clubs. David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, and Jose Mourinho struggled with this aspect of the job, and are rumored to have found Woodward a difficult man to talk transfer strategy with. This wasn't the only reason that all of them ultimately failed as managers in Manchester - but it won't have helped.
The case of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is different. Solskjaer knows the DNA of Manchester United, having served the club not only as a player but as a youth team and reserve coach before heading out into the world to try his hand as a manager elsewhere before coming back in 2018. He’d have known what to expect, and which resources were or were not available to him. He still wasn’t expected to go it alone, though. When Solskjaer was appointed, the club also publicly committed to identifying and recruiting a Director of Football and taking some of the burden of Woodward’s multiple roles off his back. The idea was touted as part of a wider-reaching modernization of Manchester United behind the scenes. Having spent two years looking for the perfect candidate, this month the club has made the surprising announcement that as far as they’re concerned, there isn’t one.
Given the stresses and strains that Woodward has faced during the past twelve months, it’s surprising to hear that the club has given up on the search and decided to leave him in his current role. Perhaps, with the acquisition of Bruno Fernandes in the January transfer window and the subsequent upturn of form that followed his signing, the directors believe that they’ve finally turned the corner and that there isn’t an issue with recruitment at all. Perhaps they feel that Jose Mourinho identified the wrong players in his final two transfer windows as the club’s manager, and it was his bad advice that led to Solskjaer inheriting (and then struggling to get results from) a disjointed side. For all of his initial struggles, we’re beginning to see a clearer picture of Solskjaer’s vision for the club - a younger, leaner team full of players seeking to make their name rather than players content on living on the reputation they’ve already established. It’s why Mason Greenwood has been given so many opportunities this year. It’s also the reason that Paul Pogba is almost certain to be sold when the transfer window re-opens again.
Manchester United is a football club that prides itself on doing things differently. There will be nobody on the board who felt the need to go looking for a Director of Football just because every other big club had one. If they believe there isn't a case for bringing someone in and paying them the high salary that's associated with such a role, they'll have based that belief on facts and research. It does, however, beg the question of why the announcement was made in the first place and what the board has been doing for the past two years while allegedly looking for someone to fill the vacancy. This archaic approach to the game might work for now, and Solskjaer might be happy with it - but the risk remains that when it becomes time for Solskjaer to move on and someone else to fill the Old Trafford hot seat, they're going to face the same problems as all of their predecessors save for Ferguson. For Woodward, that probably means more negative sentiments in the future.
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