United can afford very good players but that alone doesn’t make a very good team
ED WOODWARD is not fit for purpose as executive vicechairman of Manchester United.
At Old Trafford he has merely used the galactico model, saying: “Let’s buy the biggest names, keep the cash tills ringing, and hire managers who’ll make the most of the stars we bring in.”
But it doesn’t work in England as it does in Spain, where most of the time only two sides are really battling for the title.
In the Premier League it’s a four-horse race minimum, more often five or six.
And then in any given season there are another four clubs below the usual suspects trying to take the bigger sides’ legs from under them.
So the business model Woodward (above) has chosen to follow is doomed to fail and he is a man out of his depth, which is something I’ve said all along.
He has put the cashtills before the product on the pitch, rather than the other way round.
What it needed at United was a clear, cohesive recruitment policy but what it got was a bloke striking deals with noodle companies and throwing money at bigname individuals without thinking about the team as a whole.
United can always afford very good players but very good players alone don’t make a very good team.
And until they get their heads round that then there are going to be issues at Old Trafford.
United fans are clearly recognising the problem and that’s why they turned on Woodward during the 3-2 victory over Newcastle United on Saturday.
A manager is in trouble when the crowd turn on him but when they turn on the board the manager is seriously in the mire.
Regular readers will know my position on Jose Mourinho – he has to go at the end of the season if he hasn’t already been sacked before then.
I find it odd that he stitched up Eric Bailly, Victor Lindelof and Scott McTominay with his substitutions on Saturday.
That’s not clever because he’ll have to rely on all three at some point this season and they won’t forget that.
What has surprised me in the wake of that game is how many people thought the United players were playing for the manager in those last 20 minutes, when they recovered from 2-0 down
I’d say it looked more like the senior players had a conversation among themselves and said, ‘You know what, we need to do it for each other. This guy isn’t going to help us out of any holes so let’s do it for our professional pride.’
They looked like rabbits in headlights who managed to get out of the way at the last possible moment.
Even so, Mourinho should still have been on the phone to Anthony Martial, Paul Pogba, Alexis Sanchez and Juan Mata on Sunday to tell them he’d take them out for dinner because they got him out of jail big time 24 hours earlier.
Now he needs to tell himself to get his head down and keep his mouth shut until the end of the season.
Mourinho needs to do some coaching, smile a bit, and get the results any manager could get with a squad as strong as Manchester United’s.