UNITED Woodward backs Mour and says Reds will spend
ED Woodward has vowed United are ‘working tirelessly’ to bring success back to the club after a trophyless season.
The Reds finished 19 points behind City in the Premier League last term and lost the FA Cup final to Chelsea, but only signed three players in the summer transfer window.
Manager Jose Mourinho wanted to make two more additions to his squad, but his targets were vetoed by executive vice-chairman Woodward.
The club has endured a rocky start to this campaign, losing two of their first three league matches.
United recorded three straight away wins but dropped more points at Old Trafford on Saturday to newly-promoted Wolves and were last night dumped out of the Carabao Cup by Derby.
The Reds released a record revenue of £590m for the fourth quarter in their latest financial results and Woodward promised he would attempt to meet supporters’ expectations despite an ‘increasingly competitive transfer market.’
“Everyone at the club is working tirelessly to add to Manchester United’s 66 and Jose’s 25 trophies,” Woodward said.
“That is what our passionate fans and our history demands.
“We are committed to our philosophy of blendi n g top academy graduates with world-class players and are proud that, once again, last season we had more academy graduate minutes on the pitch than any other Premier League club.
“Our increased revenue expectation for the year demonstrates our continued strong long-term financial performance which underpins everything we do and allows us to compete for top talent in an increasingly competitive transfer market.” Despite United’s turnover, they only spent £72.7m in the summer transfer window on Diogo Dalot, Fred and Lee Grant as they balked at the asking prices for Tottenham’s Toby Alderweireld and Leicester centre-half Harry Maguire. United invested £140.9m in the squad during the 2017 summer window, meaning there was a drastic drop off to £67.7m this year. Woodward gave his backing to Mourinho and promised the club will invest to become successful again. The vice-chairman was targeted Ed Woodward by a faction of the United support in the win at Burnley earlier this month when a banner that read ‘Ed Woodward a specialist in failure!’ flew overhead.
Woodward was not in attendance for United’s three straight away wins recently but was at Old Trafford for the draw with Wolves and spoke at United’s quarterly conference call yesterday afternoon.
“It’s easy to get caught up in the game-by-game fluctuations of our season or even the relatively minor pieces of business and industry news,” Woodward said.
“I would like to take this opportunity to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
“We’re the biggest sports team in the world as measured by the number of fans, we know our position is one that requires continued effort and investment to maintain.
“Our board, our investors and everyone at the club are aligned with the fans with what we need to do on the pitch and that is to win trophies.
“That’s one of the reasons why we hired Jose Mourinho and have already won three with him.
“On the pitch, it’s clearly important we continue to drive the business forward, giving us the financial muscle to compete in a highly competitive transfer market.
“This allows us to continue to blend world-class purchased talent with our continued development of top academy graduates.
“Our academy is a huge source of pride in delivering talent to the firstteam.”