Time’s up for United’s Bad Lieutenant ...the Premier League’s worst ever CEO whose galacticos model is an abject failure STAN COLLYMORE
SO Ed Woodward is finally leaving Manchester United on February 1 – well, good riddance.
Because I cannot think of a worse CEO in Premier League history.
In fact, look at United, which has everything going for it in terms of its size, history, trophy winners, legacy and money.
You would do very well to find another CEO or equivalent at any of England’s 91 league clubs, who, from a starting point of being on top of the perch, could have taken the Reds quite as far down as Woodward has.
Look, I know they haven’t been relegated out of the division and that they’re not staring down a billion-pound blackhole like Real Madrid or Barcelona.
Failure
But the consequences of the decisions Woodward has made at key times at Manchester United – or, more importantly, hasn’t made – have taken a club that was firmly on top of the tree to being England’s fourth, fifth or sixth-best club this season and that is a poor, poor return.
His galacticos philosophy has been an abject failure and should be a lesson to anyone wanting to just come in and replicate the Barca and Real Madrid models.
That’s two who have tried it in England now. Arsene Wenger wanted to copy Barca of 2011 and failed and Woodward wanted to follow Real of the early 2000s and failed.
The reason it doesn’t work here is because, most years, Barca and Real have a 50 percent chance of winning
La Liga and, when it drops, it’s never to less than a 33 per cent chance.
United, however, are in the world’s most competitive league, with five or six teams pushing them, and that’s why they should have stuck to what they are good at.
Disjointed
That is developing the best young talent in the game while making under-the-radar and ahead-of-time signings of players in the £30million to £40m bracket, and then adding one or two cherry-on-the-top signings in
the mould of an Eric Cantona and Cristiano Ronaldo. That way, just as the noisy neighbours City have done, you build a squad with two players with a cigarette paper between them in terms of what they can offer in every position.
If Woodward had done those basic things, then United, more than likely, would have won the title far more recently than 2013 and perhaps in the 2017-18 season under Jose Mourinho when they finished second.
And they certainly would have had more trophies in the cabinet.
Instead, they’re looking at a situation whereby they have arguably the most disjointed squad in elite level European football.
They’re an absolute shambles of a club – one that has now become more Coronation Street than Succession in the English game.
The lesson, then, for Richard
Arnold, who will replace Woodward, is simple – he must get back to United’s
DNA because it is really good.
He needs to get them producing young players in abundance, as United always have done, and steer clear of an ageing former player just because he’s panicked by suggestions the noisy neighbours want him.
The lesson for Richard Arnold, who will replace Woodward, is simple – he needs to get back to United s DNA because it is a really good DNA. He needs to get them producing young players in abundance as United have always done
Circus
Make sure you’re in the market for Mo Salah from Roma, Kevin De Bruyne from Wolfsburg and Sadio Mane from Southampton at £30m instead of waiting and paying £70m.
Doing those things can get United back to where they want to be.
But if Arnold continues the galacticos model, then we can expect the club to be a circus for another half-decade or more.