BULLETPROOF
It’s transfer window chaos again for free-spending United, there’s academy unrest, no director of football and unhappy players. Yet still Woodward remains. . .
Ed WoodWard’s absence from Manchester United’s pre-season tour for the first time in six years this summer was supposed to have given him the chance to negotiate the tighter transfer window, yet it was chaos as usual yesterday.
While agent Federico Pastorello was beating a path to the executive vice-chairman’s door at United’s offices on stratton street, Mayfair, seeking a move for his client romelu Lukaku — who has been on strike all summer — another of the 11th-hour deals which have characterised Woodward’s £850million of spending in the past five years came to nothing.
Tottenham’s Christian Eriksen, the kind of playmaker the club badly needs, was simply not that convinced by the ambition or genuine interest of United, who had made no approach before yesterday, according to the selling club.
For an individual who has proved so skilled at generating commercial revenue for United, the 47-year- old is surprisingly poor at spending it. The word from inside United when he stepped into the top job was to expect a brash, wheeler- dealer approach to the transfer market from the former JP Morgan investment banker. He was replacing david Gill, a chartered accountant to his fingertips, and certainly added immediate colour.
The background was grey — private education at Brentwood school in Essex, a Bristol University physics degree and Pricewaterhouse Coopers tax advisory role before he brokered the Glazer family’s debt-leveraged purchase of United for JP Morgan.
But Woodward brought a more approachable, vivid persona and seemed like a child in a sweet shop when it came to buying players. He was self- evidently pleased that his phone was viewable on a table when a call from a well-known agent came in at one social gathering.
Player acquisition has been a more complicated, nuanced process than he perhaps ever anticipated, entailing dialogue with representatives and clubs and shrewd negotiation.
Woodward and his negotiator Matt Judge, officially United’s head of corporate development, do not seem to operate this way. Harry Maguire heard nothing from Woodward for weeks, despite a relationship with Mike Phelan, ole Gunnar solskjaer’s assistant, who knows him well. He arrived on Monday for £80m — precisely the figure Leicester City had been demanding all along.
Newcastle United’s sean Longstaff could have been signed for £ 20m this summer but now United are likely to end up paying £70m next summer instead.
This is why Woodward, who lives with his wife Isobel and their three-year-old twins in Cheshire, has had a heavy, costly reliance at United on intermediaries Jorge Mendes and Mino raiola.
It would help if he had made some progress in putting in place a structure to improve acquisitions. despite recruiting Maguire and highly promising full back aaron Wan-Bissaka from Crystal Palace, the club enter deadline day with a squad that looks thin and includes two huge names — Paul Pogba and Lukaku — who have been in open warfare with United. Instead, the communication failings have extended to the search for an individual to operate between Woodward, solskjaer and the academy, overseeing the football side of the operation.
darren Fletcher was approached by Woodward, yet 10 weeks later had heard nothing more.
Fletcher is a candidate because United are seeking a ‘cultural re-set’ — to cite their mantra of the moment — taking the club back to the values instilled by sir alex Ferguson at a time when some common sense seems lost.
THERE are tensions within the academy, where Nick Cox — brought from sheffield United to become head of academy — last month replaced Nicky Butt who is now head of first team development, even though the two get on well. Butt feels undermined by the reshuffle.
Privately, coaching staff have voiced frustrations with something as basic as the lack of viewing areas of the Carrington academy pitches from their offices.
There is even unhappiness about the new first-team bus, which is seen by the players as inferior to the vehicles which transport other top Premier League clubs.
Players were so tired of personal sponsor appearances last autumn that they refused to participate. It took such a step to bring a meeting between Woodward and then-captain ashley Young.
some on the football side feel Woodward does not like confrontation and that the interminable Pogba controversy would have been better dealt with by telling the player some home truths.
Woodward might have made United incalculably richer but some tell of a penny-pinching culture, of endless emails, bureaucracy and cost justifications.
Sportsmail has established that Woodward seems considerably more popular with staff on the commercial side of the business than those involved in football.
Woodward will not be relinquishing responsibility for player acquisitions. after six difficult years it is thought he wants to be the one to preside over the assembly of a squad which will lead United back to glory.
This is even though the ‘re-set’ has signalled an acceptance that his hugely expensive strategy of bringing in ‘galacticos’ like Pogba, angel di Maria, Bastian schweinstieger and radamel Falcao has failed. Far from being embarrassed in 2016 that the club was spending £89.3m to buy back Pogba, Woodward cited the size of the fee as evidence of United being back on the map. after signing di Maria from real Madrid, he told the club’s institutional investors about a ‘12-times increase in Google searches’ for the player. ‘There is a feeling that we have the start of something special,’ he said at the time. Now United are building around youth and British players — Maguire, WanBissaka and daniel James, the promising winger who has arrived from swansea. The summer tour has also provided evidence of talent in the pipeline — exciting forward Mason Greenwood and attacking midfielder angel Gomes.
The scouting structure has been enhanced in the past few years with more full-time staff across the world. With a forward line led by Marcus rashford, the unpredictable anthony Martial and untested James, it is easy to see why some bookmakers have United at 40-1 to win this season’s Premier League title.
Many fans will feel that the problem lies at the top of a club which has simply not made progress and struggled for any sense of identity and vision since Ferguson and Gill walked away.
This season should be Woodward’s last tilt at restoring the past, those supporters will say.
The Glazers will simply look at United’s imminent annual financial results, which are expected to take revenues to £600m.
For the foreseeable future, Woodward is bulletproof.