Woodward’s fight to right wrongs of ‘six wasted years’
FOR all the flak Ed Woodward has copped for his negotiating in the last two years, he was not as blindingly naive as his predecessor, David Gill, was in 2009.
United had agreed to allow Cristiano Ronaldo to leave for Real Madrid for a world record £80m and Carlos Tevez also departed, yet United ended the summer with four underwhelming acquisitions in Antonio Valencia, Michael Owen, Gabriel Obertan and Mame Biram Diouf.
United could have cherry-picked from Real’s rejects, such as Wesley Sneijder or Arjen Robben, players who led their new clubs to Champions League glory.
Real’s obsession with Ronaldo was so intense United could have forced them to forgo signing Lyon’s Karim Benzema.
Instead, Real bought Benzema and United ended up with permacrock Owen, recently relegated with Newcastle and courted by Stoke and Hull.
The post-Ronaldo years at United became, until Ferguson’s retirement, synonymous with not splashing the cash. United have won two Premier League titles since Ronaldo left and the lack of investment, coupled with the Moyes error, have set the club back three years.
Accurately, the Manchester United Supporters Trust described the last six years as a ‘wasted opportunity’.
What symbolised Ferguson’s final four years most was that mercurial 2010-11 season. United were dubbed the ‘Unconvincibles’ after going unbeaten in their first 24 Premier League games and came reasonably close to a second Treble, only to be sucker-punched in the FA Cup semi-final by City and battered by Barcelona in the Champions League final.
In The Eternal City two years earlier, United had a chance. At Wembley in 2011, they had no chance. Ferguson pre-dated Manuel Pellegrini’s suicidal 4-4-2 set-up against Barca by four years at The National Stadium. Rather than adopt the innovative 4-3-3 formation that surprised Chelsea in Moscow in 2008 and began auspiciously in Rome, United looked like a team in a parallel universe at Wembley.
An insipid Marseille, imploding Chelsea and starstruck Schalke were vanquished by United in the knockout stages. Deceived, Ferguson stuck with Javier Hernandez and Wayne Rooney up front when one had to be demoted to counter Barca’s ‘passing carousel’.
The caveat was Ferguson had developed a phobia for signing midfielders and Darren Fletcher’s ulcerative colitis was worsening. The alternative was Anderson, hooked at half-time in Rome.
Scholes revealed United intended to ‘overpower’ Barcelona, only they had lightweight midfielders in Michael Carrick, Ryan Giggs and Ji-Sung Park.
Park was omitted from the 2008 final squad in Moscow, went missing in 2009 and again in 2011. Arguably his finest performance for United was as a defensive midfielder against AC Milan in 2010, but you could count the amount of times he played in that role on one hand and he twice started against Barca on the wing.
Rene Meulensteen lamented how a half-time row over Pedro’s opener affected the team’s focus. The glaring reality was United had punched above their weight and Barcelona dealt the knockout blow.
Woodward is having to oversee United’s return to the heavyweights.