Now Woodward is about to find out what it’s like to be the enemy of Jose
THE struggle to curb the dominance of Manchester City in English football in 2018 will not be a bloodless one. The soul- searching has already begun about how City forged so far ahead and Jose Mourinho is leading the inquest. There will be casualties for the failure of the rest to keep up with Pep Guardiola’s team. If I were Ed Woodward, I’ d start looking over my shoulder.
The Manchester United executive vice-chairman is a little boy operating in a man’s world. He is a neophyte who is way out of his depth. He wears the expression of the cat who got the cream, even as his club’s city rivals show him how it’s done. I’m not sure he knew what he was getting himself into when he appointed Jose Mourinho as the club’s manager but I think he’s about to find out.
There are plenty of things I don’t like about Mourinho. You may have noticed. But I also know he is a winner, that his record as a manager demands the utmost respect and that, if a club give him the funds to work with, he makes a habit of getting the job done.
Nor, despite the mistakes he has made this season and the negativity and fear that have infused United’s play in their biggest tests, do I think Mourinho is the main thing that stands in the way of United forcing themselves into a position next season where they can mount a credible challenge to City’s runaway hegemony.
No, United’s biggest problem is their ownership. The Glazer family and its place man, Woodward, appear to have no wider vision for the club beyond taking money out of it. Instead of progress, they have presided over atrophy and complacency. Sir Alex Ferguson was the Glazers’ camouflage but, in the years since his retirement, their nakedness has been exposed.
The Glazers got away with underinvestment for some years because of the success Ferguson brought. People called it‘ the Fergie dividend’. But now they can’t get away with it any more. They own the biggest club in the world but, even though we all know they are playing catch-up after the reigns of David Moyes and Louis van Gaal, they were still outspent in the summer by City and Chelsea.
And now Mourinho is starting to turn up the heat on them. That’s what he does. He is not shy of internal conflict. Woodward’s role at United is set to come under a fiercer spotlight now. Mourinho historians will tell you this is likely to be the start of a new phase in the relationship between the manager and the club, where he starts to put relentless pressure on United to accede to his demands.
He has no interest in being the manager of a club who are a country mile behind Guardiola’s City and are not giving him the resources to compete. Softly, at the moment, he is starting to agitate. Woodward better brace himself, because this ride’s going to get bumpy.
A couple of months ago, a journalist who is close to Mourinho wrote a report which was adorned with the headline ‘Jose Mourinho could leave Manchester United as Portuguese grows frustrated with Ed Woodward ’. The report said Mourinho had complained about ‘unnecessarily bureaucratic and inefficient organisation at Old Trafford and United’s Carrington training base’. It added: ‘A hesitancy over implementing recruitment decisions and an unwillingness to match the funding deployed by key domestic and Champions League rivals rank among other points of conflict.’
That was the start. Last week, Mourinho began to bring things out into the open. He said that the £300 million United had spent on transfers since the beginning of his reign was not enough. He fleshed out that theme on Friday. ‘The club have invested a lot of money,’ he said. ‘The problem is not the money we have invested. The problem is the money the other clubs invest.
‘It is a problem that others with better squads, with better stability, with more options — they keep on investing. When we are signing players in the past two years it is to replace people. So if next summer we buy a midfield player, it is not to improve our squad. It is to replace Michael Carrick. To improve our squad in the midfield we would need to buy two.’
And you know what? Mourinho’s right. And, for once, I admire him for pointing it out. He’s calling Woodward’s bluff right when it needs to be called. Sure, United have spent a hell of a lot of money. But the Glazers have taken a hell of a lot of money out of the club too. If they want to compete, they need to dig deeper. Is Woodward the man to help Mourinho get the job done? Does he have t he savvy of executives who have filled the same role at big clubs like David Gill, David Dein, Daniel Levy or Marina Granovskaia? I don’t think so. Woodward was clearly extremely good at his previous job as the club’s commercial director but his record in his more recent role suggests he is a lot better at signing noodle partners than first- team footballers.
Look at the players in Mourinho’s squad of 18 that scraped a 2-2 draw with Burnley at Old Trafford on Boxing Day and it is obvious that about a third of them are not good enough for the ambitions a club such as United should harbour.
Let’s leave aside for a second Woodward’s recently revealed and embarrassingly vacuous job pitch to Jurgen Klopp in 2014 that Old Trafford was ‘like an adult version of Disneyland’ — which is redolent of a man and a philosophy far more concerned with glitz and image than with substance—and concentrate on United’s scattergun attitude to player recruitment.
United legend Gary Neville pointed out on Sky Sports recently that seven of the United starting XI for the league game against West Brom this month hailed from the Ferguson era. ‘The recruitment has been disjointed,’ said Neville. ‘It’s been all over the place.’
United may be the biggest club in the world with commercial revenues that dwarf the sums others can collect but that does not mean they can afford to waste hundreds of millions of pounds on bad buys and a horribly inconsistent transfer policy.
The fear among many at United is that Woodward is simply not up to the job. You want to sign a new tractor partner in Outer Mongolia, he’s your man. You want a cogent transfer policy, then maybe not.
When Mourinho’s in charge of your club, you have a manager for whom football is a perpetual state of psychological warfare.
Woodward is about to find out what it’s like to be the enemy.
If you need a new tractor partner in Outer Mongolia, Ed’s your man. If you want a cogent transfer policy, then maybe not