WHY SAY ANYTHING?

It is not a case of the lunatics having taken over the asylum, not yet anyway. It is more that the clown is in charge of the circus and people are laughing, as they should be when watching a circus.

Manchester United PLC is, to the vast majority of supporters, a massive company such as BP, BT or Natwest Bank for example. Those supporters are not interested in the balance sheets, the profit and loss accounts or the day to day ups and downs of the stock market.

Not in the slightest. There will be some who have shares and therefore take an interest in their performance on the market, but not many.

Manchester United Football Club is different. To the supporters this is THEIR club.
They ARE interested in the day to day goings on at Carrington and Old Trafford, in the same way as, when I was a young supporter, I wanted all the news I could get from the ground and the Cliff.

The point I am making is that, to Manchester United fans the world over, Manchester United is about football and nothing else.

Ed Woodward seems to think that he knows what the fans want. Strange that! He reportedly canvasses the players for an opinion on the manager, yet I don’t ever remember him asking the fans what they want.

If he did take such an action, he would find that the United faithful don’t really want £100 million spent on Gareth Bale. They don’t want to read about interest in Neymar or James Rodriguez. With the kind of money being discussed for these players United fans know that four or five younger players could be brought in who would serve the club for years and, who knows, the next Ronaldo or Messi may be discovered amongst them.

Manchester United is not, thankfully, Real Madrid just yet. The need to spend a horrendous amount of money on one player exists purely in Woodward’s mind. He may want to be like Florentino Perez, but he is not. He may, as discussed in a previous article here, think that he is entitled to spend whatever he wants because he is responsible for bringing millions into the club, that is also untrue.

Ed Woodward is where he is now because of the Glazers, no other reason. It is very American to promote individuals who make the company plenty of money, even if it is to a position in which they have absolutely zero experience. Imagine the conversation at the Glazer household when David Gill decided to call it a day.

“Who shall we put in charge now that Gill is going?”

“How about Ed Woodward, he brings lots of money into the club?”

“Fine, that’s settled then. Get him on Skype so we can give him the good news.”

That may be an over-simplification but it won’t be too far removed from the truth and it has left United in a mess.

The problem is that the Glazers cannot see, at present anyway, that Woodward is the one making all the wrong choices and all the wrong decisions. Yes van Gaal should go, yes it was right for Moyes to go as well so surely it has to be right for Woodward to go.

Don’t fire him, send him back to what he knows and what he does best. Head of Marketing is his forte and he can continue to increase Manchester United ‘s wealth by signing his sponsorship deals, rather than decreasing it with massively overpriced transfer fees and manager pay-offs.

If this were to happen, United could then appoint a CEO who actually knows something about the game and isn’t just a money-man. He, along with the board, could appoint a manager with a far greater chance of getting it right than the previous incumbent.

All this, of course, is unlikely to happen in the near future. The word is that van Gaal is still in the job because there is no viable alternative. YES THERE IS! Sir Alex Ferguson has already said he would help Giggs if he was given the job and Jose Mourinho would probably walk to Old Trafford from wherever he is if he was afforded the opportunity. That’s two alternatives, both of which are viable.

Unfortunately it would seem, at the moment anyway, that there is no sign of a professional Ringmaster taking charge of the Old Trafford circus and, while this is the case, the poor saps paying to watch the rubbish dished out by van Gaal will have to put up with Ed the Clown for a while longer.