SOMETIMES, Ed Woodward must wonder if anybody will ever give him credit for anything. Stop spending huge amounts of money on players who are past it, they said, and so he did, and the result is £60m spent on Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Dan James, young players of undoubted promise who still have much to prove. Again, though, the most appropriate response again seems to be one of scepticism. The point is not whether Manchester United sign young players or experienced players, whether they invest in potential or proven talent: it is what the plan is behind it all.
And really, what is the plan? Who is making these decisions? What is the philosophy underpinning it all? Wan-Bissaka, it’s true, answers United’s need for a right-back to replace Antonio Valencia, but what is James’s part in this? If there’s one area in which United are replete, it’s surely rapid wide men with questionable end product.
Perhaps that’s unfair. James had an excellent second half of the season at Swansea – his final eight league games yielded three assists and two goals – and it may be that United have signed somebody who could have the sort of impact Gareth Bale eventually did. But the problem is what has gone before and the sense that Woodward has no plan, has little confidence in his own understanding of football and so drifts with the wind, reacting to circumstance and criticism rather than forging his own path – or at least appointing a director of football to work out what that path should be.
When Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, the appointment of David Moyes, although in retrospect deeply flawed, perhaps seemed to make sense.
Certainly, when Ferguson himself was backing Moyes, it would be harsh to blame Woodward for not recognising Moyes would be overawed by the job. But after an attempt at a continuity candidate failed, he went for European experience. The problem was that he went too experienced and appointed in Louis van Gaal somebody who had represented the vanguard of innovation twenty years earlier.
So, react again. A proven winner. Jose Mourinho. A big name with two Champions Leagues and league titles in four countries. But the problem is that football is dynamic. It moves on. There were plenty of people who wondered whether Mourinho also mightn’t be past his best. Football is not simply about buying the shiniest most expensive item in the shop: it’s about identifying talent that is still on the way up.
Signing James and Wan-Bissaka feels like a belated recognition of that after the huge outlays on Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Sanchez have brought, at best, mixed results. But signing young players if there is no plan is just as pointless as signing experienced ones, if cheaper. They need direction, and it’s hard to see how Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can provide that. He is almost certainly steelier than his cheery demeanour suggests but there is a reason why his is favourite to be the first Premier League manager to leave his job in the coming season.
And this is where Woodward feels unfortunate. Appointing Solskjaer as caretaker manager was just about the one good football decision he has made. Who better to clear up the toxicity Mourinho always leaves at a club? Who better to make fans feel good about themselves again, to reawaken their affection for the club? Who better than somebody so devoted to the club and its ideals to buy the board time to find the right manager to take United forward into the long-term (while ideally appointing a sporting director).
And then came football’s great joke as Solskjaer began setting records. There was a time when United would probably have been better off had he lost a couple of games, rather than ramping up the pressure to give him the job full-time. And of course, when that pressure came, Woodward, who could easily have waited until the end of the season, chose not to gather two further months of evidence, but succumbed. And the result is that, while some maintain a faith that Solksjaer can somehow make it 1999 all over again, there is a sense once more of United being in a holding pattern, just waiting for the inevitable when the Norwegian will be removed and Woodward will replace him with whoever seems most popular at the time.
Turning to youth is probably a positive, but it would be a far more convincing move if there were any sense it is part of a wider plan.
Manchester United to finish in the top four – Evens
