Six Years Of Ed - Part 2

For a man who had made very few truly regrettable decisions in his tenure at United, and who is universally regarded as being an excellent judge of character, the appointment of Moyes was a complete and utter disaster. In hindsight, Ed’s Match Attax lottery system may have actually yielded better results.

His first big decision as the new manager of Manchester United (and the second decision that led to the ship changing its course towards a big iceberg named “mediocrity”) was to replace the title-winning backroom team with his team from Everton.

This was the first missed opportunity for Ed Woodward to do something to steer us right. He could have vetoed the decision, reasoning that replacing the likes of Meulensteen and Phelan with Steve Round and Jimmy Lumsden was akin to replacing the E-Street Band with Showaddywaddy. But he did nothing, because he didn’t realise that Moyes had just made an enormous mistake. Because Ed Woodward is not a football man.

A “football man” might have pointed out that needlessly changing a setup that had just won the league perhaps isn’t the wisest of moves. But Ed Woodward is not a football man. Nor, seemingly, has he ever heard the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. He is an investment banker. So, whilst Moyes ripped out the brain of the team, he just smiled, nodded and continued booking Dwight Yorke a flight to Thailand to go and sit on tractors.

Moyes’ tenure was so bad that three of our four senior defenders left at the end of the season leaving a gap in our back four that has still never been adequately filled. The dressing room was lost, amongst embarrassing stories of derisive nicknames and Phil Jagielka DVDs. Not only was the ship off course, but the crew were starting to jump overboard.

Fast forward through nine long, arduous months and Moyes is out of the door, quickly replaced by caretaker manager Ryan Giggs.

There are two things that should be screaming out to any United fan here, or indeed, anyone with even an inkling of how a successful business should be run:

1 – Ferguson’s successor being an abject failure obviously never crossed anyone’s mind in the entire build up to his retirement, and over the course of those disastrous nine months. There was never a “Plan B”. No contingency. This speaks volumes about the competency of the people that are currently in charge of “the biggest club in the world”.

2 – Giggs’ appointment as caretaker manager until the end of the season was the opportune moment for a new, long-term strategy for the club to have been drawn up in time for the summer transfer window.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, Ed’s response was to appoint (after consulting his “World Cup” edition Match Attax) Louis Van Gaal and throw money at the squad to try and make the memory of the previous season disappear.