Something has got to give.
Manchester United’s struggles on the pitch are symptomatic of a greater issue at the club and it’s clear that nothing is going to improve at Old Trafford unless the thinking among the higher-ups changes significantly.
The decision to appoint Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on a permanent basis after an impressive run of results is now causing concern among supporters as the usual new manager bounce has come to an end.
Fresh from United’s defeat to Manchester City on Wednesday, The Football Spin with Dion Fanning and Paddy McKenna welcomed football journalist Tony Evans to the show to discuss what’s wrong at Manchester United and what must change in order for the Red Devils to compete with the likes of City and Liverpool again.
“The Glazers actually don’t care as long as United are churning over the cash and no matter how badly they’re doing, that will continue to happen,” Tony Evans explained.
https://soundcloud.com/thefootballspin/roy-keane-kicking-ass-and-taking-names-ed-woodwards-repetitive-errors-liverpools-consolation
“They’ve got a man in charge, Ed Woodward. I spoke to a very good friend of his a couple of years ago and I said to him, ‘I know he’s your mate but he’s not a very good football executive.’
“And this fellow said, ‘Yeah, you’re right and he knows it too.’ He’s a man without any vision, without any real football idea or knowledge and he’s just making the same mistakes over and over again.
“I think most of us looked at the appointment of Solskjaer and saw that he is a nice guy, he was a very good player and he may turn into a really good manager but it’s a classic Chelsea/Di Matteo mistake. A bit of positivity, the bounce after Mourinho, the players are good enough and they appoint him. And it was mad.
“They’re a football club. They’ve got to try to come up with a strategy. You’ve got to look at where you’re going to be in five years and what do you want to do.
“I worked for Chelsea back in the late-nineties and one of the interesting things about [then-chairman] Ken Bates was that he didn’t like people who were Chelsea fans working for the club because they got caught up in the cycle of results and Woodward has got caught up in that cycle. United went on a good run, they appointed Solskjaer but it wasn’t representative of the way it was going to go.
“What you need to do is think strategically and step outside the week-to-week results and what’s happening. Think two, three, five years down the line and United haven’t done that at all.”
