There’s a propensity in football to deal in absolutes.
For example, how often have you heard the phrase: ‘If club X sign player Y, everyone else may as well give up and just hand them the title’. Your average football fan is a bit of drama queen and certainly not averse to fatalistic proclamations.
Alas it rarely pans out that way. Empires take years to build and often seem unstoppable at their peak, but it’s amazing how often they turn to shit in double time. It wasn’t long ago that Chelsea were English football’s juggernaut, and if they signed Paul Pogba it would be game over.
No sooner had Manchester City confirmed that Pep Guardiola would be their next manager that the hyperbolic defeatism began in earnest. It was time to shut up shop, add sky blue ribbons to every piece of silverware going, and wave the white flag.
City had the money, the management structure, the facilities, the youth setup, and the players – and now they’d gone and nabbed the greatest coach in the world. It is painted as a doomsday scenario – particularly if your allegiances lie with the red half of Manchester.
Of course in reality things are not quite so straight-forward. As much as self-assumed experts would love to have you believe that football is now an exact science that can be calculated like an equation, it has a funny habit of proving people wrong. Absolutely every dead cert is a risk.
So the good news for Manchester United supporters is that, for all his trophies and tactical prowess, Guardiola will have to prove himself in English football – just as he has in La Liga and in the Bundesliga. He will need to adapt and assimilate the same as everyone else – and it is never easy.
The bad news is that United themselves are turning into one of the biggest jokes in world football. It is all well and good pointing to the fact that City may fail, but at least they’re doing everything possible to ensure success. United are floundering, and the buck stops with one man.
Ed Woodward has been in his post as executive vice-chairman of the club since 2013, when he replaced David Gill. In that time, the most feared and reviled team in the land has become an embarrassing national punchline. Two failed managers, dreary dull football, and not even a sniff of a trophy.
If David Moyes wasn’t Woodward’s appointment (and no one’s owning up to it), then Louis van Gaal definitely was. Being kind, you’d suggest the Dutchman’s usefulness has expired; it is crueler and perhaps truer to argue that he has been a failure on nearly every level.
And yet Woodward does nothing. He keeps Van Gaal in a job – even though the manager’s every recent utterance points to rare self-awareness and open defeatism. Many fans feel that it is an exercise in arse-covering on Woodward’s part – rather than loyalty or conviction – that keeps the coach in a job.
To condemn Van Gaal as a mistake would be to admit that it was an error that he made – an accountant with no football knowledge to speak of. And if there’s one thing we know from all the briefs he provides to his favourite journalists, it’s that Woodward is obsessed with his own reputation.
Perhaps that’s why he only seems interested in chasing ‘marquee’ signings, that will put him as dealmaker firmly in the spotlight. It’s all well and good bounding into the transfer arena like some dick-swinging big dog, but it’s not long until you’re seen as something of a desperate joke.
Maybe that’s the reasoning. Perhaps doomed pursuits of Gareth Bale or Neymar or Thomas Muller serve everyone’s agendas. United make the headlines and give the pretence of relevance, while the players’ agents are able to negotiate bigger deals using United as a convenient bargaining chip.
Since Woodward took charge, the youth academy has become a rudderless mess, the senior side have served up dull and pointless garbage for a seriously pissed off fanbase, and the club have wasted a fortune on the likes of Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao with nothing to show for it.
Who knows how City will fare under Guardiola. What is clear is that the hierarchy at the Etihad are focused professionals. They had the forward thinking to hire Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano, and prepare all levels of the club to their number one target’s liking.
United, on the other hand, look f*cking clueless. Even if they go on to appoint Jose Mourinho in the summer, it will be due to dwindling options. Because Jurgen Klopp and Guardiola went to rival clubs; both of these individuals being more suited to Old Trafford’s ‘Theatre of Dreams’ pretensions.
There is no guarantee of success in football, but you can f*ck things up very easily. United fans shouldn’t fear Pep Guardiola – they should worry about Ed Woodward. Because outside of tying up deals with official noodle suppliers and tyre partners, it looks very much like he hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing.
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