This boardroom upheaval has to be very unsettling for Coach Ole and the team in the middle of a title challenge.
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No mention of the Super League in Woodwardâs statement.
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Barney is the unnamed irish sports star
Failure will be Ed Woodwardâs legacy
By Daniel Taylor 1h ago
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Before he turns out the lights for the final time, would it be too much to expect Ed Woodward to offer some form of apology to the Manchester United supporters who overwhelmingly give the impression they will be glad to be shot of him?
It doesnât seem an unreasonable request when many of those supporters have been left so disillusioned and disconnected they might actually prefer Woodward to be put in stocks outside Old Trafford so they can throw rotten fruit in his direction.
Yet there was no trace of contrition or embarrassment in the statement that Woodward released to coincide with those moments when the Super League turned to dust and the 12 clubs, aka the Dirty Dozen, were left with a stain on their reputations that will be hard to wash out.
At least Arsenal had enough self-awareness to realise their part in the tragicomedy was worthy of an apology. Tottenham Hotspur did likewise. John W Henry, Liverpoolâs owner, swallowed his pride to ask for forgiveness. But we should probably know enough about the way the Glazer family operates to realise they are unlikely to do the same.
And Woodward? He did not even mention the events of the last few days. He just wanted us to know that he was proud of his achievements as Unitedâs executive vice-chairman and positioned it as a triumph when, back in the real world, the alternative view is that his eight years in office have largely been synonymous with waste and failure.
Perhaps we should not be too surprised. It shouldnât have needed the now-infamous Super League to understand that Woodward, as well as various Old Trafford colleagues, could do with a refresher when it comes to the responsibilities that ought to be considered mandatory for anyone running a sporting institution.
When Woodward took this role in 2013, he embarked on a PR drive that included the revelation that he intended to restore the words âfootball clubâ to Unitedâs badge.
Those words had been lopped off by the previous regime and Woodward, sensing an easy win, saw an opportunity to demonstrate that he and the Glazers did not, contrary to popular opinion, see United primarily as a business.
It never happened, of course, because it quickly transpired that the relevant people still had their priorities badly blurred. More fool anyone for believing it at the time. And in the last few days, we have seen the compelling evidence, yet again, that the people in charge at Old Trafford have no real understanding of what a football club means to its people, its community, its town or city.
Woodwardâs aides have gone into damage-limitation mode. They now want us to believe he is misunderstood and that, privately, he had his own misgivings about the Super League project that United, on his watch, championed and spearheaded. His PR team are busily spreading the word that he always intended to leave at the end of the year. And there is more spin here than a Shane Warne googly.
Letâs just focus on the fact Woodward had his fingerprints all over a blundering, self-serving, cack-handed plan that would have blown a gaping hole in the sport as we know it. His United reign has been synonymous with a series of bad decisions and this was the worst of the lot. He got his fingers burned. In fact, his whole sleeve caught fire. And, professionally, it has sunk him.
The irony is that it has happened during one of the few occasions when it has actually felt like United had some real momentum since Fergusonâs retirement, meaning the Glazers no longer had anybody to make up for all the faults that exist elsewhere in the club.
Woodwardâs decision to stick by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will always polarise opinion when, in his more difficult times, the Norwegian has had to battle the notion that he is a three-star manager at a five-star club. Increasingly, however, that had started to look like it might be one of Woodwardâs better decisions. United had reached the semi-final of the Europa League. They had only Manchester City above them in the Premier League and a 13-point lead over Liverpool that nobody could have envisaged last season when the team from Old Trafford were an afterthought in the title race.
But then, of course, we embarked on the wild, eccentric 48-hour whirl that has brought words such as âsnakesâ and âliarsâ and âscavengersâ and âmafiaâ into the football lexicon and, rather hilariously, provided an unexpected audition of the all-dancing, tills-ringing Super League in all its glory.
Who knew, after all, that its knockout stages would take this form? Or that they could be so fun?
First, it was Chelsea who opted out. A few minutes later, the news arrived that Manchester City had lost their nerve, too.
There were newsflashes about Atletico Madrid and Barcelona pulling out and, in the age of twitching, relentless 24-7 news, not many people bothered to check whether it was actually true. The next tweet told us Andrea Agnelli had resigned as president of Juventus. That was one of many red herrings. All very entertaining, though. And then, one by one, they all started to fall away. RIP, dear Super League: the vanity project that will be remembered in years to come for lasting about as long as it takes to boil an egg.
Unfortunately for Woodward, what that means for him is infamy and a part in the story that will always be cited for the wrong reasons. He and his fellow conspirators underestimated the depth of feeling it would create. They did not appreciate how monumental the backlash would be. And the reason they did not understand was because they did not know enough about football and, specifically, the people who follow it.
Woodward might be pushing his luck, therefore, when he says he will treasure the memories of winning the Europa League, the FA Cup and the EFL Cup (conveniently overlooking that the 20-times champions of England have spent most of his tenure thinking back nostalgically to happier times).
âI am proud of the regeneration of the clubâs culture and our return to the Manchester United way of playing,â Woodward added.
But did Woodward really understand the clubâs culture? Can he really say he was tuned in after trying to push through a reviled, baffling project that turned everyone off â fans, media, stakeholders, players, politicians â and prompted Sir Alex Ferguson, who did more than most to create that culture, to go against his own club?
The truth here is that Woodward has shown himself to be the kind of boardroom presence that makes it easy to understand what Gareth Southgate, the England manager, meant when he talked about loving football but disliking the football industry.
Woodward always liked to present himself as a man of the people, good for a pint and a game of golf. In reality, he is a modern-day example of why, in 1909, William McGregor, the founder of the Football League, warned the sport to âbeware of the clever, sharp men who are creeping into the gameâ.
Nobody will campaign for him to change his mind about leaving. Few will sympathise. Indeed, there is a solid argument that he should bring forward his departure rather than stretching it out to the end of the year. Why wait? Fetch your jacket and show yourself out the back door.
Even ignoring the events the last few days, it is not difficult to understand why so many United supporters have grown weary of Woodwardâs mistakes and see him through suspicious eyes.
Perhaps that was inevitable bearing in mind it was Woodward, in his previous role as an investment banker with JP Morgan, who helped the Glazers arrange their highly leveraged takeover. But it wasnât just his background that was the issue. It was the fact Woodward had presided over more transfer-window calamities than he would probably wish to remember. It was his erratic, accident-prone leadership. It was the fact that, though he clearly had strengths in the world of finance and marketing, his time in charge had coincided with United falling behind the teams they measure themselves against the most.
It made him so unpopular that a plane flew over one game with a banner dubbing him the âspecialist in failureâ. There were hostile chants. Fireworks were chucked at his house. One cartoon in Red News, Unitedâs oldest fanzine, showed him in conversation with Joel Glazer. The speech bubble had Glazer asking if Woodward had been misleading the fans. âOf course I have,â came the reply. âMy lips were moving.â
Another tribute from the same pages began with the words: âWoodwardâs incompetence stands out like the pair of bollocks on a bulldog.â And when then the news dropped on Tuesday, there were fans waving flags in celebration on Sir Matt Busby Way and cars beeping their horns at the junction of Chester Road where protest banners had been put outside The Trafford pub.
Gary Neville posted a waving-hand emoji on his Twitter account and we can only try to imagine the scenes of rejoicing if the Glazers were to follow Woodward out of the club. âEd Woodward was the trunk of the tree,â Neville said. âWe now need to go for the roots.â
Do the last few days make it any more likely that Joel, Bryan, Avram and the rest of the Glazer crew might start looking at their own exit plan?
Nobody outside of a small circle can answer that with any authority because, to put it bluntly, we donât know. The Glazers keep everyone a long armâs length away. They have built an invisible wall around themselves but it feels like wishful thinking to assume they might think this is the right time to sever their ties with United too. If there is one thing we should know about these people, it is that they do not bend for anyone. If they cared about public opinion, they would have gone a long time ago.
As for Woodward, maybe he will come to reflect that this is all part of an attitude problem at the top of the sport, where they seem to believe that money is how we keep the score nowadays.
Nobody can doubt his emotional involvement or how dedicated he was to getting it right. Those sort of things tend to be taken for granted, however, when the person in question is the highest-paid club director in the Premier League, raking in ÂŁ3.1 million a year. The lesson, perhaps, is that Manchester United is, first and foremost, a football club, even if those words are still absent from the badge. And football clubs are precious.
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Here we go.
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Announce van de Saar 
Ooofftt
Eddie loves beeker so much hes gonna come over and look after him
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Wow.
I suppose theyâre hoping a not for profit organization picks them up and puts another billion into the club for fun.
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Thats a movement there.
Coach Ole with the touch of diplomacy
Did they block coach Oleâs parking space down the back by the wheelie bins?
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Still ringing that bell I see? Very good.
TBF, after the Alan Smith thing, heâs surely got another 10 years grace on it.
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Weâll post where we want, weâll post where we want 
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