by Hutch's Shoulder » Fri Aug 29, 2014 5:20 pm
I think they have another problem, also a Ferguson legacy, aside from the quality of their squad. This other problem is the archaic management structure of their business.
The Glazers seem to have been essentially hands-off owners, sitting back and enjoying the money-making machine they purchased.
Gill, and probably Woodward, have been good at the commercial side, signing the image rights deals in Asia etc., like our Tom does.
Ferguson meanwhile ran the football side and it all went through him. There was no long term planning, no world-wide vision or even director of football like Ferran and Txiiki provide, no plan for their academy, etc., just Fergie.
Take him away and Woodward is out of his depth, Moyes and LVG (who today said he left the signing of players to Our Ed), are sticking plasters on the first team squad season-by-season.
In business terms, they have a poor product, which is bad but repairable, and no Governance or Management Vision. The contrast with what ADUG have done for us is stark.
They don't seem to have realised this point yet, and it is that which makes me optimistic that we will stay ahead of them for years.
This management weakness is a result of Ferguson's style: he was an old style, dictatorial manager, with all the strings in his own hands. As with many dictators, long as he was pulling the strings, it worked okay by and large, but once he was gone, his appointed successor was in a different mould and there was no football management infrastructure to keep it going (compare what happened when Mancini went - Kiddo retained, Vieira in place etc.). We seem to have a management team, they had a dictator.
Last edited by
Hutch's Shoulder on Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.