Sir Alex Ferguson undergoes emergency operation

[Felwin]

So the plan was that Jose would replace Fergie. He agreed to it before signing for Chelsea as he made them a promise - and cos Abramovic was paying him more no doubt.

That was the time to get him tbh. There were signs his football was less effective, and his 2015 title win benefited massively from Abramovic's industrial scale cheating (key players in that team were inelligble due to being bought by Roman). But hiring him in 2013, before Klopp and Pep changed English football, made more sense than when Woodward got round to it.

Fuck me, reviving this thread just made me think he'd had another emergency operation. I feared the worst.

I still think it would've ended up shit with Jose, but we might have declined slower as he wouldn't have made many of the mistakes Moyes made. Don't forget we were saddled with Woodward and other Glazer stooges who had decided that it didn't matter where we finish in the league, United was an asset to be milked for everything it was worth.

Whether it would be the shit football, stupid signings or Woodward failing/refusing to get Jose the players he wanted, we'd have been treading water by 2017/2018 IMO. You can't have such awful leadership at the top and hope to rebuild the squad successfully. We've got comparatively competent leadership now and it's still been rocky and it's possible this summer we'll end up patching holes in the squad and not really moving forward.

[Fuck the Glazers]

So the plan was that Jose would replace Fergie. He agreed to it before signing for Chelsea as he made them a promise - and cos Abramovic was paying him more no doubt.

That was the time to get him tbh. There were signs his football was less effective, and his 2015 title win benefited massively from Abramovic's industrial scale cheating (key players in that team were inelligble due to being bought by Roman). But hiring him in 2013, before Klopp and Pep changed English football, made more sense than when Woodward got round to it.

Fuck me, reviving this thread just made me think he'd had another emergency operation. I feared the worst.

I still think it would've ended up shit with Jose, but we might have declined slower as he wouldn't have made many of the mistakes Moyes made. Don't forget we were saddled with Woodward and other Glazer stooges who had decided that it didn't matter where we finish in the league, United was an asset to be milked for everything it was worth.

Whether it would be the shit football, stupid signings or Woodward failing/refusing to get Jose the players he wanted, we'd have been treading water by 2017/2018 IMO. You can't have such awful leadership at the top and hope to rebuild the squad successfully. We've got comparatively competent leadership now and it's still been rocky and it's possible this summer we'll end up patching holes in the squad and not really moving forward.

Yeah, that's fair. The football would have been properly shite and he'd have left us in a mess with a broken squad, like he always does. But we might have nicked a title. Or got close.

It would still have represented a step in the wrong direction, we just might have had more time to correct it for when Klopp & Pep got going. Just as they were winning everything, we were hoofing it to Lukaku who was 20 yards inside his own half and could only run for 10 minutes a game.

Looking back Woodward wasn't capable of building a top squad. We were still buying players for commercial reasons first, football reasons second. And the Glazers were still overseeing all the key departments and extracting wealth.