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Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the day Sir Alex Ferguson retired as Manchester United manager.
In those ten years, there have been eight different managers, but none have been able to come close to matching the success the great man achieved.
David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Erik ten Hag have held the role on a permanent basis, with Ryan Giggs, Michael Carrick and Ralf Rangnick all having pitched in with caretaker stints.
However, it has to be said that none of Ten Hag’s predecessors were given the time that Sir Alex was to establish themselves at the club.
The Scot took the reins at Old Trafford in November 1986 after a horrific start to the season from the popular Ron Atkinson had left United in the relegation zone.
Sir Alex guided United to 11th that year, second the following year and then 12th and 13th in the next two seasons. It has now gone down in folklore that were it not for Lee Martin’s winning goal in the 1990 FA Cup final, the then chairman Martin Edwards was going to sack him had he not won the game.
Edwards subsequently denied these claims but did admit that “I don’t know whether if we had gone out of the cup that game and our league position hadn’t improved how long more I could’ve gone on supporting him, I don’t know.
“I’ve always been honest about that. It may have come the day we had to say ‘hang on Alex, I have supported you the best I can, but it is not getting any better’.” (source: Sky)
The rest, as they say, is history and Sir Alex remained at the helm for 23 more years, making 26 in total.
The question we will never know the answer to is would any of the eight that followed Fergie have come good if allowed the three and a half years he was to prove himself at Old Trafford?
All will argue that they were hamstrung by one thing or another. Moyes had the unenviable task of being the immediate successor. He inherited an aging and depleted squad and his first transfer window was also the first run by former executive vice chairman, Ed Woodward, and was a fiasco that ended in only Marouane Fellaini being bought on deadline day.
Van Gaal was backed to the hilt in the transfer market and managed to qualify for the Champions League in his first season, but appeared to lose the dressing room in his second and responded by becoming more and more defensive, both in tactics and in rhetoric. The disastrous signing of Angel di Maria and loan of Radamel Falcao were big factors in his demise.
It was also dressing room politics that seemed to be the death knell for the next manager, José Mourinho, whose famous fall-out with Paul Pogba turned the dressing room toxic. Mourinho has suggested since that he was not backed in the Pogba fall-out and that player power – and Pogba’s market value – won the day. Ironic, given that the Frenchman left the club on a free transfer two years later. Mourinho also complained that he was not backed in the transfer market in his third season. He signed Pogba, Mkhitaryan, Bailly and Ibrahimovic in his first season, Lukaku, Matic and Lindelof in his second but in 2018/19 only Fred, Diogo Dalot and Lee Grant were added to the ranks. So he had a point, particularly as Fred was reportedly bought against his wishes.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was the next man in the hotseat and he, too, has some justifiable axes to grind. The main one would be the board’s decision to re-sign Cristiano Ronaldo, one that reportedly was made over his head altogether. Although Ronaldo finished his first season as the club’s top goalscorer, his presence forced Solskjaer to adapt the team’s style of play completely and everything was about feeding Ronaldo. Ultimately the rest of the team lost confidence, shape and form and Solskjaer paid the price. The Norwegian was also told to play the erratic Harry Maguire, too, according to former Red, Marcos Rojo, recently.
So many problems since Sir Alex left can be attributed to the stewardship of the club at a level above manager. The great man did manage to survive for eight seasons under Glazer ownership, but in those early days David Gill was still the chief executive. This meant that football matters were still dealt with by football people.
Had Moyes, Van Gaal, Mourinho and Solskjaer been operating under Gill rather than Woodward, who, when not being incompetent himself, opened up a trans-warp conduit for Joel Glazer to tinker with the squad and team selection, who knows what they might have been able to do? More frighteningly, if Sir Alex had stayed on and had to work with Woodward, would he have been able to counteract the incompetence or would he, too, have ended up being fired for the mistakes made by those above him?
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The post 10 years on since Sir Alex Ferguson retired: what have we learned at Man United? appeared first on Man United News And Transfer News | The Peoples Person.
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| Article Name | United's lost decade: would Sir Alex Ferguson have survived under Ed Woodward? |
| Description |
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| Author Name | Candyboy |
| Published On | May 20, 2023 |
| Post Category |
Man Utd
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