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Former Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward has revealed why the club failed to get respective deals for Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham over the line.
The two were top targets during the managerial reign of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer but the club attained neither.
Borussia Dortmund ended up beating United to the signatures of both youngsters at the time.
The pair have since gone on to become world-class players and are widely regarded as two of the best stars in the world.
Haaland is currently smashing records for fun in the Premier League with Manchester City. Bellingham on the other hand has quickly made himself the main man at Real Madrid.
Their successes have often left United and certainly supporters reminiscing about what could have been had more spirited efforts been mounted to land them.
ESPN reached out to Woodward who was in charge of transfers at the time and asked why United failed in their Haaland and Bellingham pursuits.
“When contacted by ESPN, Woodward said that United would not match Dortmund’s guarantee of “minutes” for Bellingham, while Haaland, in United’s view, was always destined for City.”
Mark Ogden divulges that the newspaper spoke to many club employees who gave shocking accounts of just how rotten United have been over the years.
The members of staff narrated separate incidents of how the Glazers and their cronies led by Woodward, mismanaged situations, and resources and steadily led the Red Devils into dramatic decline.
One staffer said, “Ed would boast that the deals he had done while working in the city [banking] were far bigger than any football transfer. He thought football deals would be easy in comparison. He would also talk about speaking to Joel Glazer as often as six times a day — he was close to Joel and you could almost count him as a seventh Glazer — but if you need to speak to your boss six times a day, it doesn’t suggest that much is actually getting done.”
“There was a frustration that issues or key decisions would go to Ed and Joel, but days or weeks would pass without anything being resolved or communicated back down the chain. The search for a new director of football being an obvious example. It was announced in 2019 and nothing happened for two years.”
It’s understood that on one occasion, Woodward gave members of staff his phone number and urged them to feel free to contact him whenever they needed to.
An insider within United noted that when they sent Woodward a message not long after, a response didn’t arrive. They’re still waiting for a reply to this day.
Another source remarked, “David Gill knew everybody at Old Trafford and you would often see him in the staff canteen. You never saw Ed and he certainly didn’t know everybody. He spent most of his time in the London office.”
Ogden points out incidents narrated to him by other staffers in which club bosses let down former United managers, chiefly Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Apparently, when Mourinho asked for the signing of Ivan Perisic, he was told that the Croatian winger was not marketable enough.
The Portuguese coach also wanted to get rid of Anthony Martial but the move was blocked by Joel Glazer who is a fan of the Frenchman.
“Ole wanted to bring down the age of the squad, so he identified three young players and told the club they should prioritize signing them. United messed up moves for Haaland and Bellingham and didn’t even make an effort for Rice. But they did sign Donny van de Beek, despite him not even being a player that Ole had identified as a target.”
One of Solskjaer’s former teammates told the newspaper, “Ole was ready to get rid of Paul Pogba in his first summer window. But he feared he wouldn’t be given the proceeds of any transfer fee to replace him. That’s how it worked.”
When contacted for comment, Solskjaer and his representatives did not provide one.
A notable ex-player mentioned that United turned down a move for Kieran Trippier only to swoop in for an even older Cristiano Ronaldo just a week later.
“The Trippier suggestion was rejected out of hand, basically laughed at. He was only 31 and ended up at Newcastle for £12m six months later.”
United fans will be hoping that these are the kind of messes Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his INEOS personnel will be seeking to clean up as the British businessman closes in on the ratification of his partial investment into the 20-time English champions.
