Reply With QuoteWoodward to UWSMag🧐
Woodward: "We were clear-eyed about players leaving without being replaced. It was a cold, calm decision, but the feeling was that we had an opportunity to give a number of young players first team action." #mulive [uws
Woodward: "Ole has brought a lot of the discipline back. Whatever manager we have has to buy into that philosophy and Ole is a walking, talking version of that. Let's play this out with Ole in terms of the cultural reboot." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "I don't want to say it [exact figure spent on academy] but it's meaningful money and it's a very deliberate investment at the heart of the club. There are encouraging signs too. This is central and important to what we are doing." #mulive [uws]
Woodward asking about #mufc refusing to sell Martial under Mourinho: "What I will say is that the football people might get together to put a strong case forward for keeping a player." #mulive [uws]
Woodward on the club's vision: "Winning; playing attacking football with players that have an 'x-factor'; and giving youth a chance. Added to that, we want players to come in who respect their team-mates, the club, the history." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "The communication of the high-level direction and vision and strategy that we had [under Moyes, Van Gaal and Mourinho] from a football perspective had become blurred. We hired Ole because he syncs with that vision." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "We have to win the Premier League. I view the Premier League as the focus, that's the biggest test, the benchmark. You can roll a dice in the Champions League, you need luck to win that, but we have to win the Premier League." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "Ole had a huge amount of interest in the purchase of Hannibal [Mejbri] and watches a lot of young players. He's got that evolution in his head, but there's no reason why we shouldn't augment that." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "He [James] was a player flagged as 'YA' - a young player who could be 'A level', who we'd been tracking for three years ? he was on our radar well before the deal for him to go to Leeds fell through." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "When we sign a player, we don't just go through the process and that's it. There's a huge amount of due diligence around the character of the player. The bar is set very high under Ole and after the cultural reboot of the club." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "We also have to hold our hands up and say that recruitment wasn't at its best in recent years. We feel that we now know who our best scouts are." #mulive [uws]
Woodward on the past failure in recruitment: "The system wasn't set up in the right way. Twelve scouts reporting to one chief scout was more set up to say no ? too many exceptions to the process were made historically while this was being fixed." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "The manager sits down in September - so Ole has already done this for the next cycle - and told the experts the positions that he wants to recruit in and the characteristics relating to those players." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "The manager has a veto on a player - we would never sign a player the manager wouldn't want because he wouldn't play him. But we also feel the recruitment department, the football experts, should have a veto too." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "We've added scouts, increasing from 12 to 60, including academy scouts for greater breadth and depth. That allows us to act quicker when someone emerges." #mulive [uws]
Woodward: "Recruitment isn't everything, but it's pretty close. You have to get that right and we haven't done that consistently enough in the past.
Originally Posted by Giggs
