Ed Woodward reveals Man United transfer plans in a call with club investors
It is no longer a secret anymore! We can expect a summer transfer market in which English Premier League clubs will dig deep into their pockets and splash cash in the race for potential transfer targets for the upcoming 2016/2017 season.
This is particularly true for Manchester United following revelations by Board Executive Ed Woodward that Manchester United has set aside about 300 million pounds towards securing signings that will assist in turning around the former English Premier League Giants fortunes following what has been a largely poor showing ever since the departure of long-time manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
According to Ed Woodward, failure by the Red Devils’ to qualify for next season’s Champions League won’t stop them from strengthening in a bid to launch a stronger fight for the title in the coming season.
In his analysis of the impacts of the failure to qualify for the Champions League Ed Woodward was quick to point out that despite a resultant loss of 30million pounds of TV broadcasting revenue, the 750 million pounds sponsorship deal with Adidas was still in place and would only suffer a 30% reduction if Manchester United failed to qualify for the Champions League in a second successive season.
Ed Woodward was quick to highlight the new competitive nature of the Premier League following a change in management of two English Premier League clubs Manchester City and Chelsea and the increase in TV rights money across the board for all the clubs in the English Premier League.
“The last round increase [of TV rights money] was 70 per cent domestically, obviously we’re in the last year of that cycle, and visibility into the next year’s cycle from domestic money going up by a similar percentage, obviously makes all the other clubs more competitive in the Premier League.
“But I think the way we view it is that we know we have strengths and we have to focus on giving ourselves the best chance in every single area of the club that we can.
“Yes that’s the academy, but it also means in recruitment, in means the coaching staff, it means having the best medical department, sports science facilities, etc etc. It’s trying to get the extra one per cent from all of those areas that influences and impacts the first-team.”
In the interview, Ed Woodward was quick to praise Manchester United academy for nurturing many potential talents who have risen through the ranks into the senior team besides having had managed to win the youth title 3 times in as many as 4 last seasons.
Ed Woodward praised the impact that the likes of Rashford have had in the senior team and acknowledged the club’s long-time commitment to nurturing its own home grown players.
“Marcus Rashford made an immediate impact, scoring goals on his debut in Europe and then two more on his Premier League debut against Arsenal. Three of our regular first-team players – Rashford, Jesse Lingard and Cameron Borthwick-Jackson – are locally-born academy players who have been with the club since they were eight years old.
“Over the past six seasons we’re the highest Premier League producer of academy players who are now playing in one of the top four leagues in Europe. Also, we have won three out of the last four Under-21 Premier League titles, including this year’s, a particularly impressive achievement given many of our Under-21 players have also been called into our first-team, making them unavailable for that side.”
In terms of the revenue and financial outlook Ed Woodward pointed out the continued rise in revenues for the club over the quarters with the most recent rise being a 29.9 % rise in revenues compared to last year’s. Ed Woodward highlighted the importance of the club embarking on an all- round improvement of every area that has an impact on the first team’s performance.