How Ed Woodward Cost Manchester United £30 Million

Précis

Being a football man or, for that matter, a businessman is no longer enough for a team to reach its full potential due to the levels of corruption in the game.
Top teams need to instigate corrupt practices to exploit their power and to compete with other top sides who are employing similar tactics while lesser teams need to undertake defensive strategies to offset the corruptions perpetrated against their interests.
The strategic knowledge, the ability to create complex scenario analyses, the necessary contacts and market analytical skills (to assess the insider trading that is always linked to corruption) are required to optimise the performance of any serious football club in the postmodern game.

The Background 

Manchester United were available at 100/1 to qualify for the Champions League prior to their match at Everton on April 20th 2014...
... and yet if Ed Woodward and David Moyes had possessed an ounce of strategic planning between them, the club would have been guaranteed fourth place.

Richard Scudamore had announced that it was bad for the Premier League brand for Man Utd to be failing.
UEFA wanted United in the Champions League as there is a necessity for the second biggest global brand to be in the competition.
No other G14 top tier team had ever failed to qualify for the Champions League.
The Glazers understood that their leveraged buyout would be financially insecure with loss of income, deterioration in player value and inability to attract suitable players in future.
It was also understood within the club that they could not fall any further behind Manchester City.
Additionally, British and offshore bookmakers desired United qualification for turnover/profit reasons.
The systemic structure existed.

The Sting 

Manchester United needed to win all five remaining fixtures in their easy run-in while Arsenal achieved no more than 5 points from their final four games and Everton no more than six.
All three sides had to play Hull City (managed by former Red, Steve Bruce).
David Moyes was even sat next to Bruce in the Directors' area for the Aston Villa v Southampton match on April 19th.

If this were Spain, discussions would have taken place regarding maletins being exchanged to ensure suitable performances from Hull City.

With Hull on board, the strategy would have began in earnest.

If the Premier League want for something to occur with their brand, they can facilitate such realities through their control of the 18 PGMOL referees - a combination of Marriner, Atkinson, Webb, Taylor, Clattenburg and Moss as refs/4th officials would have done the trick (Moss and Clattenburg had already been selected for Hull v Arsenal and Everton v Man Utd while Marriner had overseen Everton's defeat by Palace earlier in the week).
As all referee appointments are made via just one individual, Keren Barratt, this offers a closed matrix of manipulation which is very easy to activate.

With Hull and the referees on board, the odds are no longer 100/1!

Approaches would then have been made to two leading firms of agents ####### and ######### who are both willing to 'persuade' their clients to underperform accordingly when requested.
These two firms would have delivered very key individuals in both the Arsenal and Everton teams to allow the maletins to be opened.
Once the corruption was in motion, the frail psychologies of failure relating to both Arsenal and Everton would have been engendered.

With Hull, the match officials, control of two key players in competitor sides and negative psychologies on board, United would have been certain of qualification and the £20 million that would have gone with it.

Instead, Woodward lost both this money and the £10 million it took to pay off David Moyes.

The amount that the corruption would have cost would have been a fraction of these totals and, obviously, significant inroads could have been made into the costs by trading on the fraudulent events in the Dark Pool and Asian Underground Betting Markets.

If you think that this scenario sounds incredible, I can assure you that similar corruptions occur every single season in the Champions League, Serie A and La Liga.

Football is Fixed!

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed  

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014