Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
Some are.

I'm sure Tan gives his opinion on all sorts of things in his phone calls with the manager or with Dalman or Choo - including throw away comments about playing style. He obviously has the final say on key appointments and the recruitment strategy (buy oven ready or grow your own!) and may make some bad calls because he doesn't understand the consequences of his decisions.

But Dalman's comments today sound like simple deflection - 'don't blame me, I'm just the messenger' even if he does state that 80% of the club's big challenges are sitting on his desk. Whether Tan takes that as a straight statement of fact that he is the final decision maker, or a disloyal attempt to blame the owner for the worst run in club history, we will find out in time.
This pretty much sums up my view of what Dalman had to say. It felt like he chucked a few hand grenades in there to shift the blame on to Tan.

Most fans would read the stuff about finances (comments which were published by the BBC BTW) and accept it, even if grudgingly. Tans poured millions into a loss making club to keep it afloat and we've just come off the back of a pandemic, which reduced the clubs primary revenue stream to zero for an entire season. Also most fans would be aware that Tans other business interests are in leisure so its a fair bet he's taken a bath on them during the last 18 months as well.

Then however Dalman goes off piste with comments on the playing side of things. His comments that he wants a director of football but had been stopped by Tan are totally disingenuous because he himself had said in the past that we don't need one.

As for the comments about Tan insisting on a direct style of play, I'm a sorry but that's total bollocks. Was Solskjaer a long ball manager, or Harris? Also its difficult to imagine a manager less committed to direct football than Trollope. Of all the managers Tans appointed only Malky, Warnock and Mccarthy played that style of football and of those, the last two were brought in primarily as fire fighters at a time when the club was sliding down the table.

I'm not for one minute saying that Tan hasn't made mistakes. Even leaving aside the rebrand the lack of continuity on the non-playing side and poor managerial appointments sit squarely at his door. On the other hand if he is to leave in the near future, I suspect in time we might look back on his time and the club and reflect that on the whole it was pretty successful.