Ed Woodward’s reign as executive vice chairman of Manchester United is ending as it has always been: in largely self-inflicted confusion. No executive of an English football club has ever devoted so much time to personal PR, which makes you wonder how bad his reputation would have been without it.
Man United’s glorious history, he briefed as he stepped down, was like an albatross around the club’s neck; what was needed was to bring that albatross to life again. It’s just possible Woodward has never read Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner; or if he has, his reading of it is idiosyncratic.