Manchester United’s chief negotiator Matt Judge has always played a central role within the club’s transfer dealings, but what proportion of decision-making power and authority does he REALLY have? Very little has been said and written about him to date on media and he is certainly someone who always keeps away from the limelight, so much so that there are hardly any photographs available online of him, even on his social media accounts!
‘As his name became known in the football industry, there were no photographs of him in circulation,’ As reported by one of the major papers The Athletic, you can understand how private his life is even after being a part of one of the biggest clubs in the world.
In a recent Instagram post, United legend Patrice Evra painted a surprisingly sympathetic picture for the owners, the Glazer family and even executive vice chairman Ed Woodward, but did talk of others who did not have the club’s best interests at heart and hinted that Judge might be one of them. Some people have also suggested that Judge doesn’t have the proper understanding to carry out the job perfectly. BUT, one thing every reporter agrees on is he is more of a messenger, more than a decision taker and has very little authority over the negotiations he is conducting.
‘“He gets the information, passes it on to the right people … he’s a conduit,”’ one source told the reporter, where the ‘right people’ might just be Joel Glazer and Ed Woodward. As all of the negotiations follow this particular ladder, it takes a lot of time to reach the finishing line and most deals fall through mid-way. It is also reported that he doesn’t have a proper grasp of the tactical side of the game and can’t actually comment on the needfulness of a particular player in the side.
While it is certainly clear that, as we have seen above from the examples, Matt Judge ‘is out of his depth’ and while it seems he is only there because of the connections he has made with the Board of Directors and the Chief Executive over a period of years, his replacement with an experienced director of football is unlikely to make much of a difference to the way United is functioning unless the incoming director is given significantly more authority on who he signs or who gets a nod for the extension of their contract.
