Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward has revealed his only role in buying new players is 'signing off the money'. The United chief has been criticized by fans over the last few years as they believe he has too much power when it comes to bringing new players to Old Trafford.
There were suggestions that Jose Mourinho was blocked from signing some of his preferred targets while in charge of United.
But Woodward has insisted that managers will always have he final say when it comes to signings and that United have worked to improve their system of recruitment.
He told fanzine United We Stand: 'The decisions related to recruitment are all taken by football experts. My involvement is signing off the money.
'The manager has a veto on a player - we would never sign a player the manager wouldn't want because he wouldn't play him. But we also feel the recruitment department, the football experts, should have a veto too.
'I don't get involved in recruitment like people think I do. There's a myth that I look at YouTube and choose players. I don't. Having an eye for players is an art. I have no interest in doing that.
'I just want to have a disciplined process because if you are spending a lot of money on a player you have to make sure you get more right than wrong.
'Where I get involved is that I have to sign off the money, yet when you have target one, two or three from your process I feel fine going after the No 1 target and, if it's not to be him, then number two or three.'
Woodward also explained how changes had been made behind the scenes: 'The system wasn't set up in the right way. Twelve scouts reporting to one chief scout was more set up to say no - too many exceptions to the process were made historically while this was being fixed.
'We also have to hold our hands up and say that recruitment wasn't at its best in recent years. We feel that we now know who our best scouts are.
'The idea is to recruit in a closed environment, rather than listening to the press or getting distracted by conflicting agents' claims. We try and make cold decisions based on information.
'Judge the recruitment department in the coming windows where hopefully we can get a team to be at the level we want to be.'
Discussing the January window, he continued: 'The manager sits down in September - so Ole has already done this for the next cycle -and told the experts the positions that he wants to recruit in and thecharacteristics relating to those players.'
