Ed Woodward Reveals What Was Really Said in Viral Clip Involving Phil Jones

​Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward has explained what he really said in a viral clip circulated in the wake of last month’s 2-0 defeat at West Ham - when fans wildly speculated that he was giving Phil Jones a stern telling off.

The five-second clip, which has been viewed over six million times since it was uploaded, was a shot of the executive section at the London Stadium where Woodward was sat.

Jones, who was not in the matchday squad that day and has been a fringe player at best all season, was sat in the row behind next to veteran third choice goalkeeper Lee Grant, and looked as though he was muttering something.

Phrases like ‘sacked in the morning’, ‘p**s poor’ and ‘boring’ were among the suggestions made by the various Twitter detectives speculating what may have been said. It is worth noting that each of those option requires different mouth and lip shapes.

There more of a consensus over what United's executive vice-chairman said next, people presumed in the direction of Jones. ‘We’re on camera, stop,’ they alleged.

As is often the case in these situations, the truth from Woodward’s own mouth revealed a very different version of events, one that is far removed from anything remotely scandalous.

In a rare interview with fanzine United We Stand, Woodward said that Jones was uttering something about an offside, while his own comment was not in the direction of the player at all, but asking a question of nearby club secretary Rebecca Britain, who was out of the camera shot.

Other pictures that emerged at the time did show he was directly talking a woman nearby.

“Phil was talking about whether decisions were offside or not,” he has now clarified.

“There was a foul and I turned around to Rebecca Britain, our club secretary [and said]: ‘Was that a yellow card on him? [Issa] Diop?’”

At the start of the clip, Woodward was indeed holding his hands up as if incredulous at something he had just seen on the pitch, a foul on one of his club’s players, let’s say.

What’s more, ‘Diop’ and ‘stop’ are going to look rather similar when attempting to read lips.

Looking at the specifics of the game itself, Diop did in fact commit a foul in the 62nd minute, for which he wasn’t booked. The original tweet first sharing the video was posted at 3.26pm that afternoon, which places it very soon after that Diop foul, given it had been a 2pm kick-off.

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