Man Utd CEO Ed Woodward was bigging up Daley Blind’s Twitter followers and Google searches for Angel di Maria today

Well this is interesting...

The Manchester United accountants were cracking into the Jaffa Cakes and coffee last night as they crunched the final numbers ahead of the publication of the club’s first-quarter results for the financial year. As well as going through the figures, it seems as if Ed Woodward would also like to talk about the growing social media profiles of their new recruits as well as revenue. Eh? As for the numbers, revenue for the first quarter of the financial year is £88.7million, which represents a 10% fall from the previous quarter but they still made an operating profit of £8.9million, which should contribute towards paying off a huge debt increase of almost £361million. The true cost of David Moyes' reign stands at £9.8million when considering sponsorship and matchday/broadcast revenues, while the club revealed they are prepared to sign players in January of the right player if some of the club's summer targets are available but that they're not looking for short-term fixes. You have to admire Ed Woodward's attitude, however, because he preferred to focus on the positives, which include a new £750million kit deal with Adidas and his bizarre obsession with the social media profiles of United's players. Apparently Daley Blind's Twitter following has gone up 72 per cent since he joined the club and Google searches for Di Maria increased by 12%. Any update on Blind's injury there Ed? Here's some of the tweets from a rather odd press conference.

Interesting Man Utd's wage bill has fallen - no CL bonuses + Vidic, Rio, Evra, Kagawa etc leaving more than cover wages of new signings. — Martyn Ziegler (@martynziegler) November 18, 2014

MUFC announce first quarter profit of £8.9m on total revenue of £88.7m. Predicts revenue to be £385 - 395m for fiscal 2015. — Andy Mitten (@AndyMitten) November 18, 2014

Ed Woodward says Google searches for Di Maria increased 12-fold and Falcao 10-fold after joining @manutd — Bill Rice (@billrice23) November 18, 2014

Has Ed Woodward looked at the stats for people searching "What does Ed Woodward do to earn his money?"? — Ashley Connick (@AshleyConnick) November 18, 2014

Ed Woodward: "While we recognise results will reflect our CL absence we signed the largest kit sponsorship deal in the history of sport." — Mike Keegan (@mikekeeganbbc) November 18, 2014

I propose a toast to Ed Woodward as he's absolutely off his rocker #longliveEd #hashtagEd — Chris Belfield (@cbelfield) November 18, 2014

Man Utd's Ed Woodward highlighting importance of noodle deal (and something about Kill Bill relating to advertising) — Rob Harris (@RobHarris) November 18, 2014

Ed Woodward on possible Man Utd signings: "We are not looking for short-term fixes in January, but will move if summer targets available." — Squawka Football (@Squawka) November 18, 2014

Laughable how City fans brag about being champions when our new signings get 72% more Twitter followers & 12fold increase in Google searches — Nooruddean (@BeardedGenius) November 18, 2014