The Red Knights
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
That seems a bit excessively negative in its interpretation to me.
My understanding is it wouldnt have done anything about the debt straight away, not because it thought the debt was desirable or sustainable, but because it is a big problem that cannot be wished away overnight, especially when you are paying £1.5bn or whatever they were offering just to buy the club in the first place. The debt issue would have been tackled over time, and at least there would have been assurances that there would be no more debt.
The hope was, they would also refrain from treating the club as a personal piggy bank. And they were going to give 51% of the club to "the fans" in some form or another, either to be held by MUST or an equivalent organisation. What powers it might have had I dont know, but at least, I would have thought, the power to block big decisions that the fans strongly opposed. It would have been interesting to see how the thing could have been structured to be workable and useful, which would have been no small feat, but I was honestly excited about the opportunity to try it.
I dont know what assurances were made to that end though. No doubt the whole thing could have been essentially a coup d'etat, and once they had control they could have fecked the club over. Always possible.
Meddling owners: do you think anyone who takes over the club is going to meddle with SAF? I dont think even Abramovich would. 1) SAF delivers. So why would an owner feck with him? 2) SAF is so well entrenched in the club, it would be suicidal for owners to remove him. We have seen by the G&G campaign how impotent fans are in these situations, there are protests against the Glazers, they dont care, its all hot air to them. But if they had sacked Fergie (and sold Giggs), the protest would not have been limited to some gaudy scarves wrapped around the necks of people wearing replica kits. The anti Glazer sentiment would have been unanimous and the protests 10x the volume and relentlessness. It would have been horrible for them.
My point? The Red Knights wouldnt interfere with SAF any more than the Glazers do. And once SAF goes, expect the Glazers to be the same kind of muppet corporate meddlers that most owners are these days, with the managerial merry-go-round that entails. Not necessarily for a "style of play" but for success - characterised by impatience.
And the other thing people liked about the Red Knights. They were a group of rich finance types, yes, but they were Manchester United fans. I wouldnt want to quantify the value of this or overstate its importance. But it does give you some comfort to know that the owners at least watch football and want the best for the club on the field, not just on the bottom line. There is an interesting and potentially complicated interplay between the latter two points I make here: fans are arguably more likely to be interfering, thinking they know best, a la Abramovich, who may not have been brought up a Chelsea fan, but seems to act like a spoilt, knee-jerk fan in his behavoir towards his club. Maybe having fan owners is not such a good thing. But I instinctively feel on balance it is.
On the minor point of the name, the Red Knights was a term coined by the Keith Harris and the media, not by the 'Red Knights' themselves or by MUST. MUST used the term frequently afterwards, the Red Knights (sic) less so because the group wasn't a static one. Really "Red Knights" was the term that should have been used, without the use of the definite article.
Pocco, I've no idea where that figure came from but I'd be amazed if it was accurate. In terms of the amount of funds they thought they could get together - they had the club independently valued and the amount that the Glazers were asking was approaching double what they could put together. Again, as I said above, it's difficult to expect even rich folk to put their hand in their pocket for no financial return, but doubly difficult when they're also forced to pay for what they believe to be over the odds in order to do this. Personally I would have liked them to have put in the bid anyway, even if it was going to be flatly rejected - in my view not doing so let down the thousands of fans who'd protested so vociferously for the second half of that season.
Will - Yes, without regulatory or legal intervention (or a Rangers/Leeds style collapse from United) it's certainly difficult to see how full fan ownership of United can be achieved in the foreseeable future. The viable options appear to be part fan ownership with an option for share purchase from a new owner, or regulation from state or governing body. We're already seeing increased regulation from the latter through club licensing, FFP and - David Gill is going to love this - Supporter Liaison Officers. State regulation is more difficult, but there is now significant support for this in parliament.
Regarding the G&G protest - As has been pointed out, the peak of it coincided with a period where United were top of the league and were battering Milan 4-0 in the Champions League. In fact if you look at the periods of protest with regard to United ownership issues since Michael Knighton, you'll see that on-pitch success isn't a factor. Neither is the depth of the problem the key issue. The key factor is perceived viability of the solution. And at the time, a consortium were putting together a bid for a fan ownership model for the club.
Protests will inevitably start again so long as the Glazers are in charge because they are fundamentally detested at Old Trafford and in Manchester more generally and have done so much damage to the club. But there's no point pissing in the wind if there's no possibility of success. I expect protests will follow not problems, but potential solutions.
Finally, with regard to the Glazers, how any genuine United fan can defend them is baffling. At last count, they have taken over £550m out of our club to pay for their own debt, and we're still around £300m in debt. By the time they go, I suspect they will have taken £1bn out of our club for their own uses. It's unprecedented. That money is coming from you and I, and I for one can think of about a billion better uses it could have been put to.
Pocco, I've no idea where that figure came from but I'd be amazed if it was accurate. In terms of the amount of funds they thought they could get together - they had the club independently valued and the amount that the Glazers were asking was approaching double what they could put together. Again, as I said above, it's difficult to expect even rich folk to put their hand in their pocket for no financial return, but doubly difficult when they're also forced to pay for what they believe to be over the odds in order to do this. Personally I would have liked them to have put in the bid anyway, even if it was going to be flatly rejected - in my view not doing so let down the thousands of fans who'd protested so vociferously for the second half of that season.
Will - Yes, without regulatory or legal intervention (or a Rangers/Leeds style collapse from United) it's certainly difficult to see how full fan ownership of United can be achieved in the foreseeable future. The viable options appear to be part fan ownership with an option for share purchase from a new owner, or regulation from state or governing body. We're already seeing increased regulation from the latter through club licensing, FFP and - David Gill is going to love this - Supporter Liaison Officers. State regulation is more difficult, but there is now significant support for this in parliament.
Regarding the G&G protest - As has been pointed out, the peak of it coincided with a period where United were top of the league and were battering Milan 4-0 in the Champions League. In fact if you look at the periods of protest with regard to United ownership issues since Michael Knighton, you'll see that on-pitch success isn't a factor. Neither is the depth of the problem the key issue. The key factor is perceived viability of the solution. And at the time, a consortium were putting together a bid for a fan ownership model for the club.
Protests will inevitably start again so long as the Glazers are in charge because they are fundamentally detested at Old Trafford and in Manchester more generally and have done so much damage to the club. But there's no point pissing in the wind if there's no possibility of success. I expect protests will follow not problems, but potential solutions.
Finally, with regard to the Glazers, how any genuine United fan can defend them is baffling. At last count, they have taken over £550m out of our club to pay for their own debt, and we're still around £300m in debt. By the time they go, I suspect they will have taken £1bn out of our club for their own uses. It's unprecedented. That money is coming from you and I, and I for one can think of about a billion better uses it could have been put to.
Cider starts his post with "Who knows what they were planning?"
Basically he is admitting assumptions and guesswork.
The legal position is simple. You are allowed to insult anyone you want so long as your behaviour isn't causing harrassment, alarm or distress. Playground name calling is fine, even using proper names. What you are not allowed to do is spread lies about named individuals in an attempt to sully their reputation.
My lawyers have advised me I'm within my rights to use the term in the public arena up to but not exceeding five times a month, but only if I make no direct reference to Duncan [surname removed for legal purposes] in the same sentence or string or sentences.
Which makes it all the more relevant that it is so negative.
If you are assuming and guessing, it would make sense to be more balanced. If you are going to come down so strongly on one side, it would make more sense to do so with facts to back your position up.
Having said that, I acknowledge that I have similar conviction on the other side of the argument, with the same lack of real clarity on the facts. Which rather undermines the point I am making.
For me it is all about hope though. It might have been out of the frying pan and into the fire. But considering what I said above, I dont see there was much risk things would be any worse. yes the club is in great shape on the pitch, but that is nothing to do with the Glazers, and everything to do with the manager, who will be there regardless of the owners.
So at least you had hope for improvement.
If you are assuming and guessing, it would make sense to be more balanced. If you are going to come down so strongly on one side, it would make more sense to do so with facts to back your position up.
Having said that, I acknowledge that I have similar conviction on the other side of the argument, with the same lack of real clarity on the facts. Which rather undermines the point I am making.
For me it is all about hope though. It might have been out of the frying pan and into the fire. But considering what I said above, I dont see there was much risk things would be any worse. yes the club is in great shape on the pitch, but that is nothing to do with the Glazers, and everything to do with the manager, who will be there regardless of the owners.
So at least you had hope for improvement.
This is a private forum. Opinions can be put forward without insults and name calling. I'm sure Niall is not too keen to start another round of emails to resolve issues so Cider can have a play on words. In fact, I suggest Cider refrains from using such insults or I will personally make sure he gets banned from this part of the forum.
What evidence do you have of this?
Of course, that's the long and short of it.
If any of us dared question the plans we were told that it was a secret, but that MUST had been made privy to some of the plans and so we should all just trust MUST and the Red Knights.
As you well know I spread no lies about anybody.
I questioned the motives of a political figurehead, which is something I stand by my right to do.
sigh. old news.
who cares? It was nothing more than a pipe dream
until someone can come up with a viable solution, you're all expending nervous energy on for no gain
who cares? It was nothing more than a pipe dream
until someone can come up with a viable solution, you're all expending nervous energy on for no gain
I was just wondering if this group had any plans for the future, geebs. All this crap will resurface if we have a poor run of results again, obviously it'll all be the fault of the owners; I'm curious as to what MUST etc. have in store for us next time.
Do you mean how do I know they were fans, or how do I know people liked that about them?
If the former: no evidence per se, but they were always reported to be fans: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/02/red-knights-manchester-united
If the latter: I dont this either, I was inferring that point, I actually have no evidence at all of what other people think. I was speaking about my personal opinion on it and extrapolating that perhaps other people who were similarly upbeat about the prospect had arrived at that judgement in the same way I did.
Here you are ignoring Ralphie's point above, which is the absence of a correlation between protest and on-pitch performance. You are implying this is some kind of spoilt, knee jerk reaction to failure. When there is no evidence it is that at all. It is the idea that someone is jeapordising the future of the club, its wealth and thereby its dominance - for their own, very personal gain. It is the stories about the Glazer sons pocketing millions for consulting fees which rile me most, and I imagine others too. Some owners pump money into football clubs they buy, ours pump money out. Sure, things are fine on the football pitch now, and I am certainly not sitting here hoping for a sugar daddy - we dont need one. But it would be nice to not have to support these fecks' failing property empire in America, and even nicer to have some kind of formalised fan ownership.
The former: what evidence did we have to suggest that the Red Knights were United fans at all? None as far as I can tell.
There's plenty of evidence to suggest that the protests were the direct result of a run of poor results. Most notably the fact that the protests abruptly stopped when we won the league. How can you say there's no correlation? When results got better the protests disappeared; what more direct correlation could one ask for? Green and Gold till we win the league would have been the correct motto, for the Glazers are still in charge, yet the fans seem appeased.
The anti-Glazer propaganda about the club being in jeopardy, money running out, debt crippling United etc. turned out to all be bollocks. MUST's goldenboy Andersred personally guaranteed us all on this very site that there would be no money for transfers during the coming seasons; that very next season we spent £60m, then £50m the season after; Andersred hasn't been seen since.
MUST's scaremongering was always gonna be a short term tactic, a select few of us saw it for what it was at the time and tried our best to draw attention to their bullshit, thankfully the fact that they're a bunch of blaggers, clowns and charlatans by now is widely known, but nevertheless the majority of fans are prone to lapses of severe shortening of memory as soon as an few results don't go our way; I wouldn't rule out MUST attempting to regain a stronghold once again in such a situation.
If your starting off point is the Guardian could have made it up then yes that is possible.
Jim O'Neill, the Goldmans guy, I think is widely reported to be a fan, I am pretty sure he at least is.
For the others there is more of a leap of faith. I believe it because it strikes me as believable. A lot of people support United. Some of them work in banks and hedge funds. Why else would such people want to buy a football club? There are easier ways to make money. Their day jobs, for starters.
One point that also didn't help with the G and G campaign was the weather, I wore my scarf to every game from when the campaign started (Burnley or Hull at home I believe). When the new season came I have to be honest, I could not be arsed to carry a scarf to the ground when it was 25 degrees in the middle of summer. By the time it was cold enough again it almost felt as if the support had moved on and wearing it would not have the same effect it did before. To be honest it got entire BBC programmes dedicated to it, was on the news and every football fan in the country knew what was happening with those scarfs, job well done in my view. The club was never gonna be sold but at least for a while the support joined together and the atmosphere improved ten fold.
Yes but that also coincided with the dissipation of the Red Knights offer, as has been mentioned. It was a correlation with the viability of the solution, as I think someone else phrased it.
Also, the end of a season is a natural breaking point, you have a summer without football, it is natural for such a movement to lose momentum in the close season, it may have happened even if we hadnt won the league.
Hardly "till the club is sold", Ill grant you. Listen, I am not particularly defending the G&G campaign itself, I never invested much interest in it myself, I completely see the criticism of it that it became a rather vacuous fashion statement, and was undermined by the number of people wearing G&G while also spending fortunes in the megastore. People lost the point of it. And as for raising awareness, I am not that convinced on that score either, as awareness was already high IMO, and the media were already interested, it just gave them a hook. I dont care about G&G one way or the other, to be honest. But I would have liked to see the RKs succeed, because I think there is grounds for confidence it would have been an improvement. And I also continue to look forward to a future where the Glazers are gone.
Paul Marshall, the hedge fund guy, is also reported to be a United fan, explicitly, by The Guardian, The Telegraph and the FT, as the top 3 hits when I googled him as a supporter. So I would say that is corroborated. And the Saatchi & Saatchi guy, Richard Hytner, is president of MUST. So fair to assume he is I would have thought.
The Guardian? Why The Guardian?
Basically, if I was part of a consortium of businessmen looking to buy a football club, knowing that our identities were a secret and that the only possible means of acquiring the club would be to cause the fans to revolt against their foreign owners, I too would put word out that the entire consortium was made up of benevolent supporters of the club with only the fans' best interest at heart.
Do I believe it? Do I feck.
Only just seen that you added to your original post.
Yes, it is fair that MUST have exaggerated the scale of the problem, whether that is more deviousness, or they are genuinely surprised to see United spending money, I dont know. I suspect a bit of both, I guess there is a fair wedge of confirmation bias, and seeing what you want to see. People who want the Glazers out will naturally believe the worst about them.
Still, there is little doubt that the Glazers have siphoned money from the club, it is just that they have also made money available for transfers. Without wanting to get into the whole "Ronaldo money" thing, suffice it to say I am not sitting here marveling at their generous extravagance for sanctioning transfer activity. And I still think they should take their million pound "loans" (or whatever they were) and their consultancy fees and feck off.
Just because I posted a link to a Guardian article earlier that referred to the RKs as fans, and individually listed some senior people in it - O'Neill, Wace etc, as I mentioned - as lifelong fans. So if they are not fans then the Guardian is lying or not doing basic fact checks.
Also fair to say, I think, that The Guardian took more interest in this story than any of the other broadsheets. Or that is how it seemed to me.
There is not much more to say on this point about whether they were fans, I dont think. Fair enough if you dont believe it. I have explained why I do. Though i agree with you that it is likely to be a little more complicated than the public relations blitz would imply. They would have been out to make money, no doubt. But I dont think it was their only or even overriding motive. If it was, they might as well have just got back to their day jobs, which tend to make far more money than owning a football club - even our football club - ever would.
It's my view that in ten/fifteen/twenty years time the majority of United fans will look back to this particular time in our history and recognise the Glazers as being decent owners. I think that progress is already being made in this regard.
It is my view that in 10-20 years time the majority of United fans will look back to this particular time in our history and recognise it was a glorious chapter in terms of on-field performance, which is by far the most important thing.
I dont think the owners will take much credit for it though. But time will tell if you are right.
I suppose that decent owners don't ever get much positive credit for anything.
Which makes it all the more impressive that you predict the Glazers will buck that trend, in 10-20 years. I wonder what they will do to deserve such credit.
Jim O'Neill too. They were all United fans, otherwise why put in the money with no serious financial reward?
£550m taken from our club and more to come. We're being raped like a 12 year old girl asking for Jim to Fix It.
Er... we lost the league.
But just in case it doesn't, I'll bring it up now.
When it comes to discussing the Glazers, this is one point which drives me nuts. You say it as if they're only doing bad. By no means do I defend them, but it's increasingly annoying when we choose just to look at one side of things.
Okay, let's look at the negative impact the Glazers have had on the club and let's only talk about that. Seriously, what happened to having a balanced view? Is it because you become emotionally charged, you lose your sense of objectivity?
People talk about the Glazers siphoning money out of the club but not enough about the opportunity we had as fans to prevent such a scenario occurring. I wonder why. Obviously, it's too late now but it's no reason to forget we were a factor in allowing this to happen. As a matter of fact, if the Glazers didn't buy us out, it's quite possible someone else would. However, that's a discussion for another day.
At this point in time, there's no viable solutions out there. All I witness is point-scoring, forcing out agendas, extrapolating the facts, fall-out between fans and beating each other over the head with statistics we don't even understand. It's like golden_blunder said, we're expending nervous energy unnecessarily. The desire to be informed often leads many to in fact, become misinformed or misled.
I feel sorry for those who blindly follow MUST simply because they're the only group out there "trying" to do something. Some of them who attend meetings have become such a vile lot and it's an organization I've lost a lot of respect for. It's hard to take someone's point seriously when you know their agenda from the off, even if they know alot about finances. Anyone who fiddles with numbers knows you can make stats say whatever you want. Again, people become misled as a result and instead of having fruitful discussions, it becomes more about who's argument 'sounds' more accurate and driving home the 'facts'. There's an enormous of emotional tension with this issue and it's surprising we are not more careful with our words let alone our arguments.
They'll be looked back upon as decent owners is what I said, and SAF will write a few good things about them in his books. That's about as much as football club owners can expect.
To be fair that has also been well covered on here over the years. The whole "if we had all just given a tenner we wouldnt be in this mess" argument.
There's your reason those debates are not being rolled out again now, I expect.
Yes, valid point. Again, I think MUST and those who think similarly - even if they have lost patience with that organisation specifically for one reason or another - acknowledge this point emphatically. It is why people are so keen on fan ownership. The RKs said they would give a 51% stake the the fans. If they had followed through on that, and depending on how exactly they did that, it might have been a way to resolve that problem in the future.
Cant disagree with any of that really. Although I still count myself as a MUST member, so I guess you are also talking about me.
I do not see how owners who plunge their own debt on a club can be decent owners, regardless of what is won or spent in that time.
Well, if you can pay for it then there's nothing inherently wrong with debt. The rate of return just needs to be higher than the interest payments; you'll find that many huge corporations run signficant debts.
I'm not advocating what the Glazers do, by the way, but I'm simply pointing out that debt is only a problem when you can't pay it anymore.
You're not alone, many still don't see it. MUST have offered so much absolute shite on the matter, for a while with an agreeable and widespread audience, that it's going to take a few years before the reality of the situation really sinks in for many fans.
Also relevant to look at what the debt has been used for.
Debt for investment and growth is one thing. That is why most corporations have debts, because they borrow to grow or in some other way benefit the business.
Debt (ours) to buy the club - for them. That is debt with no tangible benefit to the club. It looks like we can afford to pay it, but that doesnt mean it was money well spent.
Corporations that are bought using leveraged finance are generally targeted because of their inherent inefficiency, so management is shaken up, the strategy is fundamentally changed, then you sell the company and pocket the difference where the value of the company has risen. For us that manifests itself as ticket price rises, staff cut backs, a new strategy in the transfer market where skew your attention towards youth with a resell value (although this again has been shown to be a guideline rather than a dogma).
I guess it also comes down to how comfortable you are, ideologically, with football being left to the market, or whether you think a team should be - not is, should be - something more than just another company. It all comes back again to football fans as consumers, and how free market rules dont apply unless fans become more fickle with their support. When you have a captive, loyal fan base, and you squeeze them, in an efficient market they would switch loyalty, support Stockport to save money. That doesnt happen in football. There should be safeguards in place that acknowledge this and protect fans. And I say this as someone who hasnt been to OT for years, not because of any boycott but because I dont live in Manchester and I have two young kids and wouldnt have the time to go whatever the price of tickets was.
Anyway, all this has been done to death, it is nothing new to anyone.
Cider, you have focused here pretty much exclusively on criticising MUST and the Red Knights. Coherent and fair criticisms I would say on the whole.
Can you elaborate though on what you think the Glazers have done well? Why they are good owners? So far we have: doesnt interfere with SAF, I put it to you that nobody would, so I dont give them too much credit for that; have spent money on transfers, whoopie shit, its our money, how much gratitude to they want for that?
What else is there?
Is your position, Glazer is a great owner? And if so, why?
Or is it, he isnt a bad owner, in which case, fair enough, but what do you say about the money they have taken out of the club for themselves? Just the price of business? No more than would have been paid out in dividends anyway? They earnt the money fair and square by working very hard to secure new sponsorships and the like?
Can you elaborate though on what you think the Glazers have done well? Why they are good owners? So far we have: doesnt interfere with SAF, I put it to you that nobody would, so I dont give them too much credit for that; have spent money on transfers, whoopie shit, its our money, how much gratitude to they want for that?
What else is there?
Is your position, Glazer is a great owner? And if so, why?
Or is it, he isnt a bad owner, in which case, fair enough, but what do you say about the money they have taken out of the club for themselves? Just the price of business? No more than would have been paid out in dividends anyway? They earnt the money fair and square by working very hard to secure new sponsorships and the like?
Perhaps. Depends if you fit the bill I listed above. From my impressions on here, you seem to be one of the few reasonable ones.