Utd heap
Models for Coin.
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2006
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45.28% have said yes
Amazing.
Amazing.
Some people just see continued success on the pitch and think they can't be bad, ignoring the raised ticket prices, the hundreds of millions spent repaying their debts and the tens of millions they take out of the club in personal loans. We've been successful because of SAF and the way he had built up the club but the Glazers are still a parasite.45.28% have said yes
Amazing.
And some people ignore the fact that the club is extremely financially stable and successful. Every owner of every business in the world wants to make a profit, why should the Glazers be any different. And that there are a LOT worse football owners out there than the Glazers.Some people just see continued success on the pitch and think they can't be bad, ignoring the raised ticket prices, the hundreds of millions spent repaying their debts and the tens of millions they take out of the club in personal loans. We've been successful because of SAF and the way he had built up the club but the Glazers are still a parasite.
I didn't vote - the options are too vague. We can't call a family that have taken a lot of money out of the club good for United, but they haven't been as bad as was predicted when they came here.So you vote yes?
They also raised the revenue with a lot of contracts all over the world. Also, the profit of the club in the end of the tear gets taxed and some of it pays as dividend. I don't think that the difference is that big.Some people just see continued success on the pitch and think they can't be bad, ignoring the raised ticket prices, the hundreds of millions spent repaying their debts and the tens of millions they take out of the club in personal loans. We've been successful because of SAF and the way he had built up the club but the Glazers are still a parasite.
Without wishin to dredge up a very old argument, our ticket prices were ripe for an increase and are still now very competitive in relation to the quality that we get for the cost.Some people just see continued success on the pitch and think they can't be bad, ignoring the raised ticket prices, the hundreds of millions spent repaying their debts and the tens of millions they take out of the club in personal loans. We've been successful because of SAF and the way he had built up the club but the Glazers are still a parasite.
Basically they are the opposite of Abramovich.Again, I want to reinforce that I have traditionally shared a lot of these views, and still do to some extent. But you have to be open minded about this. How bad is it to spend millions repaying debts, if you also increase revenues by millions in new creative ways in order to do so? Does the positive not cancel out the negative? Similar with the personal loans: I am not delighted about them doing it, but if they are doing it from revenues that were generated by their efforts (new sponsorship etc), and the club is net wealthier than it was before them, despite the money they are skimming, is it still so bad? It isnt like they have come in and started extracting money and nothing else.
Its not just the success on the pitch. Its the success on the balance sheet. It is success by whatever measure you want to use. Bearing in mind that there is no measurement of success that uses ticket prices.
Still not committing to them being "good owners". I just think this is too delicate a subject to have such binary choices for the answers. But I do think the good owners being envisaged by some in here are a figment of the imagination.
even I am pretty suprised by that! quite a swing from 2009 when only 3.5% said they were good owners.45.28% have said yes
Amazing.
what he saidAnd some people ignore the fact that the club is extremely financially stable and successful. Every owner of every business in the world wants to make a profit, why should the Glazers be any different. And that there are a LOT worse football owners out there than the Glazers.
As for the raised ticket prices, every club has raised their ticket prices over the last 10 years for 2 simple reasons, Inflation and Supply+Demand. You want to bitch about ticket prices, try supporting Arsenal.
My understanding is that ticket prices have gone up at a much slower rate than under the PLC era. And have been frozen for the last 2/3 years whilst all our rivals have continued to increase prices. The problem is the ACS.Some people just see continued success on the pitch and think they can't be bad, ignoring the raised ticket prices, the hundreds of millions spent repaying their debts and the tens of millions they take out of the club in personal loans. We've been successful because of SAF and the way he had built up the club but the Glazers are still a parasite.
Haven't the prices been frozen two years running?Some people just see continued success on the pitch and think they can't be bad, ignoring the raised ticket prices, the hundreds of millions spent repaying their debts and the tens of millions they take out of the club in personal loans. We've been successful because of SAF and the way he had built up the club but the Glazers are still a parasite.
Cracking post.My understanding is that ticket prices have gone up at a much slower rate than under the PLC era. And have been frozen for the last 2/3 years whilst all our rivals have continued to increase prices. The problem is the ACS.
A lot of money has flowed out of the club, but when you compare this to the amount that would have flowed out under the PLC in taxes and dividends, the difference is minimal. Allied to that, the commercial side of the business has increased several fold. Moving into the era of FFP, it will put us in a better position than nearly any other club in the world. It's speculation at best to say the PLC would've achieved the same success.
I don't think anyone is looking to credit them for what has happened on the pitch, but we've all benefited from what SAF has done. All he wanted from owners was a hands off, transfer supportive approach. And he got it. He loved working under them, he said as much many times.
People claim that United are now run like a business, but it is a business. It's not a non profit. It's not fan owned. Even clubs which are fan owned, like Real Madrid or Barcelona, are still run like businesses; And their practice of individual TV bargaining is far more damaging to their domestic game and fans than anything United have done. Neither of those clubs are run sustainably, and both have soaring debts. If it wasn't for successive bent Spanish governments, Real would've been in the financial crapper a long time ago.
And whilst I will agree that the bundesliga seems to be a fans utopia, the fact that it isn't at OT, isn't because of the Glazers, because the PLC were just as 'business' orientated.
This probably won't be a very popular view around here (although looking at the Poll results, maybe it will be). But I think some people are just blinded by irrational hate. If the Glazers manage to improve their relationship with regular match going fans, I think it'd be hard to argue against them being 'good' owners. Not perfect, but hardly the doom mongering some were predicting.
They've done more or less what I expected from the start.Yes, if there was a better than expected option I would have voted thus.
The ACS is bad if you don't want to go to cup matches and can't sell your tickets; it's fine if you want to go to the matches and are guaranteed tickets for the big matches. (Arsenal's season ticket price includes the first 7 cup matches; for the later rounds there are no guarantees.)This is the thing. I don't get why everyone gets so hung up on the debt when Glazers or not, it's there. It's now completely seperate from the question of whether they are good owners going forwards.
But, lets just take the bickering over how managable the debt was and is out of the equation, and look at them purely as owners from a fans perspective:
Things they've done which a fan might perceive as negative:
- Bought club with money they didn't have, meaning their buying of the club has effectively been paid for by the fans
- Introduced ACS for season tickets meaning fans with season tickets are ripped off, every single year
- Banned people from expressing their opinion inside the ground if they don't like what the opinion is
This is an urban legend. It never happened.- Transfered ownership of training facilities to themselves and NOT the club
The club's part of the sale proceeds was used to pay down debt.- Put club on stock exchange with no promise of investment gained from it being used for the club's benefit
"Treating fans as customers", together with "Leveraging the global brand", has been a key element of United's strategic plan since well before the Glazers. You'll find it in the 2003 and 2004 annual reports.- Have overseen David Gill's weird crusade to turn Manchester United into some kind of heartless business coorporation, to the point the club now refers to fans as "customers"...who it willingly treats like shit because it knows they can't go anywhere else.
- Stabilising ticket prices - apart from the VAT increase prices have been the same for the last 4 seasons. (Compare that to our peer group.)THings they've done which fans might view as a possitive:
- Not interfered with Sir Alex Ferguson's job
- Allowed him to buy some players and invest in the team.
Of course they're not perfect - they may not even be nice - but I'm not sure how you justify "evil".So yeah, they seem to be pretty good at being ruthless, evil business men, but in terms of being good owners from a fan perspective, I can only think of the two things. One is very much self interest orientated to help their business plan work, and the other literally equates to not actually doing anything at all.
It's alarming.45.28% have said yes
Amazing.
I'm not sure alarming is the word. The club is riding high financially speaking (and high enough footballing wise too, except for the...yeah, you know, that thing that happened the other day which has made my whisky intake go through the roof), the percentage is just about where I would expect it to be. Pretty much where it has been, I should say, these last few years.It's alarming.
As are some of the assumptions in this thread.
The facts are though that the club is worth way more than the debt, the debt is decreasing and profit is increasing. As long as that continues then everything is financially healthy.If you disregard the debt (which more and more people do, partly because it's old news and people these days have the attention span of half a guppy, and partly because they've been informed that nurturing a huge fecking debt is just what a solid business is all about nowadays) these ginger Yanks are moving along just splendidly.
Interesting question for sure...my guess would be there is no definitive answer.This is an interesting philosophical question though. What is better, a well meaning meddler who only wants to bring glory to his team - and thereby himself (Abramovich)? Or a cynical and calculating businessman, who has no particular interest in the club per se, except a financial one, who knows interference is likely to be counter-productive, and therefore stays out of the football side of things?
What is more important - the means or the end? Glazer stays out of football, but for the "wrong" reasons - profit. Abramovich interferes for the "right" reasons - because he wants Chelsea to be the best team in the world, playing sexy football.
Again, whether that is an accurate characterisation of Glazer will be clearer after a couple of years of Moyes.
Sure, yeah. Looks like they're in good shape. "Financially healthy" is nevertheless a matter of definition as long as the debt hasn't, in fact (in pounds and pennies, or dollars and cents), been dealt with.The facts are though that the club is worth way more than the debt, the debt is decreasing and profit is increasing. As long as that continues then everything is financially healthy.
So the question is who would win a fight between the Glazers + Fergie, or Abramovich + Fergie and a shedload more money to spend?Interesting question for sure...my guess would be there is no definitive answer.
People can say what they like about Abramovich, he has made some spectacular errors of judgement....but he holds a genuine love for the game and he changed the face of English football forever. Without him Chelsea would not have secured 3 Premier League titles, 4 FA Cups and a Champions League title....and they would not be about to welcome Jose Mourinho back to English football.
He cleared their debts, built them a state-of-the-art training complex and has backed every manager with a big budget. There are undeniably good things he has done for Chelsea FC. Is he a good owner? There are cases on either side.
We don't really know that, do we? Yeah, Fergie has kept buying players but there's no way of knowing if he would've invested more in the squad if he had had some of the money that has been used on debt. Of course he might also have gotten exactly what he wanted.I think that they have been extremely lucky. The debt is getting lower and lower, the transfer funds were there when needed.... i'm warming towards them.
This is precisely why they are to be appreciated. You can have a Roman Abramovich style owner who would have turned pretty much destroyed the club. Fergie's influence cannot be ignore but I'm not sure what kind of "active intervention" that you seem to expect from the owners, if keeping quiet is not sufficient.No.
crediting them for Sir Alex Ferguson's work just because they didn't "interfere" is slightly insulting to him I think.
Well, this is not a charity institution. A club as big as us has to be run professionally if we are to continue our success. In these economic stress conditions anything else would lead to financial ruin.So yeah, they seem to be pretty good at being ruthless, evil business men,
How have they not been good owners?feck me, I can't believe this thread.
1- Sold RonaldoHow have they not been good owners?
VIVA Uncle MalcThey bought the club with money they didnt fecking have, they've taken money out of OUR club to repay their debts. I will go further into it tomorrow as I'm knackered. But for anybody to call them 'Good' owners is fecking weird, how on Earth have they been good? If it wasn't for our success on the pitch - which was mainly down to Fergie, we'd have been fecked.
If Moyes even looks like being a Wilf McGuinness it's all going to go tits up!I wanna see what happens this summer, will they give Moyes a decent chest to work with. This is going to be a huge season coming up, we need a signal of intent, stand still, and you have Citys weaksauce defence of the title.