It will be down to £60m by the summer and I'm sure we will still get rid of plenty of players
The Glazers 2013
- Thread starter golden_blunder
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
What a hilariously random thing to specify. Based on nothing you're stating as fact our summer spend will be £60m?
Yeah it is, I just felt like reiterating that Anderson will leave and we have to get rid of some of the deadwood at the club.Deadwood will be shifted, no doubt. How much we get is another question. Loanees, Zaha aside, will probably have fee already agreed in advance.
But it's funny how earlier on people were using the 2010 IPO prospectus as evidence we weren't going to spend more than £20-£30m a year. Yet since then we've smashed that figure now on three consecutive occasions.
You just know in 3 years time they'll ignore all that and state as fact that we only spent £20m per year on players from 2010
But it's funny how earlier on people were using the 2010 IPO prospectus as evidence we weren't going to spend more than £20-£30m a year. Yet since then we've smashed that figure now on three consecutive occasions.
You just know in 3 years time they'll ignore all that and state as fact that we only spent £20m per year on players from 2010
@Plugsy If you spend on inadequate players, then you have to spend more. We have allowed the squad to have gaping holes. You comment is like an accountants not taking into account the reality of the team.
The reality of the team is that it's been good enough to do what's asked of it over recent years. In any business you invest what you need to not what others think you ought to. Some say that this only worked because we had the best manager in world football and that might be true. We DID have the best manager in world football and the work and investment deferred to his opinion. Rightly or wrongly. We weren't going to go into each season under Sir Alex saying to him "I know you're good, but if you were a moron what transfer budget would you need?"
Now he's gone we will see a step up in funds. There's no indication the feck up in the summer was due to funds and pending official confirmation Mata is set to bring our net spend to something near £68m and counting - £17m more than the current club record that was set just last season.
Backed the manager with about £70million so far with nothing coming in from sales.
I'm not arguing they're good for the club blah blah because it's undispuitable that the money taken out of the club is terrible but they haven't gotten where they are by being idiots. They clearly know what they're doing in terms of commercialisation and indications suggest they're prepared to heavily back the manager.
I'm not arguing they're good for the club blah blah because it's undispuitable that the money taken out of the club is terrible but they haven't gotten where they are by being idiots. They clearly know what they're doing in terms of commercialisation and indications suggest they're prepared to heavily back the manager.
Ain't this post so much better than all the posturing and childish insults seen in this thread recently?
Fair play to them, they're giving him the spends.
IIRC this is already more than SAF has spent in any season?
IIRC this is already more than SAF has spent in any season?
A lot of money being spent especially considering its up in the air whether we even make the CL next season.
I suppose this is on the back of the new TV deal and sponsorship coming in.
With us also being linked with a 20m bid for Luke Shaw, we really are going aggressive in the market. There will definitely be departures in the summer and Im thinking the likes of Nani/Young/Valencia (one or two of them) and Evra/Rio Ferdinand are in danger of being sold or let go.
I suppose this is on the back of the new TV deal and sponsorship coming in.
With us also being linked with a 20m bid for Luke Shaw, we really are going aggressive in the market. There will definitely be departures in the summer and Im thinking the likes of Nani/Young/Valencia (one or two of them) and Evra/Rio Ferdinand are in danger of being sold or let go.
Moyesout.
I bet he has something out...
We actually spent loads the summer we signed Nani, Anderson etc.
Spent quite a lot last season too if you count Zaha.
I found this website which details transfer spending for us each season. Its not up to date with the Mata transfer but quite interesting to look back on previous windows.
http://www.transferleague.co.uk/premiership-transfers/manchester-united-transfers.html
They should have done this a long time ago. I still think we need another £100m to sort out the squad. LB, CB and possibly two CMs.
Could sell Hernandez for £20m. Get rid of Young and Valencia. Rio and Evra will be leaving our wage bill.
Could sell Hernandez for £20m. Get rid of Young and Valencia. Rio and Evra will be leaving our wage bill.
To be honest while they're at it, they should get rid of all average squad players and make a compact team of 18 top class players. I hope they will give Moyes the license to do so this time around.
On another completely different issue, our reluctance to spend big on a single player could have come from Sir Alex's mentality.
On another completely different issue, our reluctance to spend big on a single player could have come from Sir Alex's mentality.
Yup, I regularly use that sive, very handy.
SAF's biggest spending seasons are 61 and 63m, of course he sold both seasons. Moyes is almost at 70m, but hasn't made any sales yet, and is looking like bringing in more.
I think we're probably going to send Zaha off on loan. Then possibly see one (or two) of Nani/Valencia/Young/Kagawa leave the club in the summer. Im sure Rio is a goner and Evra likely too if we sign Shaw. Our wage bill will actually be significantly decreased as a result of all these senior players being let go.
Yeah, it must just be a matter of time before Zaha's loan is announced. I'd say it'll be a huge summer for movement, out especially.
Remember Anderson is only on loan too, so he might be on the sales list too.
Where is all this money coming from all of a sudden? Or is it money that was always there and Fergie did not feel the need to spend it?
I genuinely believe Fergie deliberately didn't spend it, knowing he couldn't go on forever and thus choosing to leave it for his successor so they had funds to shape the squad their way.
Nope, Fergie thought Cleverley and Young were as good as Thiago and Giggs.
We one of the richest clubs in the world. We have sponsorships out of our arse. It's about time this money started coming out.
Martin Samuel on the Sunday Supplement said he's told that the Glazer's biggest regret is selling Ronaldo and they wish they had kept him, even if it meant running his contract down and letting him leave for free. The reason being that what matters more than almost anything else is our commercial appeal and Ronaldo even if he left for nothing would be worth commercially far more than the £80m we received.
Thank you Malcolm for letting us spend our own money. You fecking parasite.
They've doubled the revenue of the club, how are the parasites?
Because they've drained all the extra money out.
Even if you accept the dubious argument that without them our revenues wouldn't have increased, and even if you have no problem with the hyper-commercialisation that has pushed them as far as they have, we're hundreds of millions down on the whole situation.
But, to be fair, at least they appear to have recognised the need to spend a bit of cash to avoid their investment going down the pan, so it could be worse.
Can't have it both ways. Sure the takeover has cost the club money (although seeing as they own the club I guess it is THEIR money anyway) but without them chances are we'd have found ourselves in a very similar situation to Arsenal's over the years. A PLC struggling to compete with the sugar daddies. Never mind the transfer budget itself our strict wage structure would have been crippling.
Arsenal offset not spending much over the years by the big wages. We'd have had to make the either/or decision too as they have. Without the Glazer's it's very likely to have been a choice between a big transfer budget OR the ability to pay high wages. With the Glazer's we've at least had the option of both; spending on average £52m a year over the last 3 years PLUS being able to offer very high contracts to our best players.
Whether you like the Glazer's or not their shift in emphasis to commercial revenues has made that possible. Would it have been done without them? Maybe but it's not certain. I think we'd have seen a situation very much like Arsenal's since the sugar-daddy revolution.
Arsenal offset not spending much over the years by the big wages. We'd have had to make the either/or decision too as they have. Without the Glazer's it's very likely to have been a choice between a big transfer budget OR the ability to pay high wages. With the Glazer's we've at least had the option of both; spending on average £52m a year over the last 3 years PLUS being able to offer very high contracts to our best players.
Whether you like the Glazer's or not their shift in emphasis to commercial revenues has made that possible. Would it have been done without them? Maybe but it's not certain. I think we'd have seen a situation very much like Arsenal's since the sugar-daddy revolution.
Havent we huge cash reserves? Around 150mil?
Plus a £70m rolling credit facility, whatever that actually means.
I believe it was lastly reported to be 80m.
Dont forget the huge warchest Nike is willing to throw at us as soon as one of their biggest stars will become available...
Gotta love the transfer windows.
Gotta love the transfer windows.
I'm no money expert but wouldn't that mean as well as having around £100m in the bank, that we'd be able to call upon an extra £70m if needs be?
Arsenal built a new ground, whilst we had already rebuilt ours. Furthermore we did that without any borrowing, whilst Arsenal borrowed heavily, unfortunately relying on property values to repay, only to see a property price collapse. They have only recently come out of that and into a position to buy much again.
You're becoming a spammer Plugsy, give it a rest and let someone else have a go.
We've spent £110m + on the ground and facilities during that time. Maybe even more than that. It's about £95m on the stadium plus the medical facility at the training groud plus other upgrades here and there we've done at Carrington and elsewhere.
Did he empty the plate of baguettes?
Techically it is his money.
Don't.
I hope that's true. If we ever get a player as good as Ronaldo again, I'd rather keep him for as long as possible than sell for huge money.
Manchester United slump exposes failings of Glazers' plans
The root causes of David Moyes's troubled tenure at Manchester United lie with the owners
- David Conn
- The Observer, Saturday 25 January 2014 15.50 GMT
- Jump to comments (399)
Manchester United fans unfurl a banner protesting against the Glazers during last week's defeat at Chelsea. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
The Glazers said it themselves, back in 2010, when they were seeking £500m in bonds to refinance the £525m they borrowed five years earlier to seize Manchester United with their leveraged takeover. Within their 322-page bond prospectus, the Glazers had to inform potential investors of the risks weighing against the profits being promised for lending to the "most valuable global sports team".
The risks, given sport's uncertainty and a club put into £700m debt by its buyers, ran to 15 pages. The strategy ran to only one and was, in short, to keep United at the top, to ensure that supporters', television and sponsors' money would continue to flow into Old Trafford and the low-tax Nevada base where the Glazers had relocated United's ownership. "We aim to maintain the historic success of our first team," the offer stated, "by continuing to seek to attract some of the best players in the world and committing significant resources to developing the highest quality players through our youth academy."
Should United slip or fail to qualify for the Champions League that would "negatively affect our ability to attract or retain talented players and coaching staff, as well as supporters and sponsors." That was the risk.
Another was the managerial succession, for which the Glazers had so long to plan, yet which seems to have come upon the Americans so suddenly: "We are highly dependent on … our management … including Sir Alex Ferguson," the Glazers acknowledged. "Any successor to our manager may not be as successful as he has been."
Feguson was always the Glazers' key figure at United, the manager who fired the drinkers' club of the 1980s into the football cash cow for the Premier League era. Now his leaving has illuminated more clearly how United were in fact run down while servicing the Glazers' debt mountain – at a cost of £680m so far – rather than signing "some of the best players in the world".
In the light of the stuttering performances under David Moyes's management, last season's Premier League title looks not the triumph of a robust squad, as Ferguson reflected when he bade farewell. Instead the trophy stands as a final monument to Ferguson himself, his genius of wresting the best from players and fashioning teams into greater than the sum of their parts.
Without him, the parts are exposed: ageing defenders Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand; too little in the centre of midfield, wingers – Adnan Januzaj's talents aside – too ineffective, and insufficient attacking bite when Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney are not on form.
As Manchester City, fuelled by Sheikh Mansour's dynastic wealth, were spending £1bn in just three years on their plan, determined in 2008, to have two world-class players in each position, United were making do. The signpost to where they went, in ambition and players, came in 2009, when they sold Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid for £81m. Carlos Tevez also left, for City, Mansour paying Tevez's third-party owners £45m for the Argentinian who had won two Premier League titles and the 2008 Champions League in two years at Old Trafford.
Ferguson's reinforcements that summer were Luis Antonio Valencia, £16m from Wigan, Chris Smalling, £10m from Fulham, and Gabriel Obertan, £3m from Bordeaux. United took Michael Owen on a free transfer from Newcastle, at the injury-wracked end of his fine career.
That was when Ferguson declared the transfer market overpriced, and vowed United would look for "value". Before signing Van Persie, his pre-retirement extravagance, Ferguson stuck to that, eschewing any players, David de Gea possibly aside, who might cross the radar of the voters for a Ballon d'Or.
It seemed flagrantly obvious that Ferguson's comparative frugality after a career of big-money signings – Ruud Van Nistelrooy for £19m in 2001; Ferdinand for £30m in 2002 and Rooney for £20m in 2005 to cite just three – was due to the money leaking out to the Glazers' bankers. Ferguson, though, has always been clear, as have the Glazers, that despite the debts and accounting losses, there was always money to spend. Ferguson's best explanation for his continued praising of the Glazers, which has disappointed so many United supporters, has been: "They always backed me."
So the truth may really be that they left Ferguson to it, and he alone allowed United to fall behind their rivals. As Moyes struggles with his inheritance, doubts once again focus on the Glazers' leadership, and the wisdom of allowing Ferguson to choose his successor. They look to have been a little over-focused on the eager accumulation of club sponsors helmed by the new chief executive Ed Woodward in the London office near the Ritz, rather than the defence, midfield and attack requirements in Manchester 16.
Just three weeks ago, Moyes gave United's "don't panic" assurance that the club were unlikely to sign a player this month. Now after being knocked out of the FA Cup by Swansea, Premier League defeat to Chelsea, and this week's tame Capital One Cup exit against Sunderland, they have, pending a medical, smashed the club's transfer record, in January, on Juan Mata.
Talk of financial doom is premature, even if Moyes' team misses out on Champions League qualification – £5.5bn of Premier League TV money, abundant sponsorships banked, and matchday revenue at 76,000-seat Old Trafford will pay the bills, although the debt is still £389m and United are no longer football's financially dominant force.
Ferguson, by maintaining United's success, enabled the Glazers to allow the club to carry their debt and emerge intact. Now the great football man has gone, the questions over their stewardship are being exposed.
Last edited: