LVG: Man Utd is a commercial club, not like Bayern Munich.

fcbforever

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What game? Are you saying you're not commercial?
No, but you kinda implied we were it to the same degree or rather, even worse. We are not. Of course we are an enterprise with profit in mind. But looking at how the past 10 years went, I think van Gaal is right when he implied our board is more competent when it comes to the footballing side of things. United hiring him is living testimony to that after all.
 

El-Manos

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Every club has a major marketing side to it these days, and yes Louis, that includes Bayern. Nothing wrong with what he said about United but his so called romantic impression of Bayern is false. Also, Rumminege is a fart.
 
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Josep Dowling

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He didn't really use Di Maria badly since Di Maria was fairly productive(3 goals and eleven assists in PL), in the case of Di Maria the player is the main responsible. Also PSG have used him the same way.
Part of transfers is to work out the person. Will he adapt to Manchester, the league, the country, the language, the culture? This is something that Van Gaal epically failed with, with so many of his transfers. And that’s why LVG is a hypocrite and it’s clearly just sour grapes he got sacked.
 

Raees

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Pretty sure he is guilty of treating some players like shit himself. Weirdo.
 

JPRouve

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Part of transfers is to work out the person. Will he adapt to Manchester, the league, the country, the language, the culture? This is something that Van Gaal epically failed with, with so many of his transfers. And that’s why LVG is a hypocrite and it’s clearly just sour grapes he got sacked.
I'm not defending Van gaal here but you can't say that he didn't use him properly when he actually did. Now on your point that's the scouts job, we have no idea about the content of the scouting reports and we don't know if LVG decided to ignore those reports or if actually followed them.
 

Fridge chutney

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Really want to play that game? You, the club with the global tractor partner from China?
Yes, let's explore this a bit more.

Manchester United's commercial revenue stream accounts for 32-40% of their revenue.

Bayern Munich' s commercial revenue accounts for 55-60% of their revenue streams.

United the "commercial club" indeed.
 

Trizy

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Kek. Come and try. In 2014, we sold 8,3% of our shared for 110 million. So at that point, the value of just the AG (not the club, stadium also not included) was around 1,3 billion €.
I knew I'd trigger someone :drool:.

Missed my opportunity to use whitetext, damn :(
 

arthurka

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He is just as delusional as Moyes or more..
Thanks for your time here LVG but it´s time to get on with retirement..
 

Bruce Wayne

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What is this fool talking about. Every football club is a commercial business. It will not survive without commercial deals.

"Bayern Munich maintained its position in 4th place in the 2018 edition of Deloitte’s Football Money League despite a slight decline (.7%) in total revenue from €592m in 2016 to €587.8m in 2017. Bayern was the only top-five club whose revenue declined in its home currency.

The Money League was topped by Manchester United for the second year in a row (€676.3m), followed by Real Madrid (€674.6m) and Barcelona (€648.3m). Manchester City (€527.7m) and Arsenal (€487.6m) are chasing Bayern in 5th and 6th place."

src: https://www.bavarianfootballworks.c...munich-deloitte-football-money-league-revenue

Regarding Schweinsteiger, he is old and Jose did not see the need for him and Carrick in the squad. If Schweinsteiger was still any good, he wouldn't have gone to MLS (and not even top team in MLS).

Central midfield is one area Jose improved drastically.
 
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Smores

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Loves his constant little digs doesn't he. Boring old fool
 

Kapardin

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"United are a commercial club", meaning, "I hate Ed Woodward for what he's done to me".

Jeez, he is like a jilted lover, raging against Ed at every opportunity.

As for the Jose-Schweini comment, I suppose that was his cheap low blow dig at Jose seeing as he cannot actually say we are doing badly on the pitch at the moment, being 2nd and in the CL.

Btw, if he had gone back to Bayern (not that they would have had him) instead of United and did the same crap job, he would have been booted out by the end of his first season itself, 4th or not. And Uli and KHR would have had some choice words to say about him too, unlike Ed who keeps quiet. So much for the "love" he has for Bayern.
 

NotoriousISSY

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The Manchester United job is a bigger responsibility than Bayern.

At Bayern you are essentially a coach. You are put in there to make a squad of players win games usually assembled by a bunch of technical directors/DoFs whatever name you want.

At United you are the manager. You’re in charge of players you want in. You’re in charge of players you want out. You have far more responsibility.

Whether the Bayern model works better or not is irrelevant because United operates in this traditional format - and probably will for the foreseeable future.
 

Offsideagain

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LVG is so bitter he could be a City fan. He has his view of how he was treated and , you have to say, winning the FA Cup and getting sacked is hard, ask Mancini.

It seems he wanted to turn United into Bayern and sod the expense. They should have asked him about Memphis.
 

bond19821982

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Or Louis - you could have helped us achieve more on footballing side. You had every chance to bring in whomever you want and play however you like .
Some balls that - he served shit after shift every week and the club was actually going down interms of popularity.

Thanks to Ed, we stayed relevant commercially and he exploited our brand.
 

Thisistheone

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No, but you kinda implied we were it to the same degree or rather, even worse. We are not. Of course we are an enterprise with profit in mind. But looking at how the past 10 years went, I think van Gaal is right when he implied our board is more competent when it comes to the footballing side of things. United hiring him is living testimony to that after all.
Utd would appear much better if we could suck the league dry like Bayern do. Lewandowski for free. Give us Harry Kane for free and we're already looking much better.
 

R'hllor

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Maybe i am reading this wrong but seems most getting negative vibe from that part. I dont see it as dig, more like his observation in difference between us and Bayern, regarding what profile of people are in charge of clubs. Maybe i am totally wrong ofc.
 

Giggs86

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He's like that drunk uncle who won't shut his mouth during thanksgiving dinner.

At least now he only embarasses himself and not the whole club, like he did in his pressers here.
 

Vidyoyo

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It's absolutely not unreasonable to say the Premier League is more commercialised than the bundesliga. 49% rule and all that. Also wasn't that sort of the issue all german supporters had with RB Leipzig? That they started to pour money into the club like some rich sugar daddy team?

Bundesliga isn't perfect though.

Edit: I've just learned that we have an Official Global Mattress and Pillow Partner :lol:
 
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Luke1995

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Sometimes I wish United had given Van Gaal that third season because maybe he could have gotten Rooney to play better. It's so hard to get over the fact Rooney is gone
 

VeevaVee

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Sometimes I wish United had given Van Gaal that third season because maybe he could have gotten Rooney to play better. It's so hard to get over the fact Rooney is gone
Surely not serious? Rooney was done well before that and van Gaal had the man management skills of a donut.
 

Phil

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Wouldn't mind getting down to the Allianz arena one day to see such a club, untouched by commercial agreements.
 

Champagne Football

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He may love Bayern but they for sure hated him. He's been doing a Moyes since he quit. Was given 4 months longer than he should have been given so he could possibly retire with some silverware yet acts like his Fred Flintstone sideways football and 5th place finish was on the verge of dominating Europe for decades when if anything we were steadily getting much worse.
 

Blackwidow

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Bayern needs the commercial income to keep the football running on a high level - without that it would not work. Whereas the owners of United want to earn money of the football and the commercial income of the football club. I am not talking of the fans and their intentions - just about the owners.

That might be the small difference.

For Bayern the commercial income is the only possibility to stay up in the top of European football. They are in a pole position with that because of the German industry for which they are the prime commercial sports partner. The income from TV money is not high "enough" for that and Bayern restricts itself of getting the most out of the match day income atleast of the "normal" fans (they do with the commercial tickets and VIP boxes).

I cannot tell much about United - but Bayern in parts still has something of a family led company. Rummenigge's son, Hoeneß' daughter and nephew, Breitner's son, Thomas Müller's brother, Gerland's wife, Jens Jeremies' brother and several other relatives or players of the past work in several departments of the club. Some of us fans like this - some don't as they say it is too much "Vetternwirtschaft" - nepotism. And you have all the open training sessions etc. in German football through which the normal fan seems to be able to be "nearer to the player" than the EPL fan.

Van Gaal was United coach for a longer period than he was Bayern coach. But maybe it was special players or the mentality of the players or the players that got him more connected to us than to you. I listened to an interview 2 or 3 years after he stopped being coach for Bayern and he still was talking about "his" players...
 

devilish

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He's right of course. LVG tend to be kicked out twice per club. We only sacked him once and we never gave him a second chance to be kicked out once again.
 

BusbyMalone

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Don't think anything he said was particularly that egregious tbh. He's and ex manager who's talking about the club in a somewhat unflattering way so i can understand why people take umbrage with it, but he's not wrong on some stuff. In regards to Schweinsteiger there were many on here who were echoing these sentiments about how unfairly he was treated under Jose. I agreed with him not playing as i don't think he was good enough, but Jose's treatment of him was bizarre.

As for the commercial comments, he has a point. Man Utd, and Ed Woodward in particular, are highly motivated by the commercial value of a player when it comes to signing them. It's a huge part of their recruitment and something they advertise to a player. Now, we're far from the only team to do this in this day and age, but i do think it's far more of a priority for us. There was a story a few years ago when LVG was in charge that we inquired about Aubameyang. There were other clubs involved and they spoke to him and told him what they had in mind in terms of where he was to play, etc.
When it came to Man Utd, it was more to do with what they could do for him in terms of his profile and commercial pursuits. Whether it be Twitter followers, other social media metrics and his general public profile.

I also find the commercial push with Pogba to be quite...unsavoury. It doesn't annoy me, per se, but i just find the whole thing bizarre. And i also think we would benefit from a "football guy" at the top. Someone who can plan for the future. Whether that be managerial appointments or player recruitment. Bring some sort of pattern and direction to the club.
 

mitchmouse

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there are times the suits at Bayern have got their heads so far up their arses, they come out of their ears!
 

ValenciaRocks

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Is he wrong?

United used to have traditions. But it seems like we’ve fallen out of touch with that since Sir Alex retired.

But Van Gaal was a big part of that too... the majority of his signings were not Manchester United players. It was obvious to me that Depay, Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger and Darmian wouldn’t work out here. The two LVG signings I was actually excited about; Di Maria and Falcao turned out to be two flops. And that was mostly down to LVG himself.

Mourinho’s kind of getting us back on track... Pogba, Ibra, Sanchez, Bailly and Matic are all what I’d call proper United players. I could see them all under Ferguson winning titles.... but Mkhitaryan was an obvious one that was never gonna make it here. That’s the only one Mourinho got wrong IMO.

Having said all that, I wish we would become more about the football again. I miss the days when we had an British core. Nowadays we just seem to be chucking hundreds of thousands at “world class” players and hoping they’ll fit the bill of what a United player is all about. It’s just not that simple. I don’t think Luis Figo would have worked out at United as well as say... David Beckham did. That doesn’t mean Beckham is the better player... it just means he’s more suited to the club and we need to make better judgements going forward.
This.

I also acknowledge that we are a commercial club. We were a commercial club under Ferguson but we never let that hamper our core values and footballing side of things.

I love the fact that Mourinho has made a point of not talking about Pogba but rather the emergence of McTomminay. I think Mourinho will sell a lot of players in the summer (Darmian, Fellaini, Blind and Ibrahimovic) to let some of our youth players in.

I'm also happy with Mourinho's signings and I believe next season he will have his own preferred team. I'm not interested in signing the likes of Neymar anymore (he seems too disruptive), I want players like Valencia, McTomminay, Herrera and De Gea. True proffesionals that just get on with it.

Ferguson admitted his failings in signing Djemba Djemba and Kleberson on a whim. He admits that he went in for those players too quickly, without researching their personas prior to approaching them. I think Mourinho is meticulous in the transfer market and tbh I think next season will be huge for us.

If we can ignore the commercial noise in the background and instil a "win at all costs" attitude within the team, I think we can look like our old selves again.
 
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walkinhop

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Every time someone makes a point about money not being important is losing all credibility. Nonsense and utter distraction.
 

devilish

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Don't think anything he said was particularly that egregious tbh. He's and ex manager who's talking about the club in a somewhat unflattering way so i can understand why people take umbrage with it, but he's not wrong on some stuff. In regards to Schweinsteiger there were many on here who were echoing these sentiments about how unfairly he was treated under Jose. I agreed with him not playing as i don't think he was good enough, but Jose's treatment of him was bizarre.

As for the commercial comments, he has a point. Man Utd, and Ed Woodward in particular, are highly motivated by the commercial value of a player when it comes to signing them. It's a huge part of their recruitment and something they advertise to a player. Now, we're far from the only team to do this in this day and age, but i do think it's far more of a priority for us. There was a story a few years ago when LVG was in charge that we inquired about Aubameyang. There were other clubs involved and they spoke to him and told him what they had in mind in terms of where he was to play, etc.
When it came to Man Utd, it was way more to do with what they could do for him in terms of his profile and commercial pursuits. Whether it be Twitter followers, other social media metrics and his general public profile.

I also find the commercial push with Pogba to be quite...unsavoury. It doesn't annoy me, per se, but i just find the whole thing bizarre. And i also think we would benefit from a "football guy" at the top. Someone who can plan for the future. Whether that be managerial appointments or player recruitment. Bring some sort of pattern or direction to the club.
With all due respect but unless a club is funded by dictators/regimes or has a league monopoly like Celtic and Bayern do then the way it can thrive is by taking care of its financial aspect.

Maybe we need to replace our money men with legends who accept Rolexes as 'gifts' or were under a criminal investigation. That's what proper clubs do.
 

CA1

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He didn't really use Di Maria badly since Di Maria was fairly productive(3 goals and eleven assists in PL), in the case of Di Maria the player is the main responsible. Also PSG have used him the same way.
Agree with most you say but can't on this.

Van Gaal was poison for a player like Di Maria.

All three of those Di Maria goals were in his first 4 games!

I'd remind Mr Van Gaal that we certainly are about football. Hence why he was sacked for playing some of the worst football in our history. People complain about Mourinho's football sometimes correctly particularly in big games but it's much better than Van Gaal's.

If Van Gaal had stayed any longer, I know many who wouldn't have bothered renewing.
 
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Bruce Wayne

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One more thing, "But because at that time he was coming out of a poorer season, we didn't do it in the end."

Why would a club pay top premium price for a declining player? Bayern wouldn't give discount because he had a poor season.

United got Bailly and Lindelof for 30+m each. These are not players for 'commercial deals' if that's what he was implying.
 
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