Where did it all go wrong

fergiesarmy1

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It could be argued that when the owners and thus the club are more interested in the financial aspect of football than on-pitch performance and winning titles, things tend to go downwards with the on-pitch performance and trophy collecting.
Agreed, the 15 league goals in 10 years by United’s number 7s is scandalous though. Some clubs the 10 is infamous, some the 9. Uniteds number 7 is iconic. Some would say sponsor worthy (Woodward).
 

Schmeichel's Cartwheel

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Owen was a back-up player and did a job for us, Valencia was a decent winger but was never a goal getter, Di Maria looked very good for his first month but his form fell off a cliff when his house was burgled and he never recovered. Depay had talent but believed his own hype and was benched by Christmas, and we all know the Alexis story.

Owen and Valencia essentially delivered as expected. Di Maria, Depay and Sanchez were very disappointing. Sanchez in particular as he'd already lit up the PL for years with Arsenal.
 

Lentwood

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It all went wrong between the takeover and 2010-11 when our net spend was positive - that is criminal for a club our size

What has confused matters (many of our fans and people in the media) is that the Glazers RECENT spend i.e. post SAF has actually been about par. As this has coincided with massive transfer inflation caused by the new PL TV deal, our 'real' spending looks fine on paper.....but in reality we had a HUGE amount of catching up to do after years of neglect and it would likely have taken/take between £500m/£1BN to buy what we effectively need - a new player in most positions

I'm going to use an analogy to explain. Imagine bricks cost £1 per brick and you and your four neighbours all needed to build a house each. It takes eleven thousand bricks to build one house (i.e. it takes 11 players to build a football team). At a time when bricks cost £1, over a period of five years, your four neighbours each buy nine thousand bricks for a total of £9000. You bought no bricks, at a cost of £0

Suddenly, it's starts to piss it down and you badly need a place to live, however, the cost of bricks rises to £1000 per brick....you decide to buy 3000 bricks as that's all you can afford at a cost of £3,000,000. Your neighbours buy the remaining 2000 bricks they need each at a cost of £2,000,000

Your spend - 3000 bricks = £3,000,000
Neighbours - 11,000 bricks = £2,000,009

Now see.....you've actually spent MORE on bricks, but due to bad planning and panic buying have only a third of a house! Your neighbours have spent LESS overall on bricks but because their spending was consistent and they invested wisely, they have whole houses

The media, rivals fans and our own fans are incredulous when people, like myself, argue that the Glazers have criminally under-spent....but that is because they misunderstand what has happened to the market and only look at the 'real' number. For proof of this point, wait another few years for spending to level out post-inflation....I predict we will be well behind again
 

PureCantona7

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All those number 7s were stop gaps for the real thing. Trouble is the real thing never came.

Di maria chickened out so can't really blame the club.

Then they went all out for Sanchez to be that magician but they got a B list actor.
 
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Maticmaker

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Martin Edwards decision to float the club on the stock market.

After that it was inevitable that a 'cash cow' like United would eventually be attractive to sizeable corporate investment, it was the perfect brand and already the best in the business (in the UK at least). Add to that having in situ a serially successful Manager, who finished up winning 13 PL titles, plus, plus and it was obviously the 'lowest hanging of all PL fruit' and was picked off (in all honesty you have to say superbly) by the Glazers.

The rest is history, as they say!
 

Tom Cato

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I know we're all dissapointed in the on pitch results. But we should also be happy that the financial side of the club is being run so well. Manchester Uniteds finances are rock solid. Its this operation that has granted the new manager a £250m spending bucket to re-struckture the club.
 

Gandalf

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I know we're all dissapointed in the on pitch results. But we should also be happy that the financial side of the club is being run so well. Manchester Uniteds finances are rock solid. Its this operation that has granted the new manager a £250m spending bucket to re-struckture the club.
The spending bucket may have a hole in it, rumors now are that we are only buying one or two more players this window and once you factor in a couple of player sales our net spend is likely to be more like 50 million.
 

SeasickSykes

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I know we're all dissapointed in the on pitch results. But we should also be happy that the financial side of the club is being run so well. Manchester Uniteds finances are rock solid. Its this operation that has granted the new manager a £250m spending bucket to re-struckture the club.
What about re-invesment though, the things is takes to appease the fans, to notice how much it all means to us, to witness their own shortcomings and deal with them as and when they arise. The Glazers have not put a single penny of what they've earnt back into the club, yeh Big Ed and his
sponsorship deals have afforded us to be able to buy players, but that means absolutely nothing when the owners don't give one about us, whether we sit at home or go to the matches.

Other clubs have eclipsed us because they have a solid plan for the future of the football, the Glazer family have a solid plan as to how much money they can make, football coming second.

We've been woeful since Fergie left, and yet are still making money, Why would they change anything? Is what I would be asking.
 
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Tom Cato

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The spending bucket may have a hole in it, rumors now are that we are only buying one or two more players this window and once you factor in a couple of player sales our net spend is likely to be more like 50 million.
Well we can't just buy players to buy players. Bruno Fernandes is almost certainly arriving if all the chatter and writing is to be believed. The club are targeting players this window that are being priced awfully high due to their contract situation. Wan-Bissaka appears to be close to signing as well. All other players we've been llinked to have an absolutely extreme price tag, or are also targeted by other clubs (De Ligt and Barca/PSG for example).

We might end up breaking our budget for Harry Maguire. Koulibaly woul be my prefered player, but rumour is that his release price is that much higher than Maguires. At least Maguire is absolutely dominant in the air, something we've been sorely lacking.
 

Snuffkin

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Chronic lack of investment. Parasitical owners bleeding the club dry. We are dying. We are not even in the headlines anymore. City and pool sexier. Soon we will hit the ground with a thump. But we wont be able to compete unless the owners sell up. I fear they will believe the hype about us being 'the biggest club in the world' and will bounce back no matter what. I hope they take a truth pill and sell up before we become a bottom half of the table.
 

sparx99

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The golden rule in sports is never sell/trade a superstar. Pay them whatever it takes, buy other stars to play with them.

We sold Ronaldo and whoever we got to replace him wouldn’t have been good enough.

You don’t let these guys go when you have them. Juventus weren’t the same after Zidane going. AC Milan have never been the same since Kaka left. Tottenham recovered from losing Bale by having Kane come through which is very fortunate. Even Barca have struggled to replicate their best form since losing Neymar and Real ‘collapsed’ after selling Ronaldo themselves.
 

Tom Cato

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What about re-invesment though, the things is takes to appease the fans, to notice how much it all means to us, to witness their own shortcomings and deal with them as and when they arise. The Glazers have not put a single penny of what they've earnt back into the club, yeh Big Ed and his
sponsorship deals have afforded us to be able to buy players, but that means absolutely nothing when the owners don't give one about us, whether we sit at home or go to the matches.

Other clubs have eclipsed us because they have a solid plan for the future of the football, the Glazer family have a solid plan as to how much money they can make, football coming second.

We've been woeful since Fergie left, and yet are still making money, Why would they change anything? Is what I would be asking.
The other clubs have had success with recruitment and the managers they hired.

We've had both LVG and Mourinho on board. Super merited club managers with success in Europe and domestic leagues. Both were afforded enormous transfer budgets and bought a ton of players that failed to deliver on the hype they promised. Manchester United have spent an absolutely outrageous amount of money that the managers wanted to join the club the past 5 years: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/fuenfjahresvergleich/wettbewerb/GB1

Player purchase and player usage has been absolutely trash compared to the resources we have spent on players and managers.

At last, the future looks bright.
 

We need an rvn

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Agreed, the 15 league goals in 10 years by United’s number 7s is scandalous though. Some clubs the 10 is infamous, some the 9. Uniteds number 7 is iconic. Some would say sponsor worthy (Woodward).
to be fair Di Maria and Sanchez should have been better for us than they were, be it manager / player fault not going into that. No one could have predicted those two would have been that shite for us.
 

U-N-I-T-E-D

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The golden rule in sports is never sell/trade a superstar. Pay them whatever it takes, buy other stars to play with them.

We sold Ronaldo and whoever we got to replace him wouldn’t have been good enough.
In fairness we couldn’t have really done anything to keep him. SAF managed to get him to stay an extra year more than he wanted to before he left.

As far as replacements we got Obertan and Valencia so everything worked out ok.
 

soaphroniscuss

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The other clubs have had success with recruitment and the managers they hired.

We've had both LVG and Mourinho on board. Super merited club managers with success in Europe and domestic leagues. Both were afforded enormous transfer budgets and bought a ton of players that failed to deliver on the hype they promised. Manchester United have spent an absolutely outrageous amount of money that the managers wanted to join the club the past 5 years: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/fuenfjahresvergleich/wettbewerb/GB1

Player purchase and player usage has been absolutely trash compared to the resources we have spent on players and managers.

At last, the future looks bright.

http://www.redcafe.net/threads/why-...the-club-so-badly.447316/page-8#post-24246414
 

sp_107

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SAF not buying proper midfield players when they were available with in price range of 25M at that time
Moyes/LVG/Jose conservative managers which were never made for UTD
Too many average/ Wrong signings with huge salaries to off load
Board of people at top level not really bothered that much about results
 

M Bison

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The turning point was Moyes appointment and then his subsequent dismantling of the back room team.

We won the league at a canter the season prior and then he wrecked the team and we’ve never recovered.
 

caid

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The turning point was Moyes appointment and then his subsequent dismantling of the back room team.

We won the league at a canter the season prior and then he wrecked the team and we’ve never recovered.
Nah, the team he inherited was on its last legs. Ferdinand, Vidic and Evra were mostly finished. Van Persie and Rooney weren't the same players. Giggs and Scholes were both done. He got a Carrick who was injured for most of the season and was never a regular again and a team of Jones, Smalling, Wellbeck, Valencia, Young, Evans and Cleverley to compete. In hindsight our finishing position wasn't really surprising.
Not that Moyes wasn't a fecking woeful choice.
 

Saffron

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Martin Edwards decision to float the club on the stock market.

After that it was inevitable that a 'cash cow' like United would eventually be attractive to sizeable corporate investment, it was the perfect brand and already the best in the business (in the UK at least). Add to that having in situ a serially successful Manager, who finished up winning 13 PL titles, plus, plus and it was obviously the 'lowest hanging of all PL fruit' and was picked off (in all honesty you have to say superbly) by the Glazers.

The rest is history, as they say!
In the world, actually. In all official Deloitte global revenue lists ever compiled before the Glazers, United were number 1 every time.

2002:
1. Manchester United
2. Juventus
3. Bayern Munich
4. Milan
5. Real Madrid

2003:
1. Manchester United
2. Juventus
3. Bayern Munich
4. Milan
5. Liverpool

2004:
1. Manchester United
2. Juventus
3. Milan
4. Real Madrid
5. Bayern Munich

2005:
1. Manchester United
2. Real Madrid
3. Milan
4. Chelsea
5. Juventus

This was the ready-made, debt free financial behemoth the Glazers strolled into.
 
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Snuffkin

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This was the ready-made, debt free financial behemoth the Glazers strolled into.
Yeah we were the perfect victims.
They have made hundred of millions of pounds out of us. Fergie should have come out and said something.
 

Buster15

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It could be argued that when the owners and thus the club are more interested in the financial aspect of football than on-pitch performance and winning titles, things tend to go downwards with the on-pitch performance and trophy collecting.
Forget 'it could be argued'.
That is how it is. The owners are not 'football men'.
They are investors. Pure and simple. For them it is all about the bottom line. If football success happens, that is a nice to have. Secondary to profit.
 

fastwalker

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Sorry to say, but this is all down to poor succession planning. Not just down to the Glazers but also Sir Alex. I mentioned on another thread that three years before Sir Alex resigned a nominated successor should have been appointed as the assistant manager to immerse himself in the club, take on more and more management decisions and gradually step into the role. That would have allowed for a natural transition from Sir Alex to the next man. Instead of that, in their wisdom, the Glazer's, Gill and Sir Alex contrived to bring in someone with no knowledge, experience or affinity with the club as our manager. That person then proceeded to bring in their own backroom staff, none of whom had any knowledge, experience or affinity with the club and the rest is history.

This is a salutary lesson for United. Success, painstakingly achieved and traditions carefully established can be like vapour if you take for granted the things that won you the success and established your traditions in the first place. Unwittingly and quite by accident, Sir Alex has helped destroy the very thing he so carefully built over a quarter of a century. I feel for him.

Moyes did not destroy our club, neither did Van Gaal or Jose. They were merely the instruments of enablers who by careless omission thought that things would always be the way they always were.
 

Sandikan

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If only we'd started really booting the cash in when fees were still at least vaguely sensible, and before every English club became loaded!
 

Sandikan

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Owen was a back-up player and did a job for us, Valencia was a decent winger but was never a goal getter, Di Maria looked very good for his first month but his form fell off a cliff when his house was burgled and he never recovered. Depay had talent but believed his own hype and was benched by Christmas, and we all know the Alexis story.

Owen and Valencia essentially delivered as expected. Di Maria, Depay and Sanchez were very disappointing. Sanchez in particular as he'd already lit up the PL for years with Arsenal.
Agree. People constantly bore on about Owen, but he did exactly all he needed to do. decent set of goals first season.
Valencia more than delivered what was expected too. We still came 2nd in the league and got to the final of the euro cup.
 

M Bison

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Nah, the team he inherited was on its last legs. Ferdinand, Vidic and Evra were mostly finished. Van Persie and Rooney weren't the same players. Giggs and Scholes were both done. He got a Carrick who was injured for most of the season and was never a regular again and a team of Jones, Smalling, Wellbeck, Valencia, Young, Evans and Cleverley to compete. In hindsight our finishing position wasn't really surprising.
Not that Moyes wasn't a fecking woeful choice.
The team he inherited was far from perfect but we should never have fallen as far as we did, Ferdinand Vidic and Evra were fantastic in SAFs final season and RvP was a different class. No way they should have dropped to the levels they did under Moyes.

For me that was the starting point, the ethos and heartbeat of the team and backroom staff was ripped out that season and we have never recovered.
 

Fosu-Mens

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Forget 'it could be argued'.
That is how it is. The owners are not 'football men'.
They are investors. Pure and simple. For them it is all about the bottom line. If football success happens, that is a nice to have. Secondary to profit.
I did not want to start an endless debate with certain posters on here, therefore "it could be argued" was inserted at the start of my statement.
 

Striker10

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The Glazers are parasites and it was happening under Sir Alex who had to go along with it and talk about 'value'. We went YEARS without buying a midfielder when it was obvioius we needed many. The glaers bought into success, bleed it dry and have no idea how to recreate it but they like the business model. They should sell.
 

Saffron

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Sorry to say, but this is all down to poor succession planning. Not just down to the Glazers but also Sir Alex. I mentioned on another thread that three years before Sir Alex resigned a nominated successor should have been appointed as the assistant manager to immerse himself in the club, take on more and more management decisions and gradually step into the role. That would have allowed for a natural transition from Sir Alex to the next man. Instead of that, in their wisdom, the Glazer's, Gill and Sir Alex contrived to bring in someone with no knowledge, experience or affinity with the club as our manager. That person then proceeded to bring in their own backroom staff, none of whom had any knowledge, experience or affinity with the club and the rest is history.

This is a salutary lesson for United. Success, painstakingly achieved and traditions carefully established can be like vapour if you take for granted the things that won you the success and established your traditions in the first place. Unwittingly and quite by accident, Sir Alex has helped destroy the very thing he so carefully built over a quarter of a century. I feel for him.

Moyes did not destroy our club, neither did Van Gaal or Jose. They were merely the instruments of enablers who by careless omission thought that things would always be the way they always were.
Please leave SAF out of this. He’s an employee who did a astonishing job. Had Gill or the Glazers (you know, the ones actually in charge) proposed your solution, I’m sure he would have agreed. But it’s not his responsibility to come up with it.

I’m tired of people still trying to shift much of the blame for where we are in 2019 on SAF. At most, we lost 1 season in 2013-2014. That really doesn’t have to turn into a decade long slump if the people at the top actually knew what they were doing. Just look at Madrid.
 

predator

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Obviously when fergie left. I'm correct in saying that everyone expected us to decline after he went? I did.

I thought we would decline after fergie left because he simply got the best out of our players (whether they were world class or bang average). To add to that I assumed our spending would mimic the latter years under fergie which was relatively low (towards the end of his tenure).

But it didn't.
We've spent shitloads of money on players and wages and managers since the great man left.

So you have to look it at as a complete failure from the board.
 

Zen86

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It went wrong when the majority of players that arrived here became worse then they were before, and we paid inflated fees for the privilege.
 

fastwalker

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Please leave SAF out of this. He’s an employee who did a astonishing job. Had Gill or the Glazers (you know, the ones actually in charge) proposed your solution, I’m sure he would have agreed. But it’s not his responsibility to come up with it.

I’m tired of people still trying to shift much of the blame for where we are in 2019 on SAF. At most, we lost 1 season in 2013-2014. That really doesn’t have to turn into a decade long slump if the people at the top actually knew what they were doing. Just look at Madrid.
Sorry, but I have not lost my objectivity. I can recognise what went right and celebrate that and also recognise what went wrong and critique that. No one is questioning the fact that Sir Alex did an exceptional job as manager and if you want to celebrate that, by all means start a thread and I will happily join you there. The question posed in the OP is 'where did it all go wrong'. Perfectly legitimate question to ask given that six years after Sir Alex's departure United have not won a single Premier League title and we find ourselves out of the Champions League.

The transition from Sir Alex went disastrously wrong. That is beyond dispute. I am not suggesting that Sir Alex is responsible for that, but I absolutely do believe that he shares responsibility for it. You believe that the Glazer's and Gill appointed David Moyes over Sir Alex's head. I cannot conceive how such a thing could even have been possible. It just beggars belief that Sir Alex would allow his hard fought legacy to be handed to someone whom he did not think was up to the job.

"United are in good hands with David Moyes. He will be fine. He's a good manager."

These are not my words.
 

Cathy Ferguson

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You can buy poor players for a season or two without turning into a shitty team, but if you do it for more than five seasons then you face the consequnces.

The Glazers are not helping out but if Pool and Spurs can reach the CL final without net spending crazy money so should we if we had a good manager, a strategy on and off the field, and a couple of great scouts.
 

fastwalker

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You can buy poor players for a season or two without turning into a shitty team, but if you do it for more than five seasons then you face the consequnces.

The Glazers are not helping out but if Pool and Spurs can reach the CL final without net spending crazy money so should we if we had a good manager, a strategy on and off the field, and a couple of great scouts.
Great point!
 

Offside

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We’re rotten from the top down it’s becoming obvious now. Glazers took over when we had the 2 best teenagers in world Football so we managed to overthrow Chelsea spending feck all compared to them. We then relied on Fergie’s genius, even then losing the league twice and doing crap in the CL a couple of times due to not addressing obvious weaknesses (midfield). Since then it’s been an example of how not to run a football club. Until we get new owners I can’t see us getting back to where we were on the pitch.
 

Womp

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It wasn't caused by one event. It's been shit decision after shit decision. Terrible management has led to this shit show. We've been terrible with recruitment, terrible with management and left behind in regards to structure. Actually impressive that we've managed to get it wrong so many times without getting it right.
 

Foxbatt

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The turning point was Moyes appointment and then his subsequent dismantling of the back room team.

We won the league at a canter the season prior and then he wrecked the team and we’ve never recovered.
I agree with you and Moyes was given money to buy players but he dithered and he lost the plot. Yes players needed to be replaced but Moyes never did it. He then dismantled the back room team as you have said and all we got was Fellaini from Everton. He turned us into Everton and the appointment of Moyes where it started to go all wrong.
 

Baneofthegame

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It basically began the summer directly after SAF left where our squad clearly needed revamping and Moyes managed to sign just Fellaini.

That coupled with SAF overachieving with the previous squad and no real structure to replace the enormous amount of work he did at the club led to our current predicament.

Plus all the wasted player transfers.
 

Class of 63

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It all went wrong between the takeover and 2010-11 when our net spend was positive - that is criminal for a club our size

What has confused matters (many of our fans and people in the media) is that the Glazers RECENT spend i.e. post SAF has actually been about par. As this has coincided with massive transfer inflation caused by the new PL TV deal, our 'real' spending looks fine on paper.....but in reality we had a HUGE amount of catching up to do after years of neglect and it would likely have taken/take between £500m/£1BN to buy what we effectively need - a new player in most positions

I'm going to use an analogy to explain. Imagine bricks cost £1 per brick and you and your four neighbours all needed to build a house each. It takes eleven thousand bricks to build one house (i.e. it takes 11 players to build a football team). At a time when bricks cost £1, over a period of five years, your four neighbours each buy nine thousand bricks for a total of £9000. You bought no bricks, at a cost of £0

Suddenly, it's starts to piss it down and you badly need a place to live, however, the cost of bricks rises to £1000 per brick....you decide to buy 3000 bricks as that's all you can afford at a cost of £3,000,000. Your neighbours buy the remaining 2000 bricks they need each at a cost of £2,000,000

Your spend - 3000 bricks = £3,000,000
Neighbours - 11,000 bricks = £2,000,009

Now see.....you've actually spent MORE on bricks, but due to bad planning and panic buying have only a third of a house! Your neighbours have spent LESS overall on bricks but because their spending was consistent and they invested wisely, they have whole houses

The media, rivals fans and our own fans are incredulous when people, like myself, argue that the Glazers have criminally under-spent....but that is because they misunderstand what has happened to the market and only look at the 'real' number. For proof of this point, wait another few years for spending to level out post-inflation....I predict we will be well behind again
I'm not surprised there's a shortage of affordable housing if it costs £1000 a brick :lol: