I find it hard to reconcile all the things the fans want into an outcome because a lot of it seems contradictory IMO.
We’ve spent years complaining about the PSGs and Man Cities of the world, crossing our fingers and hoping that FFP would finally be an actual thing, yet when our fans describe the kind of owner they want, they’re literally asking for the kind of owner that the clubs mentioned above have. Owners who would put in a significant amount of money to buy the club, only to expect no financial return on their investment, and possibly continue to put even more money into the club over the subsequent years. That sounds like terrible business for any sane person with business motives. You’d have to have ridiculous amounts of money, non-business reasons for spending it on United, and no expectations of a financial return.
I don’t want Saudi owners, and more generally, I don’t want football as a whole to embrace this kind of ownership model. It is bad enough as it is without more clubs going down that route.
The ESL was a culmination of FFP failure, and traditionally big clubs finally realizing that they can’t compete with clubs like PSG and Man City forever under the current model, so it made sense to create a competition that guarantees them financial rewards in line with their worldwide appeal, and also puts FFP-type constraints on the gulf-owned clubs.
People have to look at the semifinal of the CL, the ESL, and the current state of the squads of many of the ESL teams compared to, say, City. These things should not be looked at in isolation. We’re actually one of the very few teams who tried to go toe-to-toe with City in the amount we’ve spent on our squad, but it is a game we will lose sooner or later.
If things stay going exactly like they are, City will probably win 6-8 of the next PL titles, easily. Chelsea will win 1 or 2 (if you think that’s ridiculous, remember that City have won 5 of the last 10, and Chelsea won 2). Every now and then, another team will have everything, I mean everything, go right for them in a particular season and they will win the league (like Liverpool last season). We are big enough and have enough revenues to mean that we can just about stay close’ish to City, compete every year for 2nd and occasionally get everything right and win a title. Same thing will happen with the CL, albeit with a lot more surprises (beauty of the cups).