I think it's more that many are misinformed. Don't think many knows how deep-rooted ME, Chinese and (formerly?) Russian investments are in the UK. Hence why senior government/royals/other key people are keeping quiet when people are trying to raise issues in said countries.
Club Sale | It’s done!
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
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Of course it's a sports washing thing. They want to promote their nation and for people to look past all the bad stuff.
At 5bn it's hardly going to be a real money spinner for them from owning the club. It's what the club can do for Doha and the rest of Qatar they care about.
There's literally only City that have cheated and they're being hammered for it. No one else has.
Maybe if they give him #7.Wait, so are you both trying to argue that there isn't a correlation between spending vast sums of money and success?
Not PSG?
It is and I agree, but to be fair we weren't all sitting around and discussing the plight of the average Qatari for the last 10 years. It's only become a thing since the WC and now our potential new owners, and if it weren't for that I doubt we'd even be having this conversation now.
Oh yeh I know! Unfortunately I don't think he's wumming this timeYou're dealing with a guy named WUMminator for goodness sake
Does this mean I'll be able to send a text from inside OT?
To be fair they spent 1b on transfers when they shouldn’t have. Anybody can look like a baller if they don’t pay their bills at home
I've been away for 45 mins. have we decided what a proper fan is yet?
We've done our best to disprove it post Fergie!
Of course there is a correlation. But tell me what club is ever going to win multiple trophies without spending a lot of money? Are Real Madrid going to win anymore CL's without buying some of the worlds best players? Are Bayern going to win another 10 league titles without spending any money?
You said having a rich owner is a cheat code, as if all you have to do is spend a lot of money and you win everything. Obviously that isn't true because the two richest clubs haven't won everything, every season
Yes but they might take away our warm Carlings
Someone who cares about the heritage of the club.
If anything it's them putting themselves in the spotlight that has highlighted the issues, not the other way around. And whilst hosting a WC would get you temporary scrutiny, owning United would mean issues would probably be raised daily. That's what I'm hoping them buying United will cause - continued pressure, leading to dialogue and eventually change.
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So does all the history and heritage vanish overnight?
Be from Manchester, ideally within 2 miles of the ground.
Try and shift all your tickets for lesser cup games desperately on the ticket thread.
Leave most games 10mins early so you get to your house 2miles away 20mins quicker.
Oh and sneer at "day trippers".
That should cover it.
I don't think that player recruitment is where we'll feel the impact of the new ownership the most.
Think it'll be them transforming our aging infrastructure and bringing it all into the modern era that'll be the biggest culture shock for us.
We've heavily underinvested in that area since our last change of ownership and have let all the other big clubs around us surpass us in that regard.
Turning us into a state of the art operation again is long overdo and will be fitting for a club of our stature
Thanks #TopRed
I made two rather clear points. 1) We won’t outspend Chelsea - we can’t spend 600m in the next two transfer windows due to FFP and the closing of the loophole. City will also spend shit tons. There is no cheat code here. 2) We’ve spent more than everyone the last decade and it hasn’t correlated to success. So why wasn’t that a cheat code? We spent far more than Arsenal back in the day too. Was that a cheat mode that lessens our success?
Did a quick Google, it seems 8 clubs broke FFP in recent years:
PSG, Juventus, Inter, Roma, Besiktas, Marseille, Monaco and Milan.
They all paid fines, first 4 teams mentioned paid around €10m each. PSG's seems to be because they went all in for Neymar and Mbappe within the same period.
UEFA also said there's 19 more teams almost in breach and are being monitored, they include Chelsea, Leicester, Manchester City, West Ham and Rangers.
If United is bought by Qatar or Saudi Arabia then success is more or less guaranteed. Only stupidity of near biblical proportions could prevent that from happening given the de facto infinite wealth that both provide, together with the size of the club.
However the risk and jeopardy will have been removed, leading to the hollowness I mentioned. It’s like the difference between gratification and happiness, and I think the feeling from success will resemble the former much more than the latter under state ownership.
Yea it all gets literally washed over in oil and sinks to the bottom never to be seen or heard from again like Atlantis.
Only a select few will ever be lucky enough to remember the Busby babes, Trinity, Cof92 and Treble again.
I wouldn't get carried away, these guys are only billionaires.
How's this money washing or laundering only concerning when it comes to sports and not anything else ? I mean half of the items we use on our daily life has middle eastern money involved directly or indirectly.
We’re competing with them though. They’ve spent the money. How does us inevitably spending less than they have the last two windows = cheat mode?
Because there's no tribalism involved with the every day shit we use. It only matters in the context of trying to look like a better set of fans
No it doesn't, we can spend what we're allowed to spend and still get it wrong, the PL is far more competitive than the French league or any other league for that matter. Brighton spend more than most top 3 teams in other leagues. We can and will fall behind if we spend badly and appoint the wrong people again.
The potential new ownership just means that if we do get it really wrong we won't run out of cash before we can get it right again, and on top of that, we have no idea what the football landscape will look like in 5 years, the whole top 6 could be state or billionaire owned and then it won't matter how much spending power we have.
This hollow talk is premature.
The exodus of top reds would be a welcome sight.
I’ve monitored and read (& laughed) at this thread for days/weeks now, without getting involved, because it usually turns into a shit show of politics & close-minded opinions, but here goes anyway:
1) if we’re bought by Qatar, why do we suddenly turn into an oil/plastic club? If they allow the club to not be saddled with debt & allow us to spend what we can afford, without taking dividends out, how does that turn us into a plastic club? If they’re pumping £billions of their own money in transfers, above our spend limit, surely either FFP kicks in, and if it doesn’t, then sure, I’d understand the argument. But just having a simple case of “change of ownership” doesn’t miraculously mean we were relegation candidates artificially turned into challengers. We’ve also been one of the biggest names in football. Also, I’ve worked in corporate my entire career so it might be easier for me to separate ownership from operations (& on field operations). That’s just how business works. & football is business at the end of the day.
2) they’ll spend money on infrastructure and improving the facilities, which is great for the club, again, that doesn’t turn us into an oil club but rather having owners who are investing into the sporting project. Maybe they even finance it through the club, who knows. But it would be great having an owner/sponsor willing to invest into the club, versus seeing the club as a for-profit venture.
3) the world has been going this way since the dawn of time. The wealthy are extremely wealthy but there’s no real right answer in the equation as most of the wealthy generally got there by pillaging/abusing/using the poorest of the poor. Would any/most other owners really be head and shoulders above being owned by the emir of Qatar (or whatever they call him)? Or do you just consider them as such because they fit more into your personal belief system? Why can’t your personal belief system be separated from the ownership of a football club as long as they’re not trying to force their way of thinking down your throat (he’s supposedly been educated in the UK and loves football from that aspect anyway)? Unless you’d prefer another VC type ownership because it’s either sketchy billionaires or “VC type investors at these prices”….
4) maybe I’m too “lenient” or open minded coming from the third world and witnessing its horrors. Horrors most of you (a generalisation as I know it’s not all of you) are not accustomed to, but we experience it almost on the daily. It’s never right, nor should it be normalised, but the world extends, and is far greater than “just the west and your way of life”. There are other ways of life. You might not agree with it but there are, and it’s easy for most of you to sit there and criticise and judge but try being born into that, the family, the teachings, the values….its indoctrination in a form…& then try seeing how easy it is to simply severe ties with those you love because you deem it “wrong” - how would you even define wrong after living in that world your entire life? Seems a few of you look down on the Middle East and their way of life because it doesn’t fit into your own thinking about life and what it should be like. Maybe it works for them? Who knows. I certainly don’t but I find the entire “shutdown” a little condescending because you happened to be born into some sort of “privilege” (not even mentioning how all those privileges were obtained in the fist place).
Anyway, these are my thoughts. Maybe I’m detached because we have other problems to deal with here in our beautiful country, South Africa, where some tribes (and all across Africa I might add, also still struggle with gender equality). Maybe footy or United means less to me than you, who knows. And I’m not even condoning the “sportwashing” angle here, but maybe if everyone was a little more “accepting and forgiving” of some of the unknown, we could also show them the beauty of a different way of life and try and garner change to their regimes in that manner? It’s a weird world we’re living in, where a lot of the wests privilege today was borne out of the suffering of others, and whilst you feel like you might have progressed in lfiezc you might also have left others lagging behind even more, but yet some of you seem unable to “make amends” (why should you?) and give others a chance at change, by simply setting a better example, a more inclusive example.
But I guess these thoughts are too idealistic. Because it’s sports. You know, serious life threatening business in the grander scheme of life.
@golden_blunder sorry for posting “politics” in here as I know we’re trying to keep it only sale related. Was my one and only post of its ilk. I’m doing a lucky scout and saying “not open to replies from me” once I’ve aired my thoughts
1) if we’re bought by Qatar, why do we suddenly turn into an oil/plastic club? If they allow the club to not be saddled with debt & allow us to spend what we can afford, without taking dividends out, how does that turn us into a plastic club? If they’re pumping £billions of their own money in transfers, above our spend limit, surely either FFP kicks in, and if it doesn’t, then sure, I’d understand the argument. But just having a simple case of “change of ownership” doesn’t miraculously mean we were relegation candidates artificially turned into challengers. We’ve also been one of the biggest names in football. Also, I’ve worked in corporate my entire career so it might be easier for me to separate ownership from operations (& on field operations). That’s just how business works. & football is business at the end of the day.
2) they’ll spend money on infrastructure and improving the facilities, which is great for the club, again, that doesn’t turn us into an oil club but rather having owners who are investing into the sporting project. Maybe they even finance it through the club, who knows. But it would be great having an owner/sponsor willing to invest into the club, versus seeing the club as a for-profit venture.
3) the world has been going this way since the dawn of time. The wealthy are extremely wealthy but there’s no real right answer in the equation as most of the wealthy generally got there by pillaging/abusing/using the poorest of the poor. Would any/most other owners really be head and shoulders above being owned by the emir of Qatar (or whatever they call him)? Or do you just consider them as such because they fit more into your personal belief system? Why can’t your personal belief system be separated from the ownership of a football club as long as they’re not trying to force their way of thinking down your throat (he’s supposedly been educated in the UK and loves football from that aspect anyway)? Unless you’d prefer another VC type ownership because it’s either sketchy billionaires or “VC type investors at these prices”….
4) maybe I’m too “lenient” or open minded coming from the third world and witnessing its horrors. Horrors most of you (a generalisation as I know it’s not all of you) are not accustomed to, but we experience it almost on the daily. It’s never right, nor should it be normalised, but the world extends, and is far greater than “just the west and your way of life”. There are other ways of life. You might not agree with it but there are, and it’s easy for most of you to sit there and criticise and judge but try being born into that, the family, the teachings, the values….its indoctrination in a form…& then try seeing how easy it is to simply severe ties with those you love because you deem it “wrong” - how would you even define wrong after living in that world your entire life? Seems a few of you look down on the Middle East and their way of life because it doesn’t fit into your own thinking about life and what it should be like. Maybe it works for them? Who knows. I certainly don’t but I find the entire “shutdown” a little condescending because you happened to be born into some sort of “privilege” (not even mentioning how all those privileges were obtained in the fist place).
Anyway, these are my thoughts. Maybe I’m detached because we have other problems to deal with here in our beautiful country, South Africa, where some tribes (and all across Africa I might add, also still struggle with gender equality). Maybe footy or United means less to me than you, who knows. And I’m not even condoning the “sportwashing” angle here, but maybe if everyone was a little more “accepting and forgiving” of some of the unknown, we could also show them the beauty of a different way of life and try and garner change to their regimes in that manner? It’s a weird world we’re living in, where a lot of the wests privilege today was borne out of the suffering of others, and whilst you feel like you might have progressed in lfiezc you might also have left others lagging behind even more, but yet some of you seem unable to “make amends” (why should you?) and give others a chance at change, by simply setting a better example, a more inclusive example.
But I guess these thoughts are too idealistic. Because it’s sports. You know, serious life threatening business in the grander scheme of life.
@golden_blunder sorry for posting “politics” in here as I know we’re trying to keep it only sale related. Was my one and only post of its ilk. I’m doing a lucky scout and saying “not open to replies from me” once I’ve aired my thoughts
Bribed their way to win the world cup. Employed cheap migrant labour where thousands are said to have died.
But it's all fine because if we buy Manchester United everyone will eventually forget these things won't they?
Nah not for me. A sad sad day for this great football club if we are bought for the sole purpose to make people forget about slavery, homophobia, sexism etc.
And how do we ever get rid of the Qataris if we wanted to further down the line? With money no object for them they would have no reason to ever leave us unlike the Glazers who do care about money.
Don't think people realise what this might mean for us. All they can think of is new signings of course.
I would not be surprised if every PL team would be owned by some rich powerhouse in 10-15 years time. Just this week we get news on Spurs, Liverpool and United, Newcastle already has one. What's stopping them from taking over the other teams outside the 'big 6'. Things are moving in such a rapid pace. The game is already gone so I might as well accept that. I'm just glad we get an owner that has the ability to erase debt and invest in the things the Glazers have neglected for years. I can understand people having issues with state ownership and I respect their opinion but I just want to see this club thrive and for ETH to get all the resources he needs to turn this team into a dynasty again.
That's just how I feel about it. The PL is the most competitive sports league in Europe. Spurs and Liverpool are up next by the look of things. Chelsea already shown the ability to casually spend 600m in 6 months. City being City. Beating these teams in a title race will definitely not feel hollow to me. I bet a lot of rival teams want us to feel that way, though.
I like this post. Great to have some views from other parts of the world.I’ve monitored and read (& laughed) at this thread for days/weeks now, without getting involved, because it usually turns into a shit show of politics & close-minded opinions, but here goes anyway:
1) if we’re bought by Qatar, why do we suddenly turn into an oil/plastic club? If they allow the club to not be saddled with debt & allow us to spend what we can afford, without taking dividends out, how does that turn us into a plastic club? If they’re pumping £billions of their own money in transfers, above our spend limit, surely either FFP kicks in, and if it doesn’t, then sure, I’d understand the argument. But just having a simple case of “change of ownership” doesn’t miraculously mean we were relegation candidates artificially turned into challengers. We’ve also been one of the biggest names in football. Also, I’ve worked in corporate my entire career so it might be easier for me to separate ownership from operations (& on field operations). That’s just how business works. & football is business at the end of the day.
2) they’ll spend money on infrastructure and improving the facilities, which is great for the club, again, that doesn’t turn us into an oil club but rather having owners who are investing into the sporting project. Maybe they even finance it through the club, who knows. But it would be great having an owner/sponsor willing to invest into the club, versus seeing the club as a for-profit venture.
3) the world has been going this way since the dawn of time. The wealthy are extremely wealthy but there’s no real right answer in the equation as most of the wealthy generally got there by pillaging/abusing/using the poorest of the poor. Would any/most other owners really be head and shoulders above being owned by the emir of Qatar (or whatever they call him)? Or do you just consider them as such because they fit more into your personal belief system? Why can’t your personal belief system be separated from the ownership of a football club as long as they’re not trying to force their way of thinking down your throat (he’s supposedly been educated in the UK and loves football from that aspect anyway)? Unless you’d prefer another VC type ownership because it’s either sketchy billionaires or “VC type investors at these prices”….
4) maybe I’m too “lenient” or open minded coming from the third world and witnessing its horrors. Horrors most of you (a generalisation as I know it’s not all of you) are not accustomed to, but we experience it almost on the daily. It’s never right, nor should it be normalised, but the world extends, and is far greater than “just the west and your way of life”. There are other ways of life. You might not agree with it but there are, and it’s easy for most of you to sit there and criticise and judge but try being born into that, the family, the teachings, the values….its indoctrination in a form…& then try seeing how easy it is to simply severe ties with those you love because you deem it “wrong” - how would you even define wrong after living in that world your entire life? Seems a few of you look down on the Middle East and their way of life because it doesn’t fit into your own thinking about life and what it should be like. Maybe it works for them? Who knows. I certainly don’t but I find the entire “shutdown” a little condescending because you happened to be born into some sort of “privilege” (not even mentioning how all those privileges were obtained in the fist place).
Anyway, these are my thoughts. Maybe I’m detached because we have other problems to deal with here in our beautiful country, South Africa, where some tribes (and all across Africa I might add, also still struggle with gender equality). Maybe footy or United means less to me than you, who knows. And I’m not even condoning the “sportwashing” angle here, but maybe if everyone was a little more “accepting and forgiving” of some of the unknown, we could also show them the beauty of a different way of life and try and garner change to their regimes in that manner? It’s a weird world we’re living in, where a lot of the wests privilege today was borne out of the suffering of others, and whilst you feel like you might have progressed in lfiezc you might also have left others lagging behind even more, but yet some of you seem unable to “make amends” (why should you?) and give others a chance at change, by simply setting a better example, a more inclusive example.
But I guess these thoughts are too idealistic. Because it’s sports. You know, serious life threatening business in the grander scheme of life.
@golden_blunder sorry for posting “politics” in here as I know we’re trying to keep it only sale related. Was my one and only post of its ilk. I’m doing a lucky scout and saying “not open to replies from me” once I’ve aired my thoughts
Literally no one in here can do anything about that, nor do they spend their own time and money going up the shard twice a week for their whole life. Completely different. For the majority of Londoner’s, that kind of investment has done nothing but hoover up real estate and push up housing prices.
Who is actually happy with “them bank rolling our country and supplying our oil” like you’re suggesting
What can people do about who The Glazers sell to though?Literally no one in here can do anything about that, nor do they spend their own time and money going up the shard twice a week for their whole life. Completely different. For the majority of Londoner’s, that kind of investment has done nothing but hoover up real estate and push up housing prices.
Who is actually happy with “them bank rolling our country and supplying our oil” like you’re suggesting
United have had an anchor tied to their ankles for almost two decades and we're still here, still relevant and still the biggest sporting news story in the UK whenever a field mouse runs across the Carrington pitches.
Qatar owners changes nothing in that regard. We still have an actual history unlike the clubs we call "plastic". Liverpool could be bought by Midas tomorrow and nobody would dare call them plastic for the same reason.
Blame FIFA for accepting the bribes, they're the one's that allowed that situation to happen in the first place. No one's going to forget about it, and they shouldn't either, we should continue to discuss it. My point is that if they weren't buying us we wouldn't even be talking about it anymore.
There will come a point in football where most clubs are owned by billionaires or states, this is all the thin end of the wedge and has been since they allowed the City sale.
I'm not accepting it or condoning it, some of the human rights stuff is abhorrent and I really feel for the people involved, but at the same time we've got Tory austerity measures in the UK that have killed more people than the WC ever did. It's all shit but I'd rather just watch some football and I prefer watching football when we win, so that would be nice.
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