Club ownership | Senior management team talk

Just admit it INEOS you haven't got the money to sort out this club, so do the right thing and sell your shares to someone who has got enough finance to do it and the muscle to push the leeching yankees out as well
 
croadyman said:
Just admit it INEOS you haven't got the money to sort out this club, so do the right thing and sell your shares to someone who has got enough finance to do it and the muscle to push the leeching yankees out as well
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I understand the sentiment I really do, but Ineos aren’t the problem here. They’ve injected 230m sterling into infrastructure since they took over. Yes they received equity for that but those funds being ring fenced for infrastructure is the first owner injection we’ve received in over twenty years.

I think we have to take a longer term view of this. The glazers weren’t going to sell at a price even remotely palatable to even nation states, considering the debt burden and operating losses. Primarily tied to under performance on the pitch, bloated costs and a brutal incompetency and profligacy in spending on transfer fees and wages.

I say take a longer term view because Ineos have clearly come in with the remit of making the club a much more attractive investment proposition. This is realistically the only way to get the Glazers to sell up. To get them their price.

So they’ve had to improve the squad, massively reduce payroll, reduce transfer debt, and improve infrastructure all at the same time. Some of those goals are theoretically antithetical to each other. But if you look at our squad two and a half years ago vs now, it’s blatantly obvious how much better it is, all while we’ve got a new state of the art training ground, reduced transfer costs, and improved the wages to revenue ratio. And, we’re back in the champions league. The age profile of the squad is very good too.

I’m not here to defend Ineos. I’m a United fan, not an Ineos fan. But you’d have to be blind not to see how much things have improved under them. Our unwillingness to compete at the very top end of the market is a consequence of over a decade of reckless financial mismanagement from the glazers. Something which will take time to recover from.

Looking at the bigger picture, I don’t see a way forward that doesn’t include significant external investment, and perhaps an outright sale of either all The glazer shares or the club as a whole. But none of that is happening overnight. It will have to happen for the new stadium though. I really don’t think this is about Ineos not having enough cash to pump into the club, because the club really shouldn’t need cash pumped into it; and that’s the entire point. It should be self sustainable and able to invest in its own infrastructure. Until the debt is cleared, that’s not viable, and that won’t happen until all or most of the Glazers sell up. But for a well run club, the size and profile of United, it is entirely possible.

The only quick fix here is a mega wealthy oil state coming in and spunking cash all over everything. Aside from those days seemingly being a thing of the past in this global economy, it’s also not a route to success I have seen many United fans want to take. Me being one of them.
 
simonhch said:
I understand the sentiment I really do, but Ineos aren’t the problem here. They’ve injected 230m sterling into infrastructure since they took over. Yes they received equity for that but those funds being ring fenced for infrastructure is the first owner injection we’ve received in over twenty years.

I think we have to take a longer term view of this. The glazers weren’t going to sell at a price even remotely palatable to even nation states, considering the debt burden and operating losses. Primarily tied to under performance on the pitch, bloated costs and a brutal incompetency and profligacy in spending on transfer fees and wages.

I say take a longer term view because Ineos have clearly come in with the remit of making the club a much more attractive investment proposition. This is realistically the only way to get the Glazers to sell up. To get them their price.

So they’ve had to improve the squad, massively reduce payroll, reduce transfer debt, and improve infrastructure all at the same time. Some of those goals are theoretically antithetical to each other. But if you look at our squad two and a half years ago vs now, it’s blatantly obvious how much better it is, all while we’ve got a new state of the art training ground, reduced transfer costs, and improved the wages to revenue ratio. And, we’re back in the champions league. The age profile of the squad is very good too.

I’m not here to defend Ineos. I’m a United fan, not an Ineos fan. But you’d have to be blind not to see how much things have improved under them. Our unwillingness to compete at the very top end of the market is a consequence of over a decade of reckless financial mismanagement from the glazers. Something which will take time to recover from.

Looking at the bigger picture, I don’t see a way forward that doesn’t include significant external investment, and perhaps an outright sale of either all The glazer shares or the club as a whole. But none of that is happening overnight. It will have to happen for the new stadium though. I really don’t think this is about Ineos not having enough cash to pump into the club, because the club really shouldn’t need cash pumped into it; and that’s the entire point. It should be self sustainable and able to invest in its own infrastructure. Until the debt is cleared, that’s not viable, and that won’t happen until all or most of the Glazers sell up. But for a well run club, the size and profile of United, it is entirely possible.

The only quick fix here is a mega wealthy oil state coming in and spunking cash all over everything. Aside from those days seemingly being a thing of the past in this global economy, it’s also not a route to success I have seen many United fans want to take. Me being one of them.
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OK you make some valid points, so why am I seeing people on here, reddit, Youtubers and channel chat saying we should have waited it out for these leeches to lower price. Are they wrong in thinking that or is their any validity to what they are saying.
 
croadyman said:
OK you make some valid points, so why am I seeing people on here, reddit, Youtubers and channel chat saying we should have waited it out for these leeches to lower price. Are they wrong in thinking that or is their any validity to what they are saying.
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No one can say for certain, but there were other offers that didn’t involve purchasing the whole club. Would guess it’s much more likely they would have taken one of those than knocked a billion or more off their asking price.
 
Roboc7 said:
No one can say for certain, but there were other offers that didn’t involve purchasing the whole club. Would guess it’s much more likely they would have taken one of those than knocked a billion or more off their asking price.
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They would have had to knock off around £3bn to have got more interested parties I reckon but maybe wrong
 
I'd wager they've done the math, decided that we have a squad good enough for a top 5 finish again, and realised that that's all they care about so need for further investment.
 
Blood Mage said:
I'd wager they've done the math, decided we have a squad good enough for a top 5 finish again, and realised that that's all they care about so need for further investment.
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Well top 5 may not get CL so that's a feck up from them
 
clarkydaz said:
There actually were reports at the time they were underwhelmed only 2 parties were in for it, expecting a big bidding war
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Well these leeches should have you know given a more realistic asking price not stupid figure like £8bn
 
Roboc7 said:
No one can say for certain, but there were other offers that didn’t involve purchasing the whole club. Would guess it’s much more likely they would have taken one of those than knocked a billion or more off their asking price.
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Indeed, I believe there were offers from institutional investors who would have provided alternatives like structured debt financing that would have given a short term cash boost at the expense of more long term debt. They could well have tried to go down that route if they couldn't agree with Ineos (or Sheikh Jassim). All hypothetical and they would have had the same difficulties Ineos had around share types etc so who knows, but I certainly wouldn't say its a given they would just drop their price in response when there were alternatives on the table.
 
Some suggest Ballmer could have been a good owner, however no chance he pays £8bn for club
 
clarkydaz said:
There actually were reports at the time they were underwhelmed only 2 parties were in for it, expecting a big bidding war
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I would imagine they were. And treating those 2 parties as full sale buyers was a stretch as one wasn't interested in buying the entire club and the other's funding position was somewhat dubious. Had their been genuine interest in a full sale from multiple parties, those 2 wouldn't have been encouraged for as long as they had.
 
Blood Mage said:
I'd wager they've done the math, decided that we have a squad good enough for a top 5 finish again, and realised that that's all they care about so need for further investment.
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I’d wager they’ve brought in the two most immediately critical signings to ensure we don’t get our pants pulled down over fees, and are now biding their time over other top targets to see how market movements affect costs and viability. There will be back up options ready to be activated. I’d wager we’ll bring in 2-3 more before the window is out, and I think these will be more of the sensible, long term strategic signings we have mostly seen from them. We made our biggest signing late in the window last season, I see no reason to draw any conclusions just yet. If we finish the window with just these two, I would say it was extremely unambitious, but by the same token I’m not in the camp of needing to pay 100m+ for pretty much any body.

I wouldn’t have signed Fernandes, Tonali, Guimaraes, Diomande, Anderson, Rogers, Barcola or Bouaddi for anything like the fees paid or being mooted. Either because they are grotesquely overpriced or because it would cripple our ability to strengthen elsewhere. Guimaraes is the only one who I’d say is worth the sort of money paid, but 75m on him makes sense for Arsenal, just like 85m for Santos and Tielemans makes sense for us.

Let’s judge the window when it’s closed. Then let’s really judge it when the season is over. I say that because look at Dorgu. 25m, which went from being a sensible punt in most people’s eyes, to a complete waste of money in many’s, to deadwood, back to an extraordinary bargain. Right now he’s a player with enormous upside, still somewhat of an enigma in that no one knows where he’s going to play, but a player who looked sensational under Carrick until he did his hamstring. It’s just hard to judge transfers on face value, you have to wait to see how they blend into the team and what they produce on the pitch. In terms of younger players that assessment might take 2-3 years at least.
 

croadyman said:
Well these leeches should have you know given a more realistic asking price not stupid figure like £8bn
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I am sure they would have accepted that amount if offered, but there is no evidence that they requested it.
There is some evidence to support them accepting a figure in the region of £4.5m to £5m for the club.
 
Redjazz said:
I am sure they would have accepted that amount if offered, but there is no evidence that they requested it.
There is some evidence to support them accepting a figure in the region of £4.5m to £5m for the club.
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is there? i thought the line was the family wanted 1b each, and nobody would go that high
 
clarkydaz said:
is there? i thought the line was the family wanted 1b each, and nobody would go that high
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Because of various transactions since they went public in 2012, the siblings have different shareholdings. No deal will yield then an equal amount.
An equal price per share? Certainly.
The evidence for a price of £4.5m to £5m comes from the review. As guidance, a price of $35.25 per share "would be considered" for all shares in the club.
That valued the equity at around £4.8m.
 
Shunty said:
Disgusting we can’t compete and the only reason we can’t is due to the glazers. We’ve been far too tolerant of the glazers and every other club is happy we’ve been handicapped. Only when they are gone will we ever flourish.
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Without a doubt. The Glazers have handicapped us so much. Without them, we’d won at least another title or two.
 
thisisnottaken1 said:
Without a doubt. The Glazers have handicapped us so much. Without them, we’d won at least another title or two.
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Without them we'd have replaced Ronaldo with Benzema or Robben or something like that and probably won another CL or two before the great man retired. We'd have kept the stadium and facilities ticking over and so much more. The glazers and their debt riddled takeover was the absolute worst situation we could have found ourselves in. Vultures.
 
Ali Dia said:
Without them we'd have replaced Ronaldo with Benzema or Robben or something like that and probably won another CL or two before the great man retired. We'd have kept the stadium and facilities ticking over and so much more. The glazers and their debt riddled takeover was the absolute worst situation we could have found ourselves in. Vultures.
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Well said. We wouldn’t be viewed as a laughing stock. And kids these days would actually want to support us. Apparently some Bucs fans view them positively as well, which just rubs salt in our wounds.
 
Redjazz said:
Because of various transactions since they went public in 2012, the siblings have different shareholdings. No deal will yield then an equal amount.
An equal price per share? Certainly.
The evidence for a price of £4.5m to £5m comes from the review. As guidance, a price of $35.25 per share "would be considered" for all shares in the club.
That valued the equity at around £4.8m.
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Damn it, we might have got more interested parties if they were actually willing to sell for around the £5bn mark. Unfortunately we kept hearing much higher figures so we got fake sheikh and minority INEOS as only people at table
 
thisisnottaken1 said:
Without a doubt. The Glazers have handicapped us so much. Without them, we’d won at least another title or two.
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Totally agree they have handicapped us. I would say the reason we have not been competitive has been due to them not employing competent football people to make decisions the benefit the success of the first team, as opposed to not allowing money to be spent.
 
gaffs said:
Totally agree they have handicapped us. I would say the reason we have not been competitive has been due to them not employing competent football people to make decisions the benefit the success of the first team, as opposed to not allowing money to be spent.
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Yeah they could easily have employed competent Football people, however they just couldn't be bothered
 
Redjazz said:
Because of various transactions since they went public in 2012, the siblings have different shareholdings. No deal will yield then an equal amount.
An equal price per share? Certainly.
The evidence for a price of £4.5m to £5m comes from the review. As guidance, a price of $35.25 per share "would be considered" for all shares in the club.
That valued the equity at around £4.8m.
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£4.8, as well as inheriting the dept and likely another £1bil just to convince all Glazers to sell.

At that kind of price, we are in the realm of it being the most expensive sports team ever sold. I believe The Lakers were $10bil. They make a profit of around $170 million a year. We are loosing money, thanks in big part to the debt.

Beyond sovereign wealth, there isn't many people with that kind of money. At $7bil, United are a terrible investment.
 
gaffs said:
£4.8, as well as inheriting the dept and likely another £1bil just to convince all Glazers to sell.

At that kind of price, we are in the realm of it being the most expensive sports team ever sold. I believe The Lakers were $10bil. They make a profit of around $170 million a year. We are loosing money, thanks in big part to the debt.

Beyond sovereign wealth, there isn't many people with that kind of money. At $7bil, United are a terrible investment.
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Yeah only other options that becoming state nations plaything is hoping for tech giant to get involved. Unfortunately I don't think any of the US sports owners have the required financial muscle to buy.
 
croadyman said:
Yeah only other options that becoming state nations plaything is hoping for tech giant to get involved. Unfortunately I don't think any of the US sports owners have the required financial muscle to buy.
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It's not happening. Buyers were invited to come to the table 3 or 4 years ago and beyond Jassim (if that was ever real) there wasn't anyone else.

The price is to high. When Chelsea sold, there was a ton of interest. £2.5 for Chelsea was realistic.

Yes, the United prestige and heritage matters, but it doesn't justify 2.5x the value of Chelsea.

I think even The Gulf states have lost interest. They have seen Saudis investments in LIV Golf and Newcastle have done little to nothing to improve their reputation or standing.
 
gaffs said:
It's not happening. Buyers were invited to come to the table 3 or 4 years ago and beyond Jassim (if that was ever real) there wasn't anyone else.

The price is to high. When Chelsea sold, there was a ton of interest. £2.5 for Chelsea was realistic.

Yes, the United prestige and heritage matters, but it doesn't justify 2.5x the value of Chelsea.

I think even The Gulf states have lost interest. They have seen Saudis investments in LIV Golf and Newcastle have done little to nothing to improve their reputation or standing.
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So basically we will never get rid of this leeching scum
 
According to the valuation and current state of affairs options are A) slow but steady stagnation and decline, B) sugar daddy, C) vulture fund, D) to go into administration.

A continuous period of good management could be enough if not for the debt, which won't go away due to the Glazers. So it all starts and ends with them.
 
Krakenzero said:
According to the valuation and current state of affairs options are A) slow but steady stagnation and decline, B) sugar daddy, C) vulture fund, D) to go into administration.

A continuous period of good management could be enough if not for the debt, which won't go away due to the Glazers. So it all starts and ends with them.
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There's no way that D could ever happen particularly with the revenue new stadium would bring in
 
croadyman said:
There's no way that D could ever happen particularly with the revenue new stadium would bring in
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Unpayable debt is what gets you there. Which is exactly what the new stadium would need, years before it generates any revenue.
 
Krakenzero said:
According to the valuation and current state of affairs options are A) slow but steady stagnation and decline, B) sugar daddy, C) vulture fund, D) to go into administration.

A continuous period of good management could be enough if not for the debt, which won't go away due to the Glazers. So it all starts and ends with them.
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A and D sound like the most likely.
 
Surely at some point the FA or the government need to get involved to kick glazers out on grounds of gross mismanagement, predatory practices and running an historic institution into the ground. Most other English clubs would have folded by now under such management.
 
JJ12 said:
Quite the opposite. Recruitment has been smart while recovering from the previous regimes shambles. Much better team than they inherited, while refurbishing Carrington. Smart investment in youth players also.

People think we are going to sell Zirkzee who's scored about 5 goals in 2 years. Another mistake signing from previous. Vitek sale was as good as we could expect.

We still need to sign players this summer and I expect a minimum of another 2, we'll see.
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Zirkzee was bought by ineos
 
Dr. StrangeHate said:
Surely at some point the FA or the government need to get involved to kick glazers out on grounds of gross mismanagement, predatory practices and running an historic institution into the ground. Most other English clubs would have folded by now under such management.
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Yeah how on earth they allowed this to happen in the first place was totally diabolical. Would have been stopped at source if it was a Real or Barca without doubt
 
croadyman said:
Yeah how on earth they allowed this to happen in the first place was totally diabolical. Would have been stopped at source if it was a Real or Barca without doubt
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What made it worse is only a few years earlier the govt did step in to stop the club being taken over by Sky, because of competition laws and a backlash from fans and politicians. Not sure what changed by 2005 that the same Labour govt decided to green light the Glazers buying the club but it does make you wonder how differently things could've been had Murdoch's Sky been allowed to buy the club.
 
croadyman said:
Yeah how on earth they allowed this to happen in the first place was totally diabolical. Would have been stopped at source if it was a Real or Barca without doubt
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Legally, it can't happen at Real Madrid or Barca because of how the club's were set up. And even if it was an option, the membership/fans could presumably vote against it.

Ultimately, it was always a risk for United once the club went public in 1991.

The fans should have been more organised and bought shares when they were affordable but a lot were on a (literal) comedown after the Cup Winners Cup and then many were distracted by the actual football until Murdoch tried in 1998.

In the few years between that and the Rock of Gibraltar fiasco (which ultimately lead to the Glazer takeover) shares became very expensive.

There should have been rules in place to stop it but the FA just kept seeing £££ signs from all the TV deals to care about who was actually running the clubs.
 
maximus419 said:
What made it worse is only a few years earlier the govt did step in to stop the club being taken over by Sky, because of competition laws and a backlash from fans and politicians. Not sure what changed by 2005 that the same Labour govt decided to green light the Glazers buying the club but it does make you wonder how differently things could've been had Murdoch's Sky been allowed to buy the club.
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Always considered the same thing. It would have been great for us initially but probably turned the Premier League into the SPL.

That's ignoring Murdoch's various scandals which would have presumably impacted us eventually.
 
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