Lebowski
Full Member
This is very well put.Ok one more post and then really I'm done. Please can someone take over the mantle of this as this is just wasting my time.
This is just... what can I say? Selling shares will raise capital. But it clearly says in that 2012 prospectus, the net proceeds are going to pay off debt, debt that was originally accrued as part of the acquisition of the club. You are selling a stake in the club to essentially finance the takeover of the club via debt. How can anyone not understand why fans would have a problem with that? It's a loss for the club, it's money down the drain on interest, the club essentially being forced to buy itself back. I don't give a flying feck what you think any accountant would make of that.
Again you seem to be missing the point that debt was saddled onto the club, in order to buy the club in the first place. This is definitely 'unnecessary debt', unless and only unless you are the parasites who need that debt in order to gain control of the asset. So yes the club is poorer, because the club revenues, including selling equity, have to service that debt. This is actually making me pissed off now, having to spell this out time and time again, it is not difficult.
It's actually not common for a football club to be bought with PIK loans, or leveraged to the extent that the Man Utd takeover was, hence the pages and pages of articles about it at the time and the uproar from the fanbase. With better rules from FIFA or the premier league it simply shouldn't have been allowed as the Glazers wouldn't pass the fit and proper owner test. Hedge funds and private equity might get away with it in the corporate sector where their customers only care about their experience with that brand, when it's a football club it is a totally different scenario. You can do it sure, it's legal, but don't think for a fecking minute there won't and shouldn't be huge protests from the fanbase.
Oh wowwww, they used a teeny bit of the debt for a transfer or two. High fives everybody! Aren't we lucky, we got a new player as part of the debt! That is some patronising sh*t right there so wd for that.
The fact remains no matter how you try and spin it. The club was saddled with the debt of its own takeover which made it comparatively poorer than it would have been without the takeover. It is being used in the same way hedge funds use assets, to be sweated for all it is worth, as a cash cow. Nothing you say will change this. Saying we should be glad it's the Glazers and not other owners is the same as saying "well it sure sucks to have HIV, but I'm sure as sh*t glad it ain't meningitis!".
With that I'm really done. I don't like being offensive, but you are either a) dumb b) a shill or c) some kind of odd cheerleader for 'casino capitalism'. Whatever it is this is my last post replying to you. Life is really too short.
I will probably get round to replying in more detail to the original poster's response to this, but what you've said is spot on and doesn't really need much expanding on.
The club was saddled with debt for the first time in almost a hundred years. Debt which was completely uneeded which was used to fund a completely unwanted hostile takeover. Debt which threatened the club's very survival at some stages and a takeover which has sewn animosity and division amongst our fanbase and has led us to the awful state that the football club finds itself in today.
Yet we still have some apologists who support this model of ownership and expect us to be grateful when the owners turn some of the debt into equity via a stock market offering and allow the club to spend some of the money it is making (from fans) on transfers and wages.