How Manchester United came a cropper on the Rock (8)
‘By 2005 there wasn't any really coherent counter-offer (to the Glazer’s bid),’
Drasdo said. The Glazer pursuit through 2003 had been viewed as
hostile by the United Board. After all, the Company had been debt-free for 13 years. And they had contemplated a plan to avoid this very circumstance.
‘We'd had various approaches from representatives of Qataris and so on, but nobody came forward with a plan that would have been anything other than another takeover by another group that would have excluded the supporters’, says Drazdo, quoted by Robert O'Connor. The boat of United's commercial independence had sailed. Interesting to think how things might have turned out differently, at so many turns in this story.
Despite the lack of a counter-bidder, the takeover that culminated in 2005 was complex and delicate, and needed refined financial expertise to finally clinch the deal. There was a time limit, and one extremely legal complex corporate minefield to navigate.
Woodward - seemingly all on his own - dashed to the rescue of the failing deal at the 11th hour. For ‘pulling (them) out of this hole’ the Glazers will be forever grateful. ‘
Without this thought in place’, O’Connor wrote
, ‘it is impossible to make sense of the last decade at Old Trafford’.
In May 2005, Gardner and his board were
forced to recommend that minority United shareholders accept the
Red Football offer. Over the following month, Gardner and his fellow 'anti-Glazer' shareholders
resigned. At the same time, supporter-shareholders were forced to relinquish their part ownership of the club.
In the new dispensation, Malcolm Glazer’s six children were all invited to sit on the United board. Woodward, recruited from
JP Morgan after he engineered the £500 million of debt that funded their takeover, and rescued the final deal, became (in business terms)
the seventh child.
Now it was time for payback. In the years leading up to
David Gill's departure (and his replacement by Woodward), a carefully choreographed process of change was engineered at Old Trafford, with Woodward effectively becoming the chief executive's shadow. Gill ran the football club, presiding over correspondence with the FA and the Premier League and conducting transfer business, while Woodward took care of Manchester United the business as executive vice-chairman.
In 2007, Woodward was given charge of the commercial and media operations of Manchester United. He was brilliant at nailing down lucrative sponsorship deals with companies around the world. He soon trebled the commercial revenue of the company. Woodward was appointed to the board of directors and named executive vice-chairman in 2012. After the retirement of CEO David Gill the following year, Woodward was promoted to CEO, the top operational role at Old Trafford. Woodward was succeeded by
Richard Arnold as the club's commercial ‘Group’ management director.
As we know, Sir Alex Ferguson stayed on under the new regime up until his resignation in May 2013 (just a few months after the departure of Gill). When the Green and Gold protest (organised by MUST) began, Ferguson had backed the supporters’ right to protest as long as it didn’t affect the team, but he defended the owners as well. As success on the field continued, the protests faded away. Woodward, 'the seventh child' was now firmly in place.
To be fair to the owners, they are straight up about their intentions. To get a sense of the values of today’s board, listen to what they say. ‘Angel Di Maria saw a 12-times increase on Google searches on the day of his transfer from Real Madrid and Falcao saw a 10-times increase in searches compared with the day he signed from Atletico’. That was Ed Woodward’s message to investors, in November, 2014. Neither of these players would work out on the field of play under
Louis Van Gaal, but in commercial terms they fitted the bill to a T. According to Richard Arnold, United see themselves as a ‘mobile-first media organisation, focused on consumable chunks of content fans can engage with on the go’.
Eventually the Glazer approach (if they continue in charge) may clear the debt they conferred on the Football Club. I don't know. It has already been reduced considerably; anyway that question lies beyond the scope of my 'story'.
The exercise of doing this ‘story’ is that I am now convinced that
#WoodwardOut is futile, while the current owners are in place. I have restricted this story to – as best I can – a direct narrative, to sort out in my own head, the sequence of events and turning points.
I have not included the unfolding background story, the change in the culture of football over the quarter century, how other corporate entities, sponsorship and TV changed the character of UK, European and world football. All these are debates for another day. But under Woodward, we have seen the departure (in various circumstances) of Ferguson,
Moyes,
Van Gaal,
Mourinho. Who will be next? And where do we go from here? Who could not feel a pinch of joy on seeing Sojskjaer return to the fold? His smiling face and optimistic outlook will surely buoy the club for a while, regardless of results. But the longer-term outworking of the
Rock of Gibraltar affair is far more difficult to predict.