I don't think partial fan ownership is necessarily a good thing. There are plenty of examples of good business people making right cock-ups of football club ownership due in no small part to inability to delegate to more capable people on the football management side, and that's probably more likely to happen if fans are amongst the owners. One thing you can't fault the Glazers on is in leaving football management to the football management, and focusing more on the commercial side. They have a clue about how to run sports businesses.
The opportunism of MUST during Rooneygate.
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Fergie's not going to come out and say that if he doesn't think it's in the best interested of the club. Also, of course, at the end of the day, the Glazers are his employers.
I thought it was really telling that he priased the fans after the Bursa game when they were singing all the anti-Glazer stuff (as well as the pro Fergie stuff).
Pre 2005 we had the ability to buy top, top players, even with much lower income. Even when the likes of Real, Blackburn, feck me, even Newcastle briefly, were flexing their financial muscles. And even when Abramovitch came on the scene, we were able to buy Rooney (albeit for a ridiculous amount of money at the time).
We don't have the same freedom now as we did under the PLC (or before). The PLC wasn't perfect by any stretch, but the pressures to reduce costs were not as great as they are now due to the debt. That much is obvious.
Apart from 1989 of course.
Sinch, 1) I dont think the fans would ever have a big enough stake to be able to really interfere and 2) Having seen a lot of other clubs at home and abroad attempt this or something similar on various scales, we would have the advantage of seeing what works and what doesnt.
I agree that anything that basically took a cross section of fans like you see on here and gave them a vote each on important matters affecting the club, we would probably be playing tiddliwinks in the third division within a couple of months. But I dont think it would pan out that way.
But yes, maybe you are right that Manchester United is lucky Shareholders United wasnt more successful in its aim back when it was McManus and Magnier. If enough fans had invested a tenner or £100 each and we had built up a significant stake, as I so hoped at the time. Perhaps that wouldnt have been such a great thing. We will never know.
I agree that anything that basically took a cross section of fans like you see on here and gave them a vote each on important matters affecting the club, we would probably be playing tiddliwinks in the third division within a couple of months. But I dont think it would pan out that way.
But yes, maybe you are right that Manchester United is lucky Shareholders United wasnt more successful in its aim back when it was McManus and Magnier. If enough fans had invested a tenner or £100 each and we had built up a significant stake, as I so hoped at the time. Perhaps that wouldnt have been such a great thing. We will never know.
1. There's a difference between fan ownership and a club run by the fans.
2. There's plenty of examples of good fan owned clubs - look at Bayern Munich - highest commercial revenue in the world and incredibly low ticket prices..
How many owners do "interfere" with footballing matters? How many owners in the modern day go out and buy players without speaking to the manager, or tell the manager how they want the team to play? Very very few - Romamov being one example.
Owners typically interfere only so far as they place budget restrictions on managers (and ALL owners do that to some extent) or when they sack the manager.
Of course, although my suspicion is that the days of highly leveraged buy-outs of football clubs are coming to an end after the Liverpool fiasco.
The fan groups have always said they would only support a bid to buy the club if it was placed into a better position than it was now (most importantly, less debt and more communication with the fans). One reason why it is important to keep up the pressure on the Glazers is as a warning to potential future buyers - if you want to enjoy your purchase and not have to firefight on a weekly basis, you have to treat the club and the fans with a modicum of respect.
Re: Why MUST haven't set out an ideal plan for fan ownership - I suspect because there are many different possible structures, all of which are better than the current situation. My own view is that the German model is actually better than the Barca model (and certainly the Madrid model which can turn into a bit of a circus). The reason they didn't set out exactly how it was going to work under the Red Knights was from my understanding simply because they didn't get that far down the line. But it was clear that they wouldn't have backed a take-over by them that didn't give the fans an opportunity to 'buy back' a stake in the club at a preferential rate.
MUST have embraced the RK, and yet refused to tell us anything about them and their bid (aside from 'mini-Mansours', and 'trust us'), and yet preached about how more communication with the fans is a requirement.
Seems a bit hypocritical.
Sorry ralphie but you continue to make things up to support your argument.
The only "top, top player" that I can remember us buying was Veron. That really was one for the transfer muppets to get orgasmic about at the time.
Yes, we have always bought high quality players but I think you're looking back with the red-tinted specs a bit here.
In 2001 Real Madrid signed Zidane for 75million (euros) - at the time, I think that was in the region of £45million. Now, that is a top, top player going for a fee that we have never even come close to matching to this day - almost ten years on.
But this is where you are coming from with your argument, that we should be buying the "Zidane's" of today because that's what we used to do. You're wrong.
You're also forgetting the fact that our most expensive transfer came during the Glazer era (Berbatov).
As for the pressures to reduce costs being less under the PLC, I don't know where you're coming from to be honest.
The wage bill under the PLC was £80m at its peak. Turnover was around £150m at its peak.
The wage bill is now £130m and the turnover £285m.
That means that, all else being equal, we should have £85m more to play with under the Glazers than we did before. This being the case, the debt is having very little effect on us in terms of us being under pressure to cut costs at the expense of a competitive squad.
You're basically doing what MUST do in a lot of their arguments - just looking for the anti-Glazer angle and going with it without regard for where it leaves other arguments (in a state of contradiction mostly).
Again, I point you to something I was saying a few days ago - look at where we were in the league for the last couple of years of the PLC - miles behind. Chelsea were buying all the players and we were reduced to buying such "top, top players" such as Djemba Djemba, Bellion and Kleberson.
ffs give over with stating the obvious
Very much so. I agree. So again, How does pressuring the Glazers into spending money help at all?
How is claiming the Glazers have finally "caved in" due to public pressure over this a good thing? At all?
How is complaining about how we're not competing with the top brass in the transfer market when it's generally accepted we haven't got the money helpful to our situation? How is that on message?
The message is, "We haven't got any money". So the best thing for the club is to be frugal in our current circumstances, no?
....And yet a huge load of complete spastics are whinging on about how the Glazers should be spending money (which would be bad for our finances surely?) about how it's a good thing Rooney has forced them into doing this (when it's bad for our finances surely?) and how if we aren't competiting at the very top of the league for just one season it's a travesty
How is anything said/done regarding this Rooney issue, let alone the sudden decision to use not playing particularly well so far this season as an actual argument, of any help to this cause what so ever?
I've said before that I'd be willing to go a few seasons without winning the League if it meant our club could become more stable financially...Yet instead some - and now by the looks of it, MUST - seem to be going out of their way to ensure money is spent, by complaining about how it isn't being, and how we aren't being ambitious enough, which is very short sighted IMO and directly worsening our financial position, presuming of course it's in the dire straights MUST and their ilk have been telling us it is...I don't understand this dual, conflicting approach.
You either say we haven't got the money, therefore we should be responsible. Or you say we have got the money, therefore we should spend it. You can't say both.
It's therefore worrying me that there is no approach, and there is no message, it's just "we'll use anything and everything to get these people out...even if it means engineering it ourselves, or trying to make United's situation worse in the process"...
I'd like someone to reassure me this isn't the case. That's all really.
This is how MUST come across to me.
The problem is, Mockney, you are arguing from the side of MUST but arguing against them at the same time. United are NOT in a state of financial disarray. We remain a very well run club. We remain one of the best clubs in the World. We remain competitive at the very highest level.
What MUST, ralphie and others would have you believe was that prior to the Glazers, we would win the Premier League and the Champions League every season and last season was a complete abomination by our pre-2005 standards. It's just plain wrong.
I don't think Mockney is arguing any such thing.
Without putting words in his mouth, I think he's arguing that the Glazers are by definition bad because of the stupid pointless indebtedness, but that MUST haven't exactly covered themselves in glory.
Well, he started his post with "Very much so, I agree" in response to ralphie's
None of which is anywhere close to the truth.
So, Mockney is taking that on board as being "the truth of the situation" and then arguing that if that IS the truth then why is being frugal a bad thing?
I don't accept what ralphie is saying, any of it. It does not represent the reality of the situation (and I explained why in a post further up).
EDIT: In general, I agree with what Mockney is saying but I think he's coming from the basis of "yes, we ARE fecked" which is not correct.
I'm anti-Glazer for the record. The debt is bad for the club. Of course it is. The "Very much so" was in agreement with ralphie's last paragraph, not the whole thing..I was basically following on as if it was an actual conversation...However...
That's what's concerning me because it paints MUST as an organisation that have no real position and no bother over whether their position is right or not, merely a myopic, obsessive desire to get rid of the Glazers using any old reason. Some may say that's all the matters, but if you aren't sold on whether your own reasons are right or not, you aren't in the best place to know whether the actual outcome is either.
And that affects my desire to want to be/remain a member of it. ...Basically.
Well yes.. this is my point. Why are MUST changing their argument to one that only works if you don't buy what they've been saying for the last few years?
That's what's concerning me because it paints MUST as an organisation that have no real position and no bother over whether their position is right or not, merely a myopic, obsessive desire to get rid of the Glazers using any old reason. Some may say that's all the matters, but if you aren't sold on whether your own reasons are right or not, you aren't in the best place to know whether the actual outcome is either.
And that affects my desire to want to be/remain a member of it. ...Basically.
Well, at last people are starting to wake up to the pointlessness of MUST. We're getting somewhere. Great. That they don't actually have a stance other than "anti-Glazer" and will twist their argument to suit that based on the expediency of the moment should tell you all you need to know about their pointlessness.
Something ralphie said earlier in the thread said it all to me:-
That is my other problem - they lack any kind of PLAN.ralphie88 said:
I have said all along that MUST shouldn't just be saying why the current ownership is bad, they should tell us why their alternative is better.
They clearly can't do this because they don't actually have an alternative.
MUST have been around for how long now? And they still haven't got a proper plan in place?
All they are doing is saying, "The current owners are shit, get rid of them."
The rest of the plan just seems to be something they hope to pluck out of the debris that such action would leave behind.
As for the debt being bad for United, this is an issue discussed at length in the relevant thread but, in a nutshell, yes, it is impossible to argue that £45m going out in interest is in any way good. It is impossible to see that and not think of Gareth Bale running down the left wing instead.
However, the club was always going to be bought out and whoever bought it was going to use borrowing of some sort (Manchester United seems to have been too expensive even for our favourite billionaires to get involved with).
What the Glazers have been doing, however, is increasing revenues wherever they can in order to render the debt less harmful.
Turnover pre-takeover was £150m, today it is £285m. The argument is that this would have happened anyway and anyone could have done that.
The reality is - not necessarily. It is by no means guaranteed. We were slipping behind at the time the Glazers took over.
The other thing is, as an example of a contradiction in the MUST argument that a significant portion of this increase is as a result of the ticket prices increases - something which, it is argued, no other owner except the Glazers would have done.
Round and round the mulberry bush
Sums it up. I still pop in to read but it's a discussion that is fast going nowhere.
That pretty much sums MUST up too.
However, I think we have established some key points:-
1) MUST have no consistent argument and will take whatever happens at United and spin it in a way that is critical of the Glazers - even when they contradict something that they have said previously.
2) People are waking up to this fact and are losing faith in MUST.
3) The club is in debt. Welcome to 2005.
4) Green and Gold doesnt look anywhere near as good as Red.
I think you're spot on there to be honest and I do wonder where MUST will be in a year, 3 years and 5 years.
I'm going to make a predicition that the Glazers will still own the club and be very successful despite the fact that they will have used alot of money to reduce their debts. MUST will still be complaining about how much money the Glazers have taken out.
This does however lead me to a scenario I would like the Pro-MUST parties to consider, how would you feel if...
In 10 years time, the Glazers are still in charge.
The team has remained competetive, lets go on our average of the last 20 years, we win 5 League Titles, 1 Champions League Title, 3 Carling Cups and an FA Cup.
We have managed to buy the odd marquee player a la Berbatov, Rooney, Veron in the past and kept spending at our average rate of around £25m net each year.
The Glazers have managed to increase our profits year upon year as they have been doing for the last 5 years.
But they have spent a large portion of it on paying off interest on the debt and they started the inevitable of paying off large chunks of the debt.
The ticket prices keep increasing in the same sort of arc they are now.
So in summary, we are successful on the field and are raking it in off the field which is somewhat at our expense as supporters but the Glazers have spent a large amount of money paying off interest and paying off the debt. This does however leave them in a position where their debt is reduced significantly which in turn has started to free up the profits making our club, or the Glazers, somewhat rich again.
To summarise the summary (
) In ten years, we have been successful and our debt has been reduced but this has come at a cost of taking profits away from the club.Just off the top of my head in my time watching United:
Birtles
Robson
Pallister
Keane
Cole
Veron
Rooney
All players who were record buys or right at the top of what British teams were paying at the time.
We were the big spenders. We're not anymore.
To summarise the summary of the summary, its all good.I think you're spot on there to be honest and I do wonder where MUST will be in a year, 3 years and 5 years.
I'm going to make a predicition that the Glazers will still own the club and be very successful despite the fact that they will have used alot of money to reduce their debts. MUST will still be complaining about how much money the Glazers have taken out.
This does however lead me to a scenario I would like the Pro-MUST parties to consider, how would you feel if...
In 10 years time, the Glazers are still in charge.
The team has remained competetive, lets go on our average of the last 20 years, we win 5 League Titles, 1 Champions League Title, 3 Carling Cups and an FA Cup.
We have managed to buy the odd marquee player a la Berbatov, Rooney, Veron in the past and kept spending at our average rate of around £25m net each year.
The Glazers have managed to increase our profits year upon year as they have been doing for the last 5 years.
But they have spent a large portion of it on paying off interest on the debt and they started the inevitable of paying off large chunks of the debt.
The ticket prices keep increasing in the same sort of arc they are now.
So in summary, we are successful on the field and are raking it in off the field which is somewhat at our expense as supporters but the Glazers have spent a large amount of money paying off interest and paying off the debt. This does however leave them in a position where their debt is reduced significantly which in turn has started to free up the profits making our club, or the Glazers, somewhat rich again.
To summarise the summary (
I would be happy with that and would admit that my fears about Glazer had been misplaced.
We've got to remember that Fergie will be long gone in 10 years time (
) which makes it incredibly fecking unlikely that we'll maintain our recent run of success whilst continuing our recent net spend. Something's got to give.Yeah, it doesnt look like a likely scenario, does it? But the question was how would i feel in that situation and the answer is i would be happy.We've got to remember that Fergie will be long gone in 10 years time (
You never know, maybe SAF will keep working well into his 70s, to great effect.
I just noticed this message in my inbox which shows that MUST are aware that certain sections of our fans have reacted badly to the way the situation has been handled:
Rooney saga - MUST position
We will be issuing an update to MUST's position on the Rooney saga in due course. There has been a certain degree of misrepresentation and misinterpretation (some of it intentional one suspects) of MUST's position on forums etc. Despite huge media interest in creating a war between Fergie and Rooney we were never going to get drawn directly into that - there can be only one winner anyway - it has to be The Boss every time and we certainly made our support for the manager clear at every opportunity.
We don't normally comment on player matters but we did have some inside information on the situation which affected the position we took in this case. That will come out in due course.
However suffice to say at this stage that we do believe it was and is essential to maintain the pressure on the Glazers not just to make resources available for squad investment but as importantly to stop them taking even more money out of the club - in particular £95m in dividends on top of the interest. In the meantime you may be interested to read MUST's response to press here:
http://ping.fm/K4qoJ
The fact that resources were made available to allow a contract agreement to be reached with which, crucially, Fergie was happy (and City were very unhappy!) is a victory in any United fans book. No-one is particularly happy at the level of players pay (except the players and their agents!) but let's be realistic here if the money had not gone to Rooney the Glazers would hardly have refunded it to supporters or given it to charity. However it may have been an even more significant victory for the long term future of the club if it has prevented the Glazers from taking their dividends and indeed forced them into a public commitment to invest in the squad. So it looks like a win-win situation in that respect. We shall see - but we cannot afford to reduce the pressure for one moment (see anti-Glazer march below).
We will be issuing an update to MUST's position on the Rooney saga in due course. There has been a certain degree of misrepresentation and misinterpretation (some of it intentional one suspects) of MUST's position on forums etc. Despite huge media interest in creating a war between Fergie and Rooney we were never going to get drawn directly into that - there can be only one winner anyway - it has to be The Boss every time and we certainly made our support for the manager clear at every opportunity.
We don't normally comment on player matters but we did have some inside information on the situation which affected the position we took in this case. That will come out in due course.
However suffice to say at this stage that we do believe it was and is essential to maintain the pressure on the Glazers not just to make resources available for squad investment but as importantly to stop them taking even more money out of the club - in particular £95m in dividends on top of the interest. In the meantime you may be interested to read MUST's response to press here:
http://ping.fm/K4qoJ
The fact that resources were made available to allow a contract agreement to be reached with which, crucially, Fergie was happy (and City were very unhappy!) is a victory in any United fans book. No-one is particularly happy at the level of players pay (except the players and their agents!) but let's be realistic here if the money had not gone to Rooney the Glazers would hardly have refunded it to supporters or given it to charity. However it may have been an even more significant victory for the long term future of the club if it has prevented the Glazers from taking their dividends and indeed forced them into a public commitment to invest in the squad. So it looks like a win-win situation in that respect. We shall see - but we cannot afford to reduce the pressure for one moment (see anti-Glazer march below).
I don't think you're really getting what I mean here. Were any of those (with the exception of Veron) REALLY the "top, top players" in the world at the time?
Don't get me wrong about what I am saying here, they were (almost) all fine players but they are classic "United buys" to me - most of them bought from other English clubs and not troubling our friends in Spain, Italy and Germany too much.
You have probably missed a trick there because you haven't included the likes of Stam and RVN and I missed these out because I thought that these were classic United buys too - both came from PSV Eindhoven and whilst immense players, weren't amongst the "sexy" names in the world when we bought them.
Forget the British record, you seemed to be arguing that we should be at the world record point with all of our transfers because "that's how it used to be".
If we're just going to compare English teams well, fine. Look at the table for the last four years. Whoever we have bought and whatever the price has been it has been plenty good enough all in all.
Three PLs and a 2nd by a point backs this up.
Personally, I think you're barking up the wrong tree with this argument ralphie - you're seeing something that isn't there and never was.
Strange that you remember Gary Birtles yet you cant remember Dimitar Berbatov who was a British transfer record just 2 years ago!
Perhaps it is selective memory loss?
Anyway this thread is about MUST response to the Rooney situation so I cant be arsed to go round in circles on stuff we have covered several times before !
So they're bashing us for pointing out what they've done and said?
Now will come the new spin line in which all who question MUST or their actions in any way are painted as the mustache twirling villains of the piece...
Yeah I got that.
I predict they will still take their pound of flesh. If the club is going to spend more money on players and wages it will come come out of the clubs' coffers after that.
I predict they will still take their pound of flesh. If the club is going to spend more money on players and wages it will come come out of the clubs' coffers after that.
Indeed.
Having had very open and frank email conversations on the matter with MUST representatives, I could have told you last week that they aren't the aloof despots that some make them out to be...
...oh hang on, I did!
I think it is positive that MUST at least acknowledge that many fans have reacted badly to their comments on the Rooney situation - hopefully they wont make the same mistakes again.
I kind of got the impression they are bashing those who intentionally misrepresent them.
It did say "some of it", which implies that most of it they would see as unintentional misunderstanding.
But feel free to try and spin this latest statement as fits your agenda (and feel free to then accuse them of spinning without even seeing the irony).
Damn... there was a half decent joke in there until he started acutally playing well this season.
Except that their statement is a blatant backtrack that bashes those who dared to point out they are often engaged in what is charitably called an "extension of the truth" (quoth fredthered).Indeed.
Having had very open and frank email conversations on the matter with MUST representatives, I could have told you last week that they aren't the aloof despots that some make them out to be...
...oh hang on, I did!
I don't have an agenda, except to hope that MUST will be honest with supporters, and not blindly follow them.
I'm sick of being accused of having one merely because I'm not a sheep, and am suspicious of people who say "just trust me".
Others will disagree, and carry their torch no matter what they do or say.
Except that there is no back-track (and no bashing of anybody other than the Glazers, actually, but I'll ignore that).
Can you point out which points they have changed their mind on?
Did you even bother read their original statement?
If you did you'll know that it hardly actually comments on the Rooney situation (as it was at the time), and just uses it as a springboard for MUST's usual points, on which they remain totally consistent.
You may not agree with their points, or the monotony with which they rell them out given any opportunity, but they are consistent.
This is true of lots of people in here... the likes of Mockney and even Rood have made clear why they no longer feel able to support MUST themselves, without turning it into a personal crusade against them.
But then there's those who feel they have been personally wronged by MUST, and will jump on every word they say to point out imagined deceit and malice.
Whatever you think of the content of their previous statements, this latest one shows that they do take into account feeback on what they say. It is a calrification of their position, but it isn't an attack on anybody (other thant he Glazers). You'd have to be pretty paranoid to think that.
Comparing the Glazers to when we were a PLC, here's an article I dug up from 2003:
Since the Glazers came in, they have doubled that profit to £100m, not including the £80m from Ronaldo remember as this was put into the tax free side kitty, and while they did take a one off £70m out of this for the bond issue this year, that still leaves the profits almost double of what was left when the shareholders took their cut before the Glazers brought their global sports brand business blueprint in.
You also have to ask what sort of special dividend would the shareholders have expected had we sold Ronaldo for £80m if they were still here? You have MUST insisting that money should be fully invested back into the team as that's obviously what would have happened when we had no debt, but the Beckham transfer shows this is definately not the case, these shareholders were no different to the Glazers, they had shares to make money and expected higher payouts the better the club was doing financially.
Again, I would like to reiterate that I am not a Glazer supporter, I'm just a realist and not an idealist like they seem to be at MUST.
Now firstly, I will admit that £14m a year might does seem trivial nowadays, but I should remind you that that was around half of our pre transfer profits of around £32m (which were set to rise 40% to £44m).
Since the Glazers came in, they have doubled that profit to £100m, not including the £80m from Ronaldo remember as this was put into the tax free side kitty, and while they did take a one off £70m out of this for the bond issue this year, that still leaves the profits almost double of what was left when the shareholders took their cut before the Glazers brought their global sports brand business blueprint in.
You also have to ask what sort of special dividend would the shareholders have expected had we sold Ronaldo for £80m if they were still here? You have MUST insisting that money should be fully invested back into the team as that's obviously what would have happened when we had no debt, but the Beckham transfer shows this is definately not the case, these shareholders were no different to the Glazers, they had shares to make money and expected higher payouts the better the club was doing financially.
Again, I would like to reiterate that I am not a Glazer supporter, I'm just a realist and not an idealist like they seem to be at MUST.
You're so disingenuous it is unreal. Sad, too.
To be fair, that message is consistent with something they are trying to achieve and that is to throw spanners in the works of the Glazers business plan (whether this is a good idea or not depends on which side of the fence you're on - personally, I think it's bloody stupid but that's me).
The idea is that we can put so much pressure on the Glazers that they will be pressured into buying players and not take out the dividends that most people believe they need in order to pay off their PIKs and fully complete their grip of their ownership of Manchester United.
That part is consistent.
It is all about putting pressure on the Glazers so that it all goes tits up and then MUST can say, "Told you so!" and run in with the Red Knights and buy United for a song.
What is unfair though is to suggest that without this pressure, the Glazers wouldn't have invested in the squad and that it is needed in order for them to invest in the squad. That is merely MUST justifying their own existence in a "Look what good we have done here. You can thank us for Rooney staying." kind of way.
What it doesn' acknowledge is that the wage bill has increased 60+% in the last five years and many players have had improved contracts offered to them in that time (Vidic was another in recent months and I believe talks are about to start to get Evra sorted next).
The Glazers are very much aware that a strong squad is necessary for them to achieve their financial aims - it's in the bloody Bond prospectus!
The idea is that we can put so much pressure on the Glazers that they will be pressured into buying players and not take out the dividends that most people believe they need in order to pay off their PIKs and fully complete their grip of their ownership of Manchester United.
That part is consistent.
It is all about putting pressure on the Glazers so that it all goes tits up and then MUST can say, "Told you so!" and run in with the Red Knights and buy United for a song.
What is unfair though is to suggest that without this pressure, the Glazers wouldn't have invested in the squad and that it is needed in order for them to invest in the squad. That is merely MUST justifying their own existence in a "Look what good we have done here. You can thank us for Rooney staying." kind of way.
What it doesn' acknowledge is that the wage bill has increased 60+% in the last five years and many players have had improved contracts offered to them in that time (Vidic was another in recent months and I believe talks are about to start to get Evra sorted next).
The Glazers are very much aware that a strong squad is necessary for them to achieve their financial aims - it's in the bloody Bond prospectus!