Alright, since you said you are a finance guy and the club is in great condition - how much do you reckon the club can spend in one summer? Is it realistic that we can sign Haaland in January and then buy Sancho + 2 CMs, 1 CAM and probably 1 LB? Because that is the expectations I see a lot of fans having and I'm almost certain they are all in for a huge disappointment.
I don't understand how there are still Glazer apologists. We are dogshit as a football club right now and our hope is that Ole does a miracle, turning out to be some sort of a genius manager that makes us competitive again.
No club in football can do this and remain compliant with the FFP, so that's never going to be something that's on the table. Not for the price of the talent a club like Manchester United require. The FFP (I'll just relay what it is in case anyone reading this do not know yet - in very broad terms) is in place to ensure that the clubs do not spend more money than they earn within a budget framework. It's there to ensure that football clubs do not go into debt they can not manage, which may threaten the long term survival of the clubs. In short, the clubs needs to be able to carry their fiscal debt within their own budgetary framework. IF clubs go beyond their budgetary framework and attempt to spend outside it, UEFA can, and will sanction the clubs in question - with anything from fines, transfer bans to locking clubs from international competition.
Portsmouth is maybe the best example of a club that spent WELL beyond their means, resulting in the club finally being taken under administration to avoid liquidifcation. The same with Leeds.
But a spending bill of £200m is ABSOLUTELY within the realm of possibilities. You have to remember that MUFC is still earning money, we are very much cash positive and have been forever.
Most importantly, the deals can be structured over installments if the selling club is willing. The willingness often depends a lot on things like credit and the clubs immediate financial needs vs other bids with larger upfront payments. Manchester United of course have excellent credit standing.
But with regards to Glazer apologists.. Listen, I'm not a fan of the Glazers, not so much because they are the owners, but because the club is in massive debt thanks to their takeover. As for the Glazers being willing to let the club spend? well, they have gone above and beyond there for the most part. I am always surprised that fans somehow don't think the managers don't get financial backing.
In the last 10 years, Manchester United and Manchester City are the only clubs who have never posted a bigget net earning than net spend.
MCFC 10 y Net spend: £916 million
MCFC 5 y Net spend: £572m
MUFC 10 y Net spend: £714m
MUFC 5 y Net spend: £416m
THIRD ON THE LIST
Arsenal FC 5y Net spend: £250m
The Manchester clubs spend SO much more on transfers than any other club. Glazers get a lot of sh*t for the debt they put in the club, but they should not be blamed for not making money available, because we are SWIMMING in it. That being said, when the Glazers riddled the club with bank loan debt after their takeover, the annual turnover was somewhere in the £250-270m range. It is now over £600m. Operating revenue has more than doubled in 9 years.
Know what our actual problem is? The players we buy, end up having no re-sale value. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Liverpool, all have players that have been sold for a massvive chunk of money that helps them decrease their net spends. Having a HUGE net spend bill is not an achievement or a symptom of investment, its a symptom of something being inherently wrong if you invest and invest, and your investment ends up being worth almost nothing in terms of re-sale value.
Christiano Ronaldo, Angel Di Maria, Romelu Lukaku. These are the only players the club has ever sold that cost more than £35 million. Yeah we're not a selling club, but we don't get a good return on investment when we need to restructure and need to move on players. We've sold players with a high pricetag after 1-2-3 seasons, and received pennies on the investment because the players have not worked out.
But what is our spending power really? Well we have assets. A lot of assets. MUFC owns a total of £1.6bn in assets, of which about half is "intangible assets" ie. Players. The good news is that the club has more than £300 million pounds in the bank in cash. The good news is that the club is turning a profit, allowing that number to grow.
The challenge is: How much money does the club need to pay upfront for a transfer of a Haaland, a Sancho, or other? We can't afford to be a £100m+ net spend club every single season. Even Manchester City with their financial doping have run out of infinite money and have reduced their spending significantly compared to the previous 3 seasons before 18/19.
This puzzle is why transfers take so long to negotiate, there are a lot of what if considerations to take into account. Paul Pogba is going to be a massive headache going into the summer. Does he stay? Does he leave? Money we get for Pogba can be re-invested into new positions, but which? A lot of things to consider, especially with how young our squad is and emerging or developing players like McTominay, Williams, Greenwood, Rashford, AWB, Garner, Gomes, James. All of these players are under 22 and are still developing talent. Regardless of how long they have already played for the club. Very few talents peak at 22, so there's that to consider. Buying someone displaces someone. This isn't generally a problem, but we're developing talent as part of a rebuild project here. No doubt the staff will take that into consideration.
The club will go for Jadon Sancho, there is no dobut about that. Will they go for Haaland? Maybe. But he won't be sold for £80m, that valuation is too high.
The club can afford another year of a £150m spending bill, depending on what amount of cash if upfront. And another year. Honestly this entirely depends on how the debt is structured. As long as the transfer value don't overshadow our income, or our ability to manage the current transfer payments. The club needs a certain bank balance to be in compliance with their loan terms (I dont know what these are, but its common for banks to demand assets to be in compliance with loans. This is one of the ways equity dillution happens - (financial obligations, capital needs for wages/investments etc). But judging by the clubs debt I doubt its more than £100m. IF this is part of the loan terms.
So depending on how the payments are structured we can probably get both Haaland and Sancho and a midfielder.
A common thing that gets neglected is that when you refer to our "awful" £80m net spend bill this season. One thing that conveniently does not get mentioned is our significant push to land Paulo Dybala and Mario Mandzukic at the end of the transfer window AND Sean Longstaff. The Dybala transfer was valued at Lukakus fee, in this contex £80m (I havent checked so dont arrest me if its £65 or something), + potential add-on for Mandzukic AND our rejected £30m bid for Sean Longstaff.
So in grand total last season, the MUFC brass
tried their very best to spend nearly £180 million pounds in the transfer window. We couldn't get the Dybala deal done, so Lukaku was sold to Inter instead.
I don't really understand why these things go unnoticed or not even unacknowledged, maybe its negativity confirmation bias. But fact of the matter is that the club DID try to spend. We know this because Tier1 reporters like Simon Stone reported on it heavily, so we know the information to be true.
So if OGS says there are funds for the right player available in January, there is funds available in january.