They don't buy players at high costs unless it's going to make them money. And like I said the football side is the bare minimum, it takes more than just the football squad to keep your club up to top tier standard.
Woodward, Glazers....
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
I try to actively avoid any discussion about the Glazer's ownership because I find it very difficult to talk about, the fact that we'll likely be owned by the parasitic cnuts for my entire life just chills me to the bone.
Yeah it would be nice if that money went into the club, it would be great to have owners who only did it for the love of the club and didn't take a profit. But considering the just incredible amounts of money, the club has spent over the past 5+ years we can hardly point towards that and go that's the problem. It clearly isn't we are top or near the top of every expenditure list for football clubs.
It's simply that the money has been generally wasted.
No, they don't back it up if you factor in what the club earns from this supposed strategy: just being in the CL isn't worth that much money.
A club with United's global fan base will generate a lot of money, regardless of what happens on the pitch (not forever, but certainly short term). As such, the Glazers could very plausibly not give a feck about investing in the team for the specific purpose of making challenges (for the biggest trophies) - I have no issue with that general argument.
But the specific argument that they only spend money in order to make sure we qualify for the CL still makes no sense. For two reasons: 1) the guaranteed money from simply being in the CL ain't all that. And 2) the money they've actually spent on transfers and wages simply isn't proportional to the supposed target.
If the strategy has been to spend just enough to make the CL - they're utter idiots. They've spent much more (especially on wages) than what would be statistically necessary in order to achieve this (even in the context of the Premier League, where it is harder to outspend your rivals compared to other major leagues).
So Utd paid 838 + 89 = £927m for the Glazers
I'm no financial expert so my question is hypothetically if the Glazers didn't take over, could we use that money to invest into the club or not ?
This has been more damaging than the lack of investment or the dividend payouts. Whilst its infuriating that they have taken money out of the club objectively speaking we have always known that this is why they bought the club for in the first place and £89m over five years is hardly.
What Joel, Avram and Woodward have done since Fergie retired is just disgraceful. The managerial picks have been awful and the utter shit show in player recruitment has cost us dearly both in terms of money and football progression.
The money we have spent for Van Gaal and Mourinho would have and should have brought in at least one more PL or CL. The failure to build a strong technical team to support the manager has hampered us and so has the reluctance to rectify this issue.
For example, if we get Sancho he will be the third £80m plus signing in our team and that's in addition to AWB, Matic, Bruno and Martial who have all cost the club at least £40m each but we would still find ourselves years away from a title challenge. Imagine what someone like Klopp could achieve with this type of backing and then remember that Woodward failed to get him when the chance to hire him presented itself.
Glazers/Woodward apologists would claim that we wouldn't have garnered the same sponsorship revenue thanks to the latter's work. But in all honesty - yes, we wouldn't be paying off ludicrous amounts of debt, nor would we be used as a cash cow for the Glazers' other ventures.So Utd paid 838 + 89 = £927m for the Glazers
I'm no financial expert so my question is hypothetically if the Glazers didn't take over, could we use that money to invest into the club or not ?
This. We will find it hard to rejoin the elite in this situation still
Sorry, i don't see your argument, Paying 3 of the top 5 fees ever paid by a British club over the past 5 years, giving the biggest contract in premier league history to Sanchez, a net transfer spend and wage bill that is up near the top of any list you care to look at, is only done to make them money? In what way? in terms of that, they are clearly investing heavily in the squad and have done for several years in order to try and make the club successful so they make money?
In terms of none footballing aspects of the club, in terms of glocal marketing, sponsorship deals we are arguably the best run club in the world. In terms of training academies, we are up there, when each new manager that has come in has been allowed to spend a lot to change Carrington to suit their training methods. The only aspect of the none footballing side of things that have been neglected is Old Trafford which clearly needs some investment and if that is you point i 100% agree
Is this thread getting a bump because people are genuinely concerned about their ownership or is it because Sancho hasn’t arrived yet?
This kicked off last season and then Bruno arrived and everyone went quiet.
This kicked off last season and then Bruno arrived and everyone went quiet.
Spot on guys.
Glazers are unfortunately here to stay, that's the fact. We need to change the narrative and start questioning them on their shambolic running of the club, rather than questioning their ownership, as they're not selling anytime soon.
It likely is related to Sancho, and also at the kind of spending Chelsea have done.
You're not getting my point. I'm not denying that our spending has been huge, I'm just pointing out the mere fact that we've spent at a wrong timing. When Liverpool finished top 4 in 16/17, they kept investing and bought van Dijk in the following season; when they again qualified for CL in 17/18, they didn't stop spending and they brought Alisson and Fabinho into the team. These players formed the foundation for the later success, and they barely needed to spend anymore in 19/20 and 20/21.
We, on the contrary, have failed to build a reliable foundation over the years largely due to the lack of ambition from the board. Everytime we scraped a CL spot, they stopped investing and failure was the inevitable outcome. van Gaal and Mourinho complained on multiple occassions that they weren't backed in the transfer market and it's not a coincidence. While I have my doubts on their potential targets, I think they should receive more support than they did.
I'm with you that we shouldn't go all in for Sancho. But as you've just said we still have very clear problems at centre back and holding midfield, have we spent a dime in these positions in this window? History repeats itself, and I will not be surprised if we end up failing this season and have to, again, spend a lump sum in the next season to "rebuild".
I don't see anyone here question their ownership, fact is they own the club. We don't question fact.
Most are questioning the money they took from the club, this is within their running of the club I think?
No i'm including the money they take as dividends and the money used for financing/interest payments as part of their ownership model. Its futile to question them on that, as they aren't going to change that anytime soon.
We need to start piling pressure on the way they spend the money though. Because if our revenue starts going down, we're truly fecked.
I've said it before (everything has been said before in this debate), but yeah - that's possible too.
The standard pro-Glazer argument is that the old plc was fecked up (and increasingly at odds with Fergie, not least). But if we're playing around with hypothetical scenarios, there really isn't any compelling reason to think nothing would have changed (in terms of the board and its policy) if Malcolm Glazer hadn't made his move the way he did.
It's all - well - hypothetical. The idea that a leveraged takeover was the only way to save United from gradually becoming irrelevant is certainly rather ridiculous. Unless one thinks Uncle Malc was the only man in the world capable of coming in and capitalizing on United's already established status (as probably the most popular football club in the world).
I am happy with Glazers as we signed lot of players in last 7 years and I always thought issue was not signing right players by Managers.
But the amount we generate, they can spend better to make us tittle challengers (last 7 years net spend is just 85M a year which is not too high compared to our revenue) and most important thing is stadium is still due for a major renovation which will cost us 250-300M and I doubt they invest that kind of money on improving our stadium.
What can we do here?
And they will do again when the next player arrives. People are not outraged about the Glazers. They are outraged that Chelsea have signed 6 players and we havent
For all this, I hope they invest 250-300M on stadium renovation. OT looks like it needs some upgrade.
The path from Dressing rooms to Pitch does need some contemporary look for sure as a start.
The path from Dressing rooms to Pitch does need some contemporary look for sure as a start.
Van Gaal and Mourinho were both given a boatload of money to spend, you can't spend that amount every year, of course, there are going to be summers where spending is a little less. Mourinho had a net spend of 315million pounds, and that doesn't even include the mamouth utterly insane Sanchez contract or the wages we paid for Zlatan, which I think was the highest yearly wage ever in the premier league until Sanchez. Mourinho was backed all the way, saying he should have been given more is ludicrous.
I suppose you could argue that Van Gaal should have been backed more in his second summer after a number of his initial signings didn't work out but, but the summer before had been bonkers it's hardly surprising it was bit quieter.
What Liverpool have done right over recent years is yes spend big when it is necessary but spend well too build a squad over several years. What we did was give Van Gaal a shed tone of money that didn't really pay off, then switch to Mourinho who basically plays in the exact opposite way and give him a boatload of cash. That kind of management change between such vastly different styles is far bigger of an issue than the spending that both managers did. That's has been the problem, The utter lack of knowledge of how to build a squad, that isn't down to money.
I would also add that I get why we haven't signed a centre back we have 7 adding an 8th before we sell any would be a bit ridiculous. Again it comes down to not the amount of money spent by the club its how it has been spent. When we are in a position that we have 7 centre backs that are all on such high wages that it's hard to sell any them then something is wrong with the amount we are spending on wages. And don't get me started on the Matic contract.
The squad management has just been appaling, the glazers aren't bad owners because of there lack of ambition or lack of investment, they are bad owners because they are allowing the incredible amount of money been spent by the club to largely be pissed down the drain over the last decade
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Not sure if this is true....They spent 80 million on Maguire last summer,who’s obviously not a marketable brand like Pogba....They spent loads on Fred a few years ago....I don’t think money’s the main issue this summer,I think the owners and Woodward have not decided to indulge in panic buying anymore.They are willing to take a principled stand on certain issues like agent fees and transfer fees....They don’t want to sign anyone who isn’t better than we already have.,,,.While I”m quite frustrated with the lack of new signings this summer,I”ve generally been impressed with the way we”ve done business in the transfer market over the last 18 months.Hopefully we“ll end up making a few important signings before the market shuts down...
'A principled stand on agent fees and transfer fees'
Hahahha 10 years on and it's just a rehash of 'no value in the market'.
It supposedly was, yes.
Which came on top of the world record transfer for Pogba - and the not insignificant wage deal he (Pogba) was offered.
But if anyone wants to argue that the Glazers have only sanctioned a "bare minimum" of spending, they should look at the improved contracts United have offered players in the post-SAF era.
The latter is very inconvenient for those who insist on a certain narrative, I know. So, expect them to ignore it. But - really - what sort of positively stingy owners would be okay with boosting the already inflated contracts of players like Rojo and Lingard? What possible purpose would that serve (from a penny pinching point of view)?
I don't give a feck if they don't invest their own money into the club when we need it, I've been so far gone from getting worked up over that years ago, but they need to restructure the club so that we can implement personnel who know what the feck they are doing. Just delegate responsibility, I think it's now very clear they just don't know how to get us back to competing, regardless of what their intentions are
This year we can't spend 120 mil on Sancho due to Covid, I think most people would understand that when we overcome the disappointment. It is was an unforeseeable situation.
But since they took over the amount of money that has been paid to Glazers including loan repayments would have gone into the team if we were owned by a state. How much we have spent does not matter, what matters is we could have spent double that and massively increased our chances of success in the process.
It's a bad thing and we shouldn't question or talk about that because they won't change? What kind of logic is this?
And imo we can still be fecked even if our revenues increase. Our spending is decided by the Glazers. It's not like there's anything guarantees they would spend more if our revenues increase. They would even just pocket more.
I'm not deluded to a point that our talks here would change anything but imo at least we can and should talk about our club's biggest problem. And we should question both, the amount and how it would be spent.
that it isn't it, the narrative is that its the lack of spending that is the lack of ambition or spending that is holding the club back and that just doesn't add up with the amount we have spent.
We possibly could have spent more, but considering how bad we have spent the already insane amount of money we have spent and the mess we have made if it do I think throwing more money at the problem would have helped? No, we would probably just have even more players we basically have to pay off to get to leave.
For me, I look at how much we have spent over since Fergie left, and how much we are spending on wages and ask myself is that enough to be competing at the very top in every competition going. And the answers is an unequivocal yes.
In short, you think our current squad is competitive enough and we don't need further investment because we've already spent a lot?
No, in short, I think our spending has been more than enough to supply each of the managers we have had with a competitive squad that should be challenging for every trophy going. The problem is that money has been wasted.
If only there were another Fergie out there nobody would give two shits who the CEO and Owners were.
The Glazers only want T4 is right up there with size doesn't matter.
The Glazers only want T4 is right up there with size doesn't matter.
Yes, we've spent and wasted plenty of our money, message received. But you still haven't answered my simple question, shall we further invest in this transfer window (e.g. on CB/holding midfield/RW)? If yes, do you feel that fans' expectations are not matched by the board's ambition?
Right now I think our priority has to be getting some players off the books and getting our wage structure a bit more under control.
I don't think we should sign a centre back until we have at least got 2 off the books maybe even 3.
I am all for signings an RW or DM if the right player is available at a palatable price. But I also don't want the club to rush to bring players in if they aren't the right circumstances, we have massive squad we don't need numbers.
The number 1 priority needs to be making sure that the infrastructure at the club is there to ensure that going forward we are spending money better more wisely so we aren't just pissing money down the toilet each summer and getting a bigger and bigger squad and no nearer competing.
Id also ad the money that has been spent over the past 5 years shows ambition, it not the ambition of the board that has been the issue its the competence in using the vast resources that have been invested to fulfil that ambition that has been the problem
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So buying the likes of maguire for 80m isnt going to help them make money? Top 4 by any chance ring a bell?
Having a club listed on the stock exchange will always be a problem. The CEO's responsibility is to his shareholders. He has a duty not to do anything which jeopardises their interests. This includes spending lots of money during a pandemic. We need to get United delisted if we want to see some real action in the transfer market. Rather than a band aid to be applied whenever we drop out of the top 4.
There is absolutely nothing we as supporters can do about the Glazers but we can certainly demand someone better than Woodward. He is the sole reason we can't shift any of the shite clogging up the squad.
Woodward still being in the job means he has Glazers approval.
In other words, we cant do anything about Woodward too
The Glazers are a cancer infecting the whole club from top to bottom. We will never win another league title under their ownership.
My argument would be
1) we'd have renovated upgraded and expanded Old Trafford. They was what we had been doing for the last two decades and it was on the cards (even if difficult)
They makes us more of an attractive prospect.
2) we wouldn't have been saddled with glazer debt. Better players bigger stadium more attractive club to advertise.
3) remember the Vodafone cup? In into itself is nothing special but it's a precursor competition to the likes of the Emirates cup and other such competitions. We were pushing every "innovation" in football, even avenue of revenue. The Glazers have done nothing special.
4) tours of USA Asia etc. Look at the 2002 tour, Malaysian All-Stars, Team Singapore, "Thailand". We were doing the hard work at expanding our fanbase long before the Glazers.
5) who is the richest club in the world
1998 Manchester United
2002 Manchester United
2003 Manchester United
2004 Manchester United
2005 Manchester United
It's not just champions League money though it's all the commercial deals that are tied around getting into the champions League and the money it generates; Adidas being the most well known example.