Manchester United Superthread 2014 mod warning #8081

RichFTW wrote: »

Anyone defending their takeover is insane IMO.

No more insane than the people who keep saying the club has lost £700m due to them when its nowhere near that - people keep forgetting our profits were subject to dividend payouts. do you think that under McManus and Magnire, we'd be turning over £400million? no way - the Glazers have grown out global brand in relation to the debt they put on the club.

i dont see anybody defending the take over either, im just looking for a bit of realism and balance against actual. weve been hearing for 10 years how they were going to damage the club, yet all we see is the clubs finances growing and growing.

the Moyes reign and very poor (and expensive/well paid) footballers did/are doing more damage to the club than them. people obsess over our transfer spend, but ignore the fact that we were outlaying almost as much as City over the past 3 years, but wasted the majority of it.

homerjay2005 wrote: »

No more insane than the people who keep saying the club has lost £700m due to them when its nowhere near that - people keep forgetting our profits were subject to dividend payouts. do you think that under McManus and Magnire, we'd be turning over £400million? no way - the Glazers have grown out global brand in relation to the debt they put on the club.

i dont see anybody defending the take over either, im just looking for a bit of realism and balance against actual. weve been hearing for 10 years how they were going to damage the club, yet all we see is the clubs finances growing and growing.

the Moyes reign and very poor (and expensive/well paid) footballers did/are doing more damage to the club than them. people obsess over our transfer spend, but ignore the fact that we were outlaying almost as much as City over the past 3 years, but wasted the majority of it.

I'm basing the figures used off that article linked which are in line with what I've seen before from actual business newspapers. I don't understand your dividend point, as far I as aware the Glaziers still take a dividend on top of the club paying the interest on the loan they took out to buy the club.

I agree with you that McManus & Magnire wouldn't have had the same success with revenue growth but I think another CEO could have. The Glaziers are not the only business men with experience in growing a global brand.

Revenue is growing and growing yes, but people seem to keep forgetting about the level of debt! You can't just ignore the debt just because revenue is going up. The risk to the club was massive at the beginning of the takeover and could have gone horribly wrong if United hadn't have been as successful on the field.

homerjay2005 wrote: »

i dont see anybody defending the take over either, im just looking for a bit of realism and balance against actual. weve been hearing for 10 years how they were going to damage the club, yet all we see is the clubs finances growing and growing.

That's all relative though. TV revenue is up, competition payouts are up, sponsorship deals prices are up, ticket prices are up. Every clubs finances are growing - hence why we continue to see all these mega deals for players wages. Any top businessman with a brain could do the global branding we've done given the reach we have across the world - nearly every business wants something to do with United. But the same goes for Madrid and Bayern, we're not alone in this.

Our problem is that they should have far more money in the kitty each year for transfers/wages to put us at the top every year. And what's more is that if they eventually do sell the club, the next person that comes along is simply going to say - right I'll pay you for what you want, and we'll leave the debt sitting there with the club. They've shown very little signs that they are serious about clearing the debt of the club.

I still hold out hope that Fellaini will be a decent player for us - he had a very poor first season, but he is not as bad a player as he tried to convince us of.

Leftist wrote: »

the club used to have a soul.

What has business reality go to do with United's soul? You measure a club's soul, by its traditions, values, pedigree and the passion of its fans & players. Apart from a crap season, which can be blamed on a lost manager and some players probably having no respect for him. How did United lose it's soul? Furthermore, I'm really intrigued to see how the Glaziers affected it?

Like most fans I didn't want the Glaziers taking over. And when it later emerged they put us into debt to fund this takeover, I was píssed. But apart from that, I can't complain. They sat back and stayed in the background as SAF spun his magic and you can't ask for anything more than that from owners. In that regard, they have been textbook owners. I have no doubt they will do the same with LVG. He will get his funds and they will step aside to let him run United the team. The Glaziers focus is on building the worldwide business and commercial success of United. And what is wrong with that? And how does any of that change the essence or soul of what United is?

Would United be a global brand without the Glaziers? Of course they would. Would United have achieved the level of commercial growth without their business acumen? No, I doubt it. I don't want some egocentric billionaire like Abramovich taking over the club and constantly meddling in team matters. So I think the Glaziers deserve full credit for not doing that. And on the subject of the Glazier family, I would like to extend my condolences to the family and may their father RIP.

Al Capwned wrote: »

Hindsight is always 20/20 though.
Ask any United fan 12 months ago which of them they'd prefer, and I would imagine the majority would have said Fellaini.

I take the 20/20 on board as regards utd fans. But Moyes was looking at Barkley for a couple of years. Surely he could see the potential. [ or was he looking:rolleyes:]

UnitedIrishman wrote: »

Our problem is that they should have far more money in the kitty each year for transfers/wages to put us at the top every year.

the money has always been there, its either not been spent or was wasted, people have become obsessed with City and Chelsea spending...moan about it, but then complain when we dont spend to that level. its hypocrisy in the extreme. take out the oil driven clubs and real and our transfer outlay is as high as anybody.

you can Blame Fergie and Moyes for that.

Pro. F wrote: »

TheDoc defended their takeover last night. He was quite glowing in his support for it.

The real trouble with the Glazer takeover was the risk that they put on the club. Revenues had to grow in order to cover the debt. It was a massive risk to take and it was a risk that was all on the club's shoulders, the Glazers were completely insulated from it. Anyone defending their takeover is insane.

ok, clearly my post has caused some ruptions from what I've read. To be perfectly honest at the time of the takeover, I barely remember having an opinion on it, so I'm not going to used muddied hindsight to make comment.

I think most people take their lead on what happened from either the fairly aggrevied fan groups and in some cases football centric punditry or comment.

From what I read and heard from the last 18 months, from experts in business and corporate finance, is that while it was a risk in the method they took over the club, it was calculated.

To be fair it's quiet complicated and I don't fully understand it, but the laymans explanation was that the Glazers saw the club with potential to multiply their revenue streams and turn the club into an absolute money making machine, and the best way to achieve this revenue growth was to buy the club with loans against the club.

This way negotiations could be done to organise internet only payments and essentially small payments on these loans, in order to maximise investment in club infrastructure and revenue expansion. I believe it was explained that if the Glazers did not go down this method, they would have had to take this investment from within the actual club directly, gobbling up revenue.

I'm not defending anything. I have been of the opinion that the Glazers were the fingerpointed enemy when the club weren't doing well, or looked to be floundering in the transfer market. Yet at the same time we are throwing €25m on the likes of Ashley Young, or Gill and Ferguson allowing transfer targets to slip through the cracks.

I've not seen anything definitive ( and remember our accounts are publicly viewable) to indicate the club coffers were dry during transfer windows.

The latest I was reading on the situation was before Christmas last year, where experts were in agreement that the method the Glazers took paid off massively, with revenue streams growing to projection and resulting in massive funding available at the clubs disposal.

I'm not being oblivious to the issues being raised, I was just stating that I felt some sadness our owner had passed away and don't think I agree with what would be forthcoming, probably a large wave of "ding dong the witch is dead".

Don't forget there was a massive infrastructural upheavel at Carrington with first class upgrading. The direct impact on the squad is that funding should be available to compete with the big spenders.

Like I said I don't fully understand it, but I never took for gospel the angry fan groups or Eamon Dunphies proclaiming our demise to financial ruin. I listened to the experts, who all fully understood why the Glazers had took this route, saw there ws a very viable reason for it, and as recently as before Christmas indicated it will all pay off for the long term, allowing the club to the financial powerhouse it should be in the marketplace among other things.

My post that seemed to have cause a lot of grief was more to antiticapte the posts of people probably posting the "good riddance" sort of nonsense.

NeVeR wrote: »

I can't wait until we actually sign some players.. and we can start to imagine how the line-ups will be.

Out of all the gossip and possible targets.. can someone ( if possible ) post a list of players we actually might get.. or are they all just wishful thinking?

i think for the next month we will not hear anything credible.

woodward likes to brief the press, usually you will know when it's a heap of reporters saying the same thing all at once.

but all this talk about shaw, kroos signing for 20m etc that is from one individual source, is going to total bollix.

We won't have a clue really until August.