Let's start by saying this is not a defence of the Glazers. The Glazer family have been nothing short of disastrous for Manchester Utd, I don't believe there is even a debate to be had here. However, one thing has continued to frustrate me recently - and that's this idea that Manchester United can and should spend £200m+ net every single year.
I believe our fans are right to question the impact the Glazers have had on our spending over the duration of their tenure as owners of the club. I believe it is an indisputable fact that between 2005 and 2010, the Glazers dramatically curtailed transfer spending in order to balance the books. During this period, we actually had a positive net spend, which is crazy for a club who at the time where competing for major domestic and European trophies.
The reason for this is that when the Glazers initially bought the club, they did so by borrowing £275m at an interest rate of 14.25%. The debt grew steadily during the early years of Glazer ownership and this resulted in us paying back upwards of £70m in interest repayments alone up until around 2012. All during a time when the clubs annual turnover peaked at around the £363m mark.
In 2010, the debt was restructured to be much more manageable as the Glazers used a £500m bond to wipe out the high-interest PIK loans and borrow at a much cheaper rate. As of 2013, finance costs have been reduced by about 66% and now stand at about £20-25m per annum.
However, I and many others rightly believe that a huge amount of damage was done during this period. Those first ten years of Glazer ownership are often referred to sarcastically by Utd fans as the 'no value in the market years' - as this was the line the Glazer puppet Alex Ferguson would often trot out to justify their penny pinching approach. That of course is absolute, utter nonsense and looks even more ridiculous now with hindsight than it so obviously was at the time. Even before we get into the recent transfer inflation caused by the new TV deal, it's just an incredibly nonsensical statement to make because the 'value' of a player is what a club is willing and able to pay.
Some posters may remember I created a not-to-dissimilar thread to this one where I analysed the Glazer spending up until around 2017 which transfer inflation applied for context. The purpose of this thread was to disprove the notion that United had spent enough money to guarantee trophies and was partly a defence of Moyes, LvG and Jose Mourinho - who at the time was constantly beaten with the stick of having a squad costing £900m which was 20pts behind City's less expensive squad (as the gutter press constantly delighted in reminding us without context). My point at the time being obviously that we had done most of our spending during peak transfer inflation years whereas City had sensibly accumulated a squad consisting of many players purchased before fees increased exponentially (Aguero, Silva, Fernandinho, Kompany etc...etc...)
Nevertheless, this thread is not about going over old ground. So yes, the Glazer family cut costs between 2005 and 2010 (especially) and harmed the club immeasurably during this period.
HOWEVER - as I said in the opening paragraph, my frustration is with a few very prominent voices on social media who are constantly misunderstanding (deliberately or not) our current predicament and misleading a large percentage of our fanbase in the process. These social media warriors are constantly banging on about our lack of spending, the lack of investment, cost-cutting etc...etc...writing about all manner of conspiracy theories as to why Ole has been appointed, why we are focusing on young, English players, why we have missed out on certain players, amongst many other examples.
This notion of cost-cutting post-2014 simply does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny whatsoever and it's incredibly frustrating for me because I believe constantly moaning about spending (or lack thereof) ignores the real issues with how the club is being run in 2020. I personally believe that one man is responsible for our predicament right now and that man is Ed Woodward. The man who was given a warchest by the Glazer family to go and revitalise and rebuild Manchester United after the retirement of Alex Ferguson - only for him to piss this money down the drain faster than you can say "Adult Disneyland".
So, I'm not a financial expert by any means and I am happy to be corrected on any of the statements I make or the figures I put forward below. However, I have spent some time going over our Annual Reports since 2013 and have found the following (apologies if I've interpreted any of this wrong - correct me if you can)
NET TRANSFER SPEND
| 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 | 2015/16 | 2016/17 | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | Total |
| PSG | £131,620,000 | £98,460,000 | £42,570,000 | £83,880,000 | £67,230,000 | £157,140,000 | £101,700,000 | -£9,810,000 | £672,790,000 |
| Manchester City | £14,000,000 | £89,800,000 | £60,000,000 | £73,700,000 | £165,050,000 | £177,550,000 | -£2,050,000 | £91,350,000 | £669,400,000 |
| Manchester United | £51,100,000 | £66,700,000 | £104,200,000 | £28,150,000 | £102,000,000 | £136,200,000 | £47,030,000 | £65,500,000 | £600,880,000 |
| Barcelona | £29,250,000 | £65,790,000 | £76,430,000 | £11,430,000 | £81,860,000 | £127,800,000 | -£4,460,000 | £87,390,000 | £475,490,000 |
| Inter Milan | £11,480,000 | £44,040,000 | -£5,890,000 | -£11,760,000 | £126,950,000 | £52,480,000 | £13,950,000 | £97,970,000 | £329,220,000 |
| Juventus | £44,550,000 | -£11,560,000 | £24,920,000 | £67,840,000 | £17,020,000 | £16,830,000 | £134,100,000 | £20,740,000 | £314,440,000 |
| Chelsea | £72,000,000 | £49,309,000 | £5,100,000 | £9,100,000 | £51,300,000 | £80,200,000 | £144,600,000 | -£152,000,000 | £259,609,000 |
| Liverpool | £41,300,000 | £20,300,000 | £38,380,000 | £28,000,000 | -£6,460,000 | -£28,000,000 | £127,500,000 | -£28,600,000 | £192,420,000 |
| Real Madrid | £4,500,000 | £55,800,000 | -£12,000,000 | -£62,410,000 | -£6,750,000 | -£79,200,000 | £25,790,000 | £186,750,000 | £112,480,000 |
| Tottenham | -£1,300,000 | -£16,300,000 | -£1,250,000 | -£7,850,000 | £27,700,000 | £24,750,000 | -£11,000,000 | £61,000,000 | £75,750,000 |
These are the net transfer spends of some sample 'big spenders' from across Europe since 2012. I picked this date as to the best of my understanding, 2013 was the last year we paid out £70m+ in interest repayments.
Quite clearly you can see from this table that the notion of any kind of cost-cutting or restrictive spending (restrictive NOT restricted - PLEASE NOTE) just does not stack up. Only the two clubs owned by countries and pumped full of oil-money have spent more than Utd net over the last seven years. I've got United supporting friends who mean well but just like this forum they seem to believe that clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid spend £200m+ net every Summer. They don't. Simple. It's a myth. Remember, whether enough money has been spent to win trophies is not my argument here...my argument is that I think it's pretty difficult to say 'lack of spending' or 'lack of investment' is the reason we're currently 5th and playing in the Europa League when clubs like Real and Liverpool have managed to win European trophies on much more limited budgets.
OPERATING PROFIT
| Operating Profit | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
| Manchester United | £146,419,000 | £23,835,000 | -£483,000 | £36,598,000 | £39,209,000 | -£37,629,000 | £18,881,000 |
Now, another common argument when you point to our net spending is 'we are Man Utd, we SHOULD be spending that every year' and very often users of this argument will point to our status as one of the richest clubs in the world, as measured by TURNOVER. However, what this clearly ignores is the amount of profit we are making. As the old saying goes, 'turnover is vanity, profit is sanity'. That certainly applies when you're measuring a companies/club's ability to invest in capital assets i.e. players! So what are we asking the Glazer family to do here? You can see the club is not making huge amounts of profit which is somehow being left sat in the bank or taken out of the club by the Glazers (hang on...before anybody jumps in at this point...will clarify shortly!)...so are we asking the Glazers to spend beyond their/our means? The facts and figures don't lie...there's barely been any surplus since 2014 to actually spend on additional transfers!
FINANCE COSTS
| INTEREST | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Overall |
| Manchester United | 72,082,000 | 27,668,000 | 35,419,000 | 20,459,000 | 25,013,000 | 24,233,000 | 25,470,000 | 230,344,000 |
Now, when I said a few sentences ago that there wasn't a huge amount of surplus money sat left in the bank every year or being taken out of the club by the Glazer family, I appreciate many will have instantly thought of the interest payments the club makes every year. Now again, remember, I'm not here to defend the Glazer's ownership. They are parasites in that they have contributed nothing and only take out of the club. The interest payments above demonstrate this. United would have been £230m better off at least since 2013 had we not been leveraged with debt by the Glazer family. So in that respect and in the eyes of fans I'm sure, £230m extra could have been spent on footballers. (I realise this is too simplistic for any finance bods out there as corporate debt reduces tax etc...etc...but let's not go down complex financial wormholes here!) However, ask yourself....think back to the net spend table. Would we be significantly better off had we spent another £230m over a 7 year period under the direction of Ed Woodward? I for one am not at all convinced we would be. Looking at the interest payments and money taken out IS relevant to the anti-Glazer argument of course....but I don't think it addresses the issue of WHY we are SO bad right now. Clearly, interest payments or not, enough money has been spent since 2012 to enable us to AT LEAST be competitive and the truth is we're far from it and our squad is an appalling mess.
WAGES
Wages are often overlooked by those who often cry under-investment because it REALLY doesn't suit the narrative in any context. Now, many are aware that Utd set an upper limit of 50% wages/turnover....i.e. no more than 50% of the clubs turnover should be spent on wages. This is actually fine and many clubs have higher percentages ratios without having such a big total bill. I accept that argument and it's reasonable to expect the club to spend 50% of it's turnover on wages moving forward. No problem here. However, look at the table below;
| WAGES | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
| Manchester United | £202,561,000 | £232,242,000 | £263,464,000 | £295,935,000 | £332,356,000 | £363,189,000 | £367,056,000 |
Would any fan in their right and sane mind describe those annual wage bill as 'value for money'?. I think we all know the answer to that! How on this Earth do we spend £367m annually on wages for the absolute mob that turn out for us week in, week out? This is very relevant to me for a few reasons. One, offering players insane wages makes it hard to sign new players and difficult to shift existing players on daft wages. Two, money spent on wages is a HUGE percentage of our overall expenditure, therefore reducing spending on wages COULD be re-invested in the transfer market as capital expenditure. Three, I keep seeing this 'cost-cutting' argument...well of course costs have to be cut don't they! I believe Alexis pushed us up to the 'ceiling' of 50% wages/turnover and I believe the club has recognised that if we want to remain profitable moving forward and continue to be able to invest in players, this has to be reduced before new signings can come in.
CONCLUSION
I have decided to summarise a lengthy OP with a few bullet-points for ease of review.
* Glazers undeniably cut-costs whilst high-interest loan repayments were made, especially against the backdrop of much reduced revenues compared to recent years.
* This very likely hurt us well into the LvG/Jose era, with respect to actually competing for trophies
HOWEVER
* Fans need to re-assess their expectations on what Manchester Utd CAN spend...even if the Glazers did want to benevenently pile every penny earned back into the club £200m+ summers every year put the club in financial jeopardy
* The Glazers DO drain money out of the club but this hasn't stopped us having one of the highest net transfers spends in the world over the last seven years
* The Glazers clearly threw off the shackles once Ed took over as CEO and interest payments had been reduced/TV money increased significantly.
* Ed Woodward has overseen all of that money being wasted
* I believe the club have recognised this and are attempting to remedy the situation by moving players on and setting a platform for a re-build
* I do not believe any conspiracy theories about prolonged 'cost-cutting' exercises. It makes no sense for the Glazers to deliberately weaken the team and devalue the brand. Remember, they bought the club with just £270m of their own money...the long term strategy is SURELY to increase the value of the club significantly and sell for a big profit.
* Following on from the above....why would the Glazers cut costs to make £12m a year between them in dividends when a successful Man Utd could be worth £3.5/4BN to a potential buyer. It would be like having a Golden Goose and slaying it for it's meat!
* Would United be better off without the Glazers? Almost certainly so.
* Are our recent troubles down to under-investment and cost-cutting when it comes to the playing staff....I believe not. I believe our issues sit firmly with Ed Woodward (and again arguably with the Glazers as the people who appointed him and continue to allow him to do a job he is making a right pigs ear of!)
Comments and input welcome - please read the OP carefully before critiquing, I can't be bothered fielding loads of lazy responses where posters trot out lines they've read on Twitter that have been addressed above!
