Yeah, that was worth it.
ALL issues relating to the bond issue and club finances
- Thread starter sammsky1
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Even Glazer apparatchiks like GCHQ thought they were going to do that (since they engineered it so they could). No one really knows what they did to get rid of the PIKS.
I think there's a difference between predicting something may happen and predicting that it will and then forecasting terrible consequences as a result. The option was always there for them to take the money from the clubs accounts but it was always doubtful they would given how little it would have left for transfers.
You're moving the goalposts. Anders went to considerable lengths to find out if there was any other source of cash that could be used, and when he couldn't find any, he came to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that it was most likely, given the evidence that we had at the time, that the clubs money would be used for the PIK's.
As, by the way, did almost everybody else, including those who now dishonestly use that to discredit his entire body of work, most of which has absolutely no relevance to that issue at all. That's called poisoning the well.
The scientific method explicitly relies on the exact form of reasoning that was used in this instance: prediction based on the current evidence --> look for further evidence in order to either confirm or falsify prediction. Both confirmed and falsified predictions further our knowledge. Credibility relies on neither.
Joga!! You haven't been around in ages! Good to see you posting again man.
anders went from hero to zero... I wonder when his next Panorama episode will be released?
The reality is that he never got above zero. His whole theory was bollocks from start to finish. Some of us tried to tell him but got flamed by his sycophants.
It wasn't that we thought they would do it but some of us preferred not to enter into the realms of hypotheticals with our arguments.
It seemed a very compelling argument and so rather than invent a scenario where the Glazers paid them off with another source, some of us used that argument as a "worst case scenario" and took it from there.
Personally, I never went above 99% with my assessment of the situation - I always said that the Glazers have money and options - using United as a cash cow wasn't a foregone conclusion.
As it turned out, giving the nutters plenty of rope with which to hang themselves went well.
No he didn't. I told him time and time again that Malcolm Glazer had been in business for 60 years. To suggest that he had no money of his own after all that was absurd.
Anders is clueless when it comes to business. He is also clueless when it comes to how people like the Glazers operate. They don't like to wave big wads of money around, it attracts the wrong kind of attention. Some of us suggested that they weren't flying by the seat of their pants throughout all this - that there was always a safety net, but that it was hidden from people like Anders, who, like it or not is NOT privy to the entire situation as regards the Glazer finances.
He was basically calling them fools but, in the end, they made him look a fool because contrary to what Anders' believed and what "evidence" he dug up, there was more to the situation than Anders could garner. He never made any allowances for this. Some of us did.
I do believe you and I have crossed swords on Anders' own website in the past. I hope that you're not including me in that number.
I think there's more to it than that though Joga. Science should not be based on a malicious bias from the start. It should simply be "let's find out the truth - I have this idea so let's test it"
You then put your hypothesis to the test and you're either proved right or wrong.
If you are proved wrong, you don't then go onto find some other angle to attack gravity with all of it's downward propulsion bastarding bastard - you accept that your hypothesis was wrong and move on.
Anders still seems to want to continue the fight against the Glazers despite there being absolutely no reason to do so - his worst fears proved unfounded.
If what you said is correct then Anders is now losing credibility. There's no evidence to support anything he has predicted and he no longer makes predictions, he simply snipes at every little opportunity.
He's placed himself in the position of a fan against the club. The club is getting on with business on and off the field.
I doubt that Anders agrees with what you say, he seems desperate to find an opportunity to restore his lost credibility but, as I say, he is only making things worse for himself now.
So, what's gonig on in here today?
Still the usual suspects trying to have their cake and eat it by claiming that the repayment of PIKs is some kind of debate-closer despite the total lack of information on what actually happened?
Still the usual suspects trying to have their cake and eat it by claiming that the repayment of PIKs is some kind of debate-closer despite the total lack of information on what actually happened?
No, that was last night after some post-match bevvies.
Today, we will be mostly talking about the lack of anything to talk about.
Has GCHQ finished wanking to that picture of Thatcher yet?
I said there was a possibility they may take some money out of the club in the form of a dividend. I also repeatedly stated that the Glazers wouldn't take cash out of the club if it meant leaving insufficient resources available for expenditure on the first team and on new facilities.
Andersred (and Redjazz) went to great lengths to point out that the Glazers had no alternative other than to use the club's cash to pay down their PIK borrowings. That foolish belief led Andersred to argue the club would have very little cash available for expenditure. Do you remember the tables of figures showing the club would have barely £5m available to spend per season after the Glazers had taken out their dividend payments? That's what I'm talking about. It was utter nonsense and I said so on many occasions.
The fact that not a single penny left the club in the form of a dividend payment to the Glazers just further emphasises how remarkably wide of the mark Andersred et al were. They got caught up in their own hubris and now others are rightly having a good laugh at their expense.
The nails have been systematically hammered into the Andersred/MUST/G&G coffin over the last 9 months or so. It started in June when season ticket sales held up very well on the back of a huge propaganda campaign against the club, including a BBC Panorama ''investigation''. The club's sensational commercial success then became apparent to all but the desperate few as numerous sponsorship agreements were signed. Then the big one. On November 16 it emerged that the Glazers were to repay their PIK debt without using ANY of the club's cash.
I strongly expect Fergie to deliver the final killer blow in May and in the transfer market over the Summer.
We know the Glazers were able to pay down the PIKs without using any of the club's cash. There's your debate-closer right there A1Dan.
My post-bond issuance record has been pretty much exemplary so I'm just going to carry on eating loads of cake if that's alright with you.
Exactly. I personally went to great lengths trying to convince people that neglecting the squad in favour of debt repayments would be entirely counterproductice and non-profitable, and that as such it just would not happen. Argued over and over with anders, telling him that he was wrong. It irks somewhat then when it turns out that andersred was indeed completely wrong, and people come out with shit about it not being his fault because "How was anyone supposed to know he was wrong? Nobody argued with him or told him he was wrong, did they?"
Precisely Ciderman.
Furthermore, Duncan Drasdo and the MUSTite knuckle-draggers are nothing but dogs who've had their day; they made their bed with the sensationalist tabloid media and then promptly shat in it before failing to rise in the morning. Now they stink of their own bullshit and yet are exactly nowhere to be seen; good fecking riddance.
I think I'd question quite how sincere any claims of 'considerable length' taken to discover something it's fairly clear that he didn't want to discover.
You really think given the partisan stance he's taken on the issue that he would have delighted in discovering the Glazer's had £200m odd stuffed away in a savings account somewhere, or whatever.
It's like saying the Daily Mail would be delighted if they found out that immigration isn't that much of a concern or Channel 5 would be delighted if they were told they had to stop showing mind-numbing shit on television.
Besides, I'm not moving any goalposts. He was free to speculate as anyone as to how the PIKS could be paid. If he didn't know, say so. It was his insistence that there was no other way they could be paid other than taking money from the clubs accounts, that lost him a lot of credibility on the issue. He went out on a wing by being so forthright on the subject and has paid the price for his credibility on the issue as he was wrong.
If he wasn't sure he could have been open about it and just say that he wasn't sure instead of the usual frenzy whipping where he and others insisted on something happening despite not knowing for sure, which turns out not to have happened anyway.
Everyone seems to be operating under the assumption that the PIKs have been entirely paid off using cash and have vanished from existence, which they quite clearly haven't.
I think the point is that nobody is operating under any assumption other than those (like Anders) who decided to make the assumption before he knew the facts.
All we're assuming is that the PIKS haven't been paid with the clubs money. We know that. If a new loan has been taken out against the clubs assets would that not have to have been declared?
Whether you're pro or anti-Glazer, the point is that if you get something wrong people will notice.
There's no point, FM.
We've pointed out a thousand times that, thanks to all the secrecy, for all we know the PIKs are still here in all but name.
But it's like talking to a brick wall, they'll just continue their little self-congratulatory love-in.
Precisely, GCHQ.
Not really. I just think it's odd how everyone is supposed to pretend these prediction of doom never happened and that somehow pointing out inaccuracies are somehow determined irrelevant because some people don't like the outcome.
What kind of basis for debate is that?
"I don't know what's happening but I'll make a 100% commitment one way or the other, anyone who doesn't agree with me is a twat and if I'm wrong anyone who points that out is also a twat and anyone who doesn't agree with me after that is still a twat"
Hardly the thing encouraged by the Oxbridge debating societies. I wouldn't imagine 'invention, denial, conspiracy' is likely to be adopted as their motto.
The brick wall is the stubborn insistence of the anti-Glazers who continue to suggest that Manchester United will be affected by the PIKs.
Gill said that the PIKs have nothing to do with the club. The stubborn wouldn't have it.
Maybe it is that the Glazers have just moved them somewhere else with a bit of refinancing just to remove them from the picture as far as us United fans are concerned. It's as if to say, "There! Look! Gone! Forget about them! They're our debts, not United's."
You're like the guy with the tache in these adverts...
A1Dan still doesn't get it, Mr Kidd.
So while all the Glazer defenders are having a good round of back slapping congratulating each other on an argument well won (perversely), I'll be attending my last few United games as a season ticket holder as I simply can't afford it any more. If there's one thing that's an absolute guarantee, its that ticket prices won't be frozen for a second year running. Goodbye Stretford End, its been emotional
I know it will be a wrench to give up your season ticket but it's not like you'll never be able to attend a match at Old Trafford again. There can't be many people in Britain who can't afford to buy tickets to say, half a dozen home games per season.
Feel your pain, Brad - did the same two years ago. But if it's any consolation, apparently the Glazers' plans to get extremely rich off the back of the club are going well.
I believe Brad's season ticket has only increased by about £100 over the last six years or an annual average increase of 5%, or just 2% in real terms. This particular case has nothing to do with the Glazers.
Personally, I prefer the consolation that we're top of the league, in the FA Cup semis and the CL quarter-finals but each to their own, I suppose.
It warms the cockles of my heart
yeah but your black. Or something.
Hmm... and you're a mod, right? Way to add to the debate, dude.
EDIT: Tonight, I'm slightly American.
Precisely, A1dan, Exactly.
And it's a self-congratulatory love-in based on fictional revisionism. I don't recall any of the "Glazer apparatchiks" on here making the following prediction: The glazers will not use any of the carveouts to deal with the piks.
In fact, they all assumed, implicitly or otherwise, that the Glazers would take most of the carveouts to deal with the pik. TMRD was 99% sure they would, yet, in some mathematically obscure way, feels that he was right all along; Cider developed a pik stabilisation theory (not a bad one) to demonstrate how the Glazers could avoid a conflict between inward investment and pik repayment, but that too was predicated on the glazers using careveouts (70\95m); and as for GCHQ, well, let's check the historical record-
In response to Peterstorey, he now says:
Revisionist GCHQ; said:
A possibility? Some money? May? Sounds like a fella never really convinced they would- a sentiment that does not tally with his previous posts on the subject:
CGHQ said:
And:
CGHQ said:
(So, It was just an issue of timing!)
And (a prediction):
CGHQ said:
So, Andersred gets a prediction wrong and is described as "a fool", "a MUSTite knuckle-dragger", "clueless" and so on by a bunch of Glazer apparats who agreed with the prediction. Hypocrisy is quite funny when it's so manifestly obvious.
You. Don't. Get. It.
The obvious questions to ask at this point are: if, as you say, the Glazers were always willing and able to spend more than £200m of their own money to clear the PIK debt ("always" is crucially important in this context because it is necessary for your narrative), why did they originally take on such a punitive and risky debt in the first place -- and one which ended up costing them far more than it would have originally -- why was it necessary for several of them to take loans from the club, and why haven't they told us how they paid for the PIK's and have instead moved their accounts to the most secretive place in the western world?
We know with a fair degree of certainty that they haven't sold a business in order to deal with the PIK's, and the evdience that there is to suggest that they have made money in the last few years is of a property that was sold for roughly $20m, which would imply that they must have had the money available to pay for the PIK's when they originally bought the club. And yet, they decided to take on the PIK's at an extremely unfavorable rate, supposedly in full knowledge that it would cost them far more to remove that debt at any point in the future.
These facts either thoroughly contradict your own theory, or at the very least, render it far less plausible, and particularly as your own theory depicts the Glazers as fantastic businessmen, while at the same time implying that they purposely cost themselves tens of millions of dollars with a completely unnecessary debt. So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't take your "trust uncle Malc, he's been in business for sixty years" routine very seriously.
A failed hypothesis has very little to do with credibility in almost any academic area that I can think of, unless of course it is still favored in the face of sufficient evidence to the contrary. And even if you believe that your theory was always the more likely, as long as the rival theory fits most of the known facts, the choice of which to tentatively accept is largely subjective.
In any case, it is quite clear that the facts at the time (rather than your own conjecture) favored the theory that the clubs money would be used for the PIK's, which is why even those who spend their time defending the Glazers accepted that it was the most likely outcome. No amount of revisionism will change those facts.
The accusations of bias are simply laughable. Bias is unaviodable. It is consistency with the known facts that should shape our opinions and beliefs. It must be wonderful to believe that everyone else is biased except those who agree with you, but bias, given everything that we know about human belief formation, is simply not a credible criticism at this point. Bias in terms of selectively avoiding uncomfortable facts would be, but that is yet to be demonstrated and it applies equally or more so to those who defend the Glazers (as I have amply demonstrated above).
Finally, there's no question that, *if* the Glazers have paid for the PIK's with their own money, *then* that fact would somewhat dilute the objections to their ownership model. That has always been a necessary and sufficient condition of my own critique. But it makes no logical sense to oppose debt being used to purchase the club, and then once it is discovered that the fraction of debt is in fact roughly three quarters of what you had originally thought, to accept that as a sufficient reason to renounce the objection entirely.
That is why, even if we could know for certain that the PIK's were no longer the clubs concern, I and many others would never accept the current owners as either legitimate or desirable. And that is also why Anders has continued to investigate and build his case, rather than be cowed by lazy and entirely self-serving attempts to discredit him.
Precisely, Joga.
Exactly, Feeky.
You lot love circles don't you
You lot love circles don't you
Quite, Redlambs.
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