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 don't know where the money came from to pay off the PIKs. BUT it's irrelevant because it did NOT come straight out of United's coffers.
This is the one thing that some people simply wouldn't believe. Whenever I said something along the lines of "you can't say that United WILL pay the money and you can't include them in the cost of the Glazers until they have taken the money" I would usually be met with a sarcastically raised eyebrow response along the lines of "who are you trying to kid sunshine? do you think we were born yesterday? You might be a naive little pup but I'm not. Jeez, give me a break, it's practically written right there in black & white what they are going to do."
As I am also not privy to the exact details as regards the Glazer finances, I would have been an idiot to say "They will NOT use a penny of United's money" because the Bond Issue
did give them access to the money in United's account and the next question would have been obvious: Where else will they get the money from? And, to that, I would have had to say, "I don't know" which is hardly the most convincing argument.
However, common sense should tell anyone who wants to look at this in a reasonable manner that they would not take over £100million from United's account and leave Fergie with a few million with which to build a title winning team.
It was because some of us were so reasonable with our argument and, as a result, took on board the theories of the "other side" that we are now being mocked. I've said many times before that Anders' argument was compelling. It had merit. But there was always a chance that there was something else that we couldn't see. Anders would have none of this and would openly mock anyone who suggested it.
And then one day the PIKs disappeared. There always WAS another way.
As for the answers to your other questions, you need to have an understanding of how people like the Glazers operate. They hate to pay tax (which is why I am surprised in one sense that they have left loads of money hanging around in the bank account with seemingly nothing to spend it on). They hate to show their full hand. They are very private people.
What you must start to acknowledge, however, is that the PIKs are, and always have been, their PERSONAL debts. If you accept that people are entitled to privacy with their personal finances then you simply have to accept that they have every right to transfer them to a place well away from prying eyes. You have no right to demand any answers whatsoever when it comes to the PIKs.
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.
As I say, you need to look at how these people work. I suspect that they are not so concerned about the interest because it is likely to be offset against future tax liability.
They will always choose to use other people's money in order to purchase because that is the way to leverage your way to owning a £1.5bn asset for a couple of hundred million down.
I know that some people like to portray the Glazers as clueless gimps but they have been very clever throughout all of this. They have refinanced and maneouvred themselves from a position of relative vulnerability way back in 2004 to a situation where they are now sitting on a goldmine.
It clearly irks you but sometimes you need to give credit where it is due - these guys know what they are doing. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that they don't. They must have done something right because they have arrived in their current situation despite a significant campaign against them. Imagine how strong the situation would be today had that campaign not been waged?
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 facts are and always were that the Glazers had not taken any money from United post Bond Issue for themselves.
It is all well and good discussing "what ifs" and debating the subject on discussion boards such as this. It is quite another to advocate boycotts based on conjecture. A line was crossed there.
At the risk of repeating myself - Anders should not have assumed that he could see the full picture. He should not have advised boycotts on the basis of his theory. He should have acknowledged that he may have been missing something, that another avenue was available to the Glazers. Unfortunately, he simply refused to accept that his own theory, whilst plausible in one sense, was quite preposterous in another sense. The common-sense theory that says that starving your own business of funds is not the best way to ensure its survival and growth.
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).
Sometimes, you actually write like Anders, Joga. "Simply laughable" - that's one of his favourite phrases for anyone who doesn't agree with him.
I'm not going to go into this too deeply but if you can't see how Anders "selectively avoided uncomfortable facts" in his own reporting of the situation then you're displaying your own bias and avoiding uncomfortable facts yourself right now.
I am not sure which facts I have avoided when defending the Glazers. Does the Bond Issue allow them to take money from the club? Yes. Have they taken the money? No. Both are facts. One of them means more to me than the other, however. Actual > Potential.
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.
Well, I am not sure how I serve myself by attempting to discredit him. My main fear was that United could have ended up in all kinds of shit had his calls for boycott been "successful". I have said many times that I love United as much as the next fan but that I view this ownership from a different angle - that's all.
We will never know and I hate to add further conjecture to the argument but perhaps Anders being "on their case" actually prevented them from taking the money? Perhaps if they weren't being watched like a hawk, they wouldn't have worried about the potential fallout from a PR pov. (My objection to this is what I said before about how taking the money from the club to the detriment of the club was not in their best interests).
At the end of the day, whether we like it or not, the Glazers do own Manchester United. How they came up with the money is always going to be a bone of contention but it has been six years or so now. They have not hindered our ability to compete on the field of play and they have more than doubled our commercial revenues off it.
At some stage, you need to take a holistic view of the Glazers' ownership rather than focus on one (admittedly fundamental) part of it. No owners are perfect. I am just one of many people who think that, all things considered, they're doing a good job.
If you disagree, by all means protest and don't buy your ticket. But make sure that you're making your decision based on
real facts... not the facts given to you by someone with one eye closed.
