ALL issues relating to the bond issue and club finances

Status
Not open for further replies.
A1Dan said:
Could be the difference...

I'm pretty confident myself stilll, though.

We've stocked up on good cover where needed, so I honestly can't see where we'd buy big next summer, other than either a creative or "destructive" centre-mid, depending on what SAF thinks we need (apparently neither at the moment, and with the likes of Cleverly, Pogba, Morrison and Tunnicliffe all at various stages in the pipeline, who's to say that will change?).

So, I reckon there will only be a maximum of one 8 figure signing, and then it is down to whether that player costs more than £28m (give or take other minor buying and selling) and whether he puts pen to paper by end of June.
Click to expand...

I could see a left back being signed. Also, we had been very close to signing Varane (centre-back) for c. £10m in addition to Jones and you'd have to put a bit of a question mark over Rio's future beyond this season due to his injury problems.

It's very possible that Giggs will retire next Summer so you'd have to say a centre midfield signing would be very likely (although admittedly we've thought that for the last two years!). As you say the development of the likes of Cleverley and Pogba will be crucial but if they do progress as hoped then I can honestly say that I won't mind losing our bet because of it!
 
Is the IPO definitely on?

Do we think that this will mean more cash for signings?

Would be nice if we could add a world class talent every summer, as Barca, Real, City and Chelski do (sometime 3-4 at a time lol)
 
What is the figure on the season ticket waiting list? I understood the only people waiting for tickets were those that were wanting to change seats.
 
GCHQ said:
My predictions:

Record Turnover - £325m-£330m. Up from £286m in 2009/10

Record EBITDA - £110m-£115m. Up from £100.8m in 2009/10

The 2009/10 ''accounting loss'' of £80m won't be repeated. Instead there should be a small pre-tax profit reported for 2010/11. Not even Duncan Drasdo or Andersred will be able to put a negative spin on these results.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that?.....

MUST: The commercial team at United are clearly smart operators and we welcome continued growth in the business but to be fair we've seen growth consistently year after year long before the Glazers took over"

"There is only one man who is responsible for that consistent success - the same one responsible for success on the pitch - Sir Alex Ferguson.

"Without the incredible performance on the pitch and the fantastic loyal support of thousands of match-going fans, as well as millions more around the world, there would be no platform on which to build the growth of the business.

"So while the financial results are strong, they also show that the Glazers have taken another £51m out of the club in the last 12 months as well as using an even bigger chunk (£64m) of the club's money to pay down part of their bond debt.

"This is money that the club has generated and money that should stay in the club rather than go to Florida or to pay down the Glazers' debt and interest.

"That's why we're calling on the Glazers to use any share sale in Singapore to clear all of the club's debt - debt that they put on the club and they must take responsibility for.
Click to expand...
 
From that statement the line:

"There is only one man who is responsible for that consistent success - the same one responsible for success on the pitch - Sir Alex Ferguson."

Is not true at all really. Gill and the rest of the corporate team have done a fantastic job increasing our commercial revenue streams and they deserve a fair share of the credit for that.
 
R_Nick said:
From that statement the line:

"There is only one man who is responsible for that consistent success - the same one responsible for success on the pitch - Sir Alex Ferguson."

Is not true at all really. Gill and the rest of the corporate team have done a fantastic job increasing our commercial revenue streams and they deserve a fair share of the credit for that.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking. I don't see why MUST always feel the need to belittle everyone at the club and their achievements. As I'm sure Fergie would be the first to say, the club is much bigger than any one person, and success on and off the field is a team effort.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
That's what I was thinking. I don't see why MUST always feel the need to belittle everyone at the club and their achievements. As I'm sure Fergie would be the first to say, the club is much bigger than any one person, and success on and off the field is a team effort.
Click to expand...

Without knowing Drasdo, but do have som knowledge of Sir Alex, I bet Sir Alex treats the office cleaners and tea ladies with more respect than Drasdo.
 
R_Nick said:
From that statement the line:

"There is only one man who is responsible for that consistent success - the same one responsible for success on the pitch - Sir Alex Ferguson."

Is not true at all really. Gill and the rest of the corporate team have done a fantastic job increasing our commercial revenue streams and they deserve a fair share of the credit for that.
Click to expand...

I agree but you haven't got an agenda when it comes to this you see :)
 
"So while the financial results are strong, they also show that the Glazers have taken another £51m out of the club in the last 12 months as well as using an even bigger chunk (£64m) of the club's money to pay down part of their bond debt."
Click to expand...

This sentence is a bit sneaky too. MUST have been banging on for years about how terrible it is that the Glazers have forced so much debt on the club, which is a fair point.

However, as soon as they start to pay it down it's not the club's debt any more, it's their debt. You can't have your cake and eat it...
 
The removal of the PIKs was treated with cautious optimism by many and with reason. The figures remain optimistic; I'm surprised the Glazers would choose to float part of the club now unless they have to to raise money - clearing the PIKs perhaps?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
This sentence is a bit sneaky too. MUST have been banging on for years about how terrible it is that the Glazers have forced so much debt on the club, which is a fair point.

However, as soon as they start to pay it down it's not the club's debt any more, it's their debt. You can't have your cake and eat it...
Click to expand...

Agreed. The argument that the debt shouldn't have been there in the first place does still stand though.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
This sentence is a bit sneaky too. MUST have been banging on for years about how terrible it is that the Glazers have forced so much debt on the club, which is a fair point.

However, as soon as they start to pay it down it's not the club's debt any more, it's their debt. You can't have your cake and eat it...
Click to expand...

It's their debt in the sense that it's debt that they saddled on the club in order to finance their purchase of it. The point being if the Glazers had never taken over the club, the debt would not be there, and the £64m in question would never have had to leave the club.

Even though paying off debt is, at this juncture, the responsible and correct thing to do, it is still, in the big picture, the Glazers taking money out of the club to feather their own nests.

I don't see anything particularly sneaky about that.
 
CnutOfAllCnuts said:
Without knowing Drasdo, but do have som knowledge of Sir Alex, I bet Sir Alex treats the office cleaners and tea ladies with more respect than Drasdo.
Click to expand...

What have office cleaners and tea ladies got to do with this? You say yourself that you don't know Drasdo - for all you or I know he could be the most polite and respectful man in the world when dealing with good honest working people like that. All we have to go on is his position on some very rich, poerful and controversial figures, whetehr we agree with it or not.

A usually intelligent poster like yourself must be able to see the irony in making random personal attacks on people based on a political agenda. By all means disagree with his point about Gill et al, but there's no need to debase your whole argument with this sort of nonsense.
 
R_Nick said:
From that statement the line:

"There is only one man who is responsible for that consistent success - the same one responsible for success on the pitch - Sir Alex Ferguson."

Is not true at all really. Gill and the rest of the corporate team have done a fantastic job increasing our commercial revenue streams and they deserve a fair share of the credit for that.
Click to expand...

If you take the quote as a whole though, you can see that it's a lot less clear cut than that, and fairly reasonable - certainly doesn't belittle anybody:

The commercial team at United are clearly smart operators and we welcome continued growth in the business but to be fair we've seen growth consistently year after year long before the Glazers took over"

There is only one man who is responsible for that consistent success - the same one responsible for success on the pitch - Sir Alex Ferguson.

Without the incredible performance on the pitch and the fantastic loyal support of thousands of match-going fans, as well as millions more around the world, there would be no platform on which to build the growth of the business.
​
 
A1Dan said:
What have office cleaners and tea ladies got to do with this? You say yourself that you don't know Drasdo - for all you or I know he could be the most polite and respectful man in the world when dealing with good honest working people like that. All we have to go on is his position on some very rich, poerful and controversial figures, whetehr we agree with it or not.

A usually intelligent poster like yourself must be able to see the irony in making random personal attacks on people based on a political agenda. By all means disagree with his point about Gill et al, but there's no need to debase your whole argument with this sort of nonsense.
Click to expand...

Strange rant.

What we know about SAF comes from all the people around him and the people he deals with.

Same goes for Drasdo, SAF usually gets painted in a much better light though oddly enough. The poster above didn't "attack" Drasdo so don't act like he did.

When will some of you finally wake up & realise that all MUST have done for half a decade is spout shite? You don't have to like Glazer or the way football has become business, but you really should realise that MUST have been a shite voice for the fans for too long.
 
A1Dan said:
If you take the quote as a whole though, you can see that it's a lot less clear cut than that, and fairly reasonable - certainly doesn't belittle anybody:

The commercial team at United are clearly smart operators and we welcome continued growth in the business but to be fair we've seen growth consistently year after year long before the Glazers took over"

There is only one man who is responsible for that consistent success - the same one responsible for success on the pitch - Sir Alex Ferguson.

Without the incredible performance on the pitch and the fantastic loyal support of thousands of match-going fans, as well as millions more around the world, there would be no platform on which to build the growth of the business.
​
Click to expand...

You've not taken it as a whole there though, you're piecing sentences from different paragraphs together to twist the overall meaning. The line about them being smart operators is a prefix to the bit about 'but such growth was happening before them too' and is then followed by a different paragraph saying it's all because of SAF and nobody else, which isn't the case.

Gill is the one who spearheads negotiations for ever increasing record breaking sponsorship deals and the like, he's a fantastic CEO who MUST have taken pot shots at repeatedly and they'll not be seen to be saying he's doing a good job if they can at all help it.
 
Sharky7 said:
Strange rant.

What we know about SAF comes from all the people around him and the people he deals with.

Same goes for Drasdo, SAF usually gets painted in a much better light though oddly enough. The poster above didn't "attack" Drasdo so don't act like he did.
Click to expand...

Hardly a rant, and far from strange... not compared to the original post, or your answer, anyway.:smirk:

I'm not disputing that by all accounts Fergie is very good to people throughout the club, but what do we know about Drasdo from the people around him and the people he deals with?
Have I missed something... Surely pretty much evertyhing we know about Drasdo comes from his public stance on MUST / Utd / Glazer issues, along with some comments from other fans who in reality know no more than you or I?

If the post wasn't an attack on Drasdo, then what was it? The MUST statement was very complimentary about Fergie, so it can't have been a defence of his character. So what else are we to read into "I bet Sir Alex treats the office cleaners and tea ladies with more respect than Drasdo"? :confused:

Just sounds like a petty and bizarre attack to me.
 
A1Dan said:
Hey? I copied it verbatim form Sharky's post!:confused:

I give up on this place, it's mental.:lol:
Click to expand...

Sorry I thought you were talking about the bits in bold, posting on my phone and didn't look up at the original.

Like I said though, the overall message is: "SAF - good, everyone else - bad".
 
A1Dan said:
It's their debt in the sense that it's debt that they saddled on the club in order to finance their purchase of it. The point being if the Glazers had never taken over the club, the debt would not be there, and the £64m in question would never have had to leave the club.

Even though paying off debt is, at this juncture, the responsible and correct thing to do, it is still, in the big picture, the Glazers taking money out of the club to feather their own nests.

I don't see anything particularly sneaky about that.
Click to expand...

It's not really worth having an argument about them doing something that's already happened. They can't go back in time and not buy the club, so the sensible discourse would be about what they can do now to be better owners.

Paying down the debt and increasing revenues is good for the club. So that's a positive for them. Their ongoing position on the ACS is clearly a negative for them. The ticket prices, while previously a bad thing, are sort of neutral to me at this point, having been softened by a couple of years without a rise.

I'd like to see them scrap the ACS (with our bunch of youngsters, the cup matches will probably sell out anyway) and invest any excess profits from the flotation (over however much of the bond they can buy back without penalty) in a serious attempt to expand OT.
 
R_Nick said:
Like I said though, the overall message is: "SAF - good, everyone else - bad".
Click to expand...

Well at least everybody can agree on half of it!:D

As I've said before, I'm not too bothered if a bit of hyperbola emerges from MUST, as long as general point they are making has worth.

The "no platform on which to build" part is key to me, and I think it's hard to argue with - without Fergie's success on the field, Gill and his commercial team could not pull off anything like what they have.

You are correct that that doesn't mean Fergie is solely responsible - everybody involved in the club is to some degree, even the tea ladies. But he is the one who is irreplacable and without whom none of it would happen.

Chances are, with canny enough recruitment, we could find another Gill. Chances are that we alread have replaced various key memebers of his team with equally skilled people. Chances are if Fergie had left a few years ago, we'd have struggled massively to find somebody who could have brought us anything like the success he has since.
 
lynchie said:
It's not really worth having an argument about them doing something that's already happened. They can't go back in time and not buy the club, so the sensible discourse would be about what they can do now to be better owners.
Click to expand...

There's merit in this attitude, and to be fair, MUST have shifted that way a little recently with talk of the beginning of the end of the "war" etc.

But I don't think it's entirely the way forward.

To many supporters they have comited an abuse (even if it's just "football morals" - I know there are worse things going on in the world!) in the way they've used the club and its supported, and they won't be forgiven just because they've avoided the worst case scenario. They are still going to end up rich beyond their wildest dreams form placing the club in a position of danger and weakness, and treating the supporters as mugs.
"It's not really worth having an argument about them doing something that's already happened" isn't a line that sits very well with the victims of injustice and they would have to make one hell of a lot of reparations to gain my forgiveness for one (like they care).

They can't go back in time and not buy the club, but they can still sell it (I know, there's a whole argument here about how we would know we were getting anybody better, but that's it's own disucussion) - hence why I do welcome the flotation, as it's a move in that direction.
 
A1Dan said:
There's merit in this attitude, and to be fair, MUST have shifted that way a little recently with talk of the beginning of the end of the "war" etc.

But I don't think it's entirely the way forward.

To many supporters they have comited an abuse (even if it's just "football morals" - I know there are worse things going on in the world!) in the way they've used the club and its supported, and they won't be forgiven just because they've avoided the worst case scenario. They are still going to end up rich beyond their wildest dreams form placing the club in a position of danger and weakness, and treating the supporters as mugs.
"It's not really worth having an argument about them doing something that's already happened" isn't a line that sits very well with the victims of injustice and they would have to make one hell of a lot of reparations to gain my forgiveness for one (like they care).

They can't go back in time and not buy the club, but they can still sell it (I know, there's a whole argument here about how we would know we were getting anybody better, but that's it's own disucussion) - hence why I do welcome the flotation, as it's a move in that direction.
Click to expand...

That sounds like smart business to me.

It seems like the resentment comes purely from the fact that fans who have nothing to do with the club and just choose to follow it and take an interest in it which tbh is all a fan is, object to a business being run like a business by business men entitled to do what they want with the property they own.

Let's face it, the club isn't yours, it's not mine, we just choose to follow them, let's not mess about. We're fans. It's awfully romantic to say 'our club, my club' etc and I think of it as my club in that it's who I support and it's who I love but when it comes to the bottom line and we put the romances aside, it's not my club, it's the Glazers club. They do with it as they see fit, if they want to get rich from it, let them, it's their property.

Whether you like it or lump it, whether I like it or lump it, agree with it or disagree with it or whether MUST agrees with it or disagrees with it, makes no odds really.

Your line about they have to do X to get your forgiveness like they care, again means nothing, they probably don't give a shit because the bottom line is the club doesn't belong to you and they don't need your forgiveness. It belongs to them and your job is to watch them on the pitch and support the club through it's successful periods (which we are enjoying plenty of) and it's not so successful periods, not get involved in the running of the club that's got nothing to do with any of us and which that aside, is currently going from strength to strength and announcing profits anyway.

So in short, we can all have opinions on the matter but in reality they can do whatever they want with the property they own and as owners of the club they need neither our permission or blessing to do anything.
 
King_Eric said:
Does this mean these £20M in taxes won't have to be paid? I don't really understand what this sentence means.
Click to expand...

Yes, but we wouldn't have had to pay taxes anyway and we won't for a considerable time. Every pound that we have lost over the last 5-6 years can be rolled forward and offset against any future profits.

GCHQ will be able to tell you the "rolled up" accounting losses over the last 5 years but I suspect it is a couple of hundred mil.
 
Zarlak said:
That sounds like smart business to me.

It seems like the resentment comes purely from the fact that fans who have nothing to do with the club and just choose to follow it and take an interest in it which tbh is all a fan is, object to a business being run like a business by business men entitled to do what they want with the property they own.

Let's face it, the club isn't yours, it's not mine, we just choose to follow them, let's not mess about. We're fans. It's awfully romantic to say 'our club, my club' etc and I think of it as my club in that it's who I support and it's who I love but when it comes to the bottom line and we put the romances aside, it's not my club, it's the Glazers club. They do with it as they see fit, if they want to get rich from it, let them, it's their property.

Whether you like it or lump it, whether I like it or lump it, agree with it or disagree with it or whether MUST agrees with it or disagrees with it, makes no odds really.

Your line about they have to do X to get your forgiveness like they care, again means nothing, they probably don't give a shit because the bottom line is the club doesn't belong to you and they don't need your forgiveness. It belongs to them and your job is to watch them on the pitch and support the club through it's successful periods (which we are enjoying plenty of) and it's not so successful periods, not get involved in the running of the club that's got nothing to do with any of us and which that aside, is currently going from strength to strength and announcing profits anyway.

So in short, we can all have opinions on the matter but in reality they can do whatever they want with the property they own and as owners of the club they need neither our permission or blessing to do anything.
Click to expand...

To be fair, it's just not the Glazers club. It's our club. Football clubs are not any other normal business though.

But we put ourselves in a position which makes it possible. We floated the plc and we opened the door to a hostile takeover. The same fans who continue to rile against Glazers choose to ignore the plc being the root cause of all evils, as it helped the club once. With a little bit of creative leadership before, the fans could have bought a fair share of the club.

Now we are in this mess and we have to look at how to get the best for all of us concerned, the fans, the football club, and unfortunately the Glazers too.
 
fishfingers15 said:
To be fair, it's just not the Glazers club. It's our club. Football clubs are not any other normal business though.

But we put ourselves in a position which makes it possible. We floated the plc and we opened the door to a hostile takeover. The same fans who continue to rile against Glazers choose to ignore the plc being the root cause of all evils, as it helped the club once. With a little bit of creative leadership before, the fans could have bought a fair share of the club.

Now we are in this mess and we have to look at how to get the best for all of us concerned, the fans, the football club, and unfortunately the Glazers too.
Click to expand...

That's the thing though, it's not our club. It's just not. It's our club in a romantic 'we support the club United till we die' sort of view, but that's it. Fans need to see where really it stops and starts. Aside from that the club has nothing to do with you or me. We love it, we support it, we'd do anything for it, but that's all. We're fans. It's a business owned by the Glazers. You own your house, I don't own it, if I turn up every Saturday and Sunday and sit outside and admire it, it doesn't give me the right to tell you what to do with it. If you buy a business, and I really liked the old one, I couldn't walk in and tell you what to do with it or tell you how to run it or what you should or shouldn't do with it or that you had to do something to gain my forgiveness, because it's got feck all to do with me, it's your business and you can do what you want with it. It's simple.

If I bought a business and someone came to me and said I don't like the way you did that, I demand you get lost and give the business back to the people that love it, I'd say get bent, this is my business that I own, voice your concerns by all means and I'll listen to them but you can come to planet Earth if you think you have some kind of entitlement or can tell me what to do with the property that I own, etc.

That's not to say that people can't have their own opinions or be pissed off etc but some of the action that people think they have the right to take is ridiculous.
 
Zarlak said:
That's the thing though, it's not our club. It's just not. It's our club in a romantic 'we support the club United till we die' sort of view, but that's it. Fans need to see where really it stops and starts. Aside from that the club has nothing to do with you or me. We love it, we support it, we'd do anything for it, but that's all. We're fans. It's a business owned by the Glazers. You own your house, I don't own it, if I turn up every Saturday and Sunday and sit outside and admire it, it doesn't give me the right to tell you what to do with it. If you buy a business, and I really liked the old one, I couldn't walk in and tell you what to do with it or tell you how to run it or what you should or shouldn't do with it or that you had to do something to gain my forgiveness, because it's got feck all to do with me, it's your business and you can do what you want with it. It's simple.
Click to expand...

You are right by logic. But you know how we all feel though.
 
fishfingers15 said:
You are right by logic. But you know how we all feel though.
Click to expand...

Of course, noone says you can't feel pissed off about it, it's just cutting through that and realising it for what it is. We can all be pissed off about it, disagree with it etc but some of the action people think they have the right to take is absurd. The comment 'they have a lot to do before they get my forgiveness' was what set those posts off. They don't have to do anything to get any forgiveness because they've done everything so far that they are perfectly entitled to do.

Yeah it's a bit shit, yeah it wasn't ideal, but they were entitled to do it and nobody can tell them any different. Like people who buy mortgages, or businesses, can't afford it themselves in cash, so they borrow the money and dump it on the asset they've borrowed the money to purchase, which they then repay over a long time. Nobody can tell them to do anything different with what they own.
 
Zarlak said:
It's a business owned by the Glazers.
Click to expand...
Well you can stop right there. It isn't supposed to be a business, it's community enterprise or at least it should be. I'd nationalise all football clubs without compensation and hand them over to fan ownership.
 
I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle now Pete.
 
The PL has only been going 20 years, in another 10 or 20 years things could change a lot - global landscape and football.
 
peterstorey said:
Well you can stop right there. It isn't supposed to be a business, it's community enterprise or at least it should be. I'd nationalise all football clubs without compensation and hand them over to fan ownership.
Click to expand...

That's an ideal that some people may have, but the reality is that it's a business. There is the team that plays on a weekend, then there is the club, the way the club is run, the brand and the commercial side. That's a business.

What's important is that we don't confuse romantic idealism with actual reality peter. There is no need to 'stop right there' at the end of the day, if you own it, you can do as you wish with it, the Glazers own Manchester United, they can put debt on the club if they want to. If I want to secure anything against my house, I can do so, it's mine. You can do the same with yours. It's ownership, and ownership is a pretty simple concept.

On one hand you have what we all want, which would be ideal, but it's a dream, then you have the actual reality.
 
Well no one has got a stake in 32 Acacia Avenue except you. Pebble-dash it, put illuminated santas on top for Christmas - do what you like with it. Football clubs are not just businesses with consumers (what business would still be in business with a delivery record like Man City when you've had a more attractive option round the corner for 50 years).
 
peterstorey said:
Well no one has got a stake in 32 Acacia Avenue except you. Pebble-dash it, put illuminated santas on top for Christmas - do what you like with it. Football clubs are not just businesses with consumers (what business would still be in business with a delivery record like Man City when you've had a more attractive option round the corner for 50 years).
Click to expand...

Stockport :confused:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.