ALL issues relating to the bond issue and club finances

Status
Not open for further replies.
Will Absolute said:
I don't know where you dug up that website, but most its figures differ from the values mentioned in the press at the time. Tosic was quoted at £8M; Diouf never listed at anything less than £4M; I've never heard of Anderson being quoted at £15M!; the price of the Tevez loan was always stated as £10M;etc. Are you sure your brother-in-law doesn't run it?

The figures are at the low end of what United might have been obliged to pay. My figures are at the high end, which is more reasonable, since United were extremely successful, and likely to end up paying the maximum amount. In any case the exact amount of money paid out is not important. When I made my original post I only included the transfer fees as an afterthought.

I listed 15 players all bought in the last 5 years. Of those only 3 were clear successes up to this time. You don't argue the point, but are you really claiming that such a low percentage of successes is par for Fergie's career? If any date in Fergies's managerial career were chosen, and his purchases in the market for the previous 5 years scrutinised, would only 20% of them have been successful. 8 of the 15 were indisputable failures. Have more than half of Fergie's purchases proven to be flops in his history as a manager?

You say that my time frame is arbitrary; that if I had gone back another year Carrick, Vidic, and Evra were bought. Very true, but it misses the point.

I'm not questioning Fergie's acumen in the transfer market. I'm making the simplest possible observation.That the reason there's a shortage of top talent in the team at the moment is our failure to buy that talent in the last 5 years. It's not that we didn't spend the money. We did - on Berbatov, Tevez, Hargreaves, Anderson. If they had turned out to be the players we all expected when we bought them, we wouldn't have any shortage of great players now. But they didn't.
Click to expand...

You're comparing hindsight purchases with current purchases when making your judgement, which is unfair. Every player we purchase has to prove themselves at some point and only in hindsight can you then say if they were a good buy or not, which discounts almost half of your list, making it a pointless argument.

For instance lets do a list in Summer 2006 referencing the previous 5 years of purchases:

Michael Carrick Unproven
Patrice Evra Unproven
Nemanja Vidic Unproven
Ben Foster Unproven
Ji-Sung Park Unproven
Edwin Van Der Sar Unproven but v.good debut season
Wayne Rooney Success
Giuseppe Rossi Unproven
Liam Miller Poor
Gabriel Heinze Success
Alan Smith Poor
Louis Saha Undecided - lots of injuries
Dong Poor
Cristiano Ronaldo Success
Kleberson Poor
Tim Howard Poor
Eric Djemba-Djemba Poor
David Bellion Poor
Ricardo Poor
Rio Ferdinand Success

4 success stories
8 unproven
8 poor signings

Now at least 5 of those unproven signings turned into quality acquisitions, making you look back in hindsight and say it was a decent period. As I'm sure will be the case with Jones, Smalling, DDG and maybe Young and Anderson.

The difference being that in the 5 years you listed we made 16 signings, in the 5 previous years we made 20 signings. At the time the ratio was roughly the same as the period you are going through. The reason we are short on top talent as you put it is because we haven't bought the same quantity of players (resulting in more good purchases) or spent big money as we did previously.

Unless you think for the last 10 years solid we have been poor in the transfer market, in which case we'll have to agree to disagree.
 
Will Absolute said:
We're not going to agree. So I agree to disagree. More disagreement would be disagreeable. And tiring.
Click to expand...

I don't know what you can disagree with to be honest... Either we have been crap in the transfer market for 10 years or we have not been crap in the last 5, as the two periods are very comparable when discounting hindsight to both cases.

Agreeing to disagree is fine if you know what you're disagreeing on... Seems more like an easy cop-out though.
 
finneh said:
I don't know what you can disagree with to be honest... Either we have been crap in the transfer market for 10 years or we have not been crap in the last 5, as the two periods are very comparable when discounting hindsight to both cases.

Agreeing to disagree is fine if you know what you're disagreeing on... Seems more like an easy cop-out though.
Click to expand...

I don't hold any of my opinions on football so precious that I'm willing to spend hours of my life arguing with a poster on an internet forum, trying to prove the unprovable, or disprove the undisprovable. If we continued, we'd eventually end up arguing about the exact definition of success and failure, and what players met those definitions. An exercise in futility. And a waste of time.
 
finneh said:
Our spend on wages is unchanged in comparison to previous years (in comparison to turnover), so I felt no need to include it as a positive or a negative. If you keep spending identical on wages, but drastically reduce it (pro-rata) on transfer fees it only means one thing: much less investment.
Click to expand...

You are right that our wage spend is around the same as it has been for a long time - also worth pointing out that it is around the same relative level (around 50% of turnover) as Barca, Madrid and Bayern. While the likes of City, Chelsea and several of the Italian clubs are spending unsustainably and FFP should hopefully force them to cut that.

So perhaps there has been a relative reduction in the amount of cash spent on transfer fees, but the difference is not so drastic when looked at in comparison to the vast amounts invested into the squad annually on the wage side. Also you should be using numbers from the accounts instead of cobbled together estimates from the media which are often bullshit.
The whole transfer market has changed significantly due to the Bosman rules and net spend stats do not take into account the true worth of a players. For example, I would say that the likes of Young and Kagawa are worth in the £25m to £30m range - yet we get them for half of that as they are in the last year of contract. We got Owen for free, even with his injury record he must have been worth £10m to £15m at the time.

This is just part of the reason why using net spend to back up any argument is pretty pointless IMO. Any worthwhile conversation about how much the club invests into the playing squad must include wages.
 
Shortage of talents?

DDG
Rafael-Smalling-Evans-.. Jones(Rio, Vida, Evra, Fabio)
Valencia-Anderson-Cleverley-Nani(Young, Scholes, Giggs)
Kagawa
Rooney(Welbeck, Hernandez)

No surprise seeing who claims that. Can't see shit.
 
Must be welcome news for any potential investors, right??

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18868223

17 July 2012 Last updated at 14:22

Manchester United 'is world's most valuable sport club'
Forbes rates Manchester United ahead of Spanish giants Real Madrid

Manchester United is the most valuable club in sport, according to Forbes magazine, which values the Premier League club at $2.23bn (£1.43bn).

United is rated top thanks to lucrative global sponsorship deals, including with AIG, Turkish Airlines, and DHL.

Second is Real Madrid at $1.88bn, with baseball team the New York Yankees and American Football club the Dallas Cowboys joint third on $1.85bn.

Fifth placed is American Football team the Washington Redskins at $1.56bn.

Earlier this month Manchester United applied to list on the US stock market in a share sale aimed at raising a minimum $100m (£64m).

In documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Premier League giant said it was listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

The club had earlier explored the possibility of a $1bn flotation on the Singapore stock market.

United, among the best-supported clubs in the world, said it would use money from the listing to repay debt.

The club has been controlled since 2005 by the Glazer family, the billionaire US sports investors who also own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers American football franchise.
 
Rood said:
You are right that our wage spend is around the same as it has been for a long time - also worth pointing out that it is around the same relative level (around 50% of turnover) as Barca, Madrid and Bayern. While the likes of City, Chelsea and several of the Italian clubs are spending unsustainably and FFP should hopefully force them to cut that.

So perhaps there has been a relative reduction in the amount of cash spent on transfer fees, but the difference is not so drastic when looked at in comparison to the vast amounts invested into the squad annually on the wage side. Also you should be using numbers from the accounts instead of cobbled together estimates from the media which are often bullshit.
The whole transfer market has changed significantly due to the Bosman rules and net spend stats do not take into account the true worth of a players. For example, I would say that the likes of Young and Kagawa are worth in the £25m to £30m range - yet we get them for half of that as they are in the last year of contract. We got Owen for free, even with his injury record he must have been worth £10m to £15m at the time.

This is just part of the reason why using net spend to back up any argument is pretty pointless IMO. Any worthwhile conversation about how much the club invests into the playing squad must include wages.
Click to expand...

To be honest I trolled the internet around a year ago and put together a list of past turnovers/EBITDA to net spend/wages. Unfortunately when I formatted I didn't move it over, but memory is where I got my rough figures from (that we are roughly three times as profitable as a decade ago, yet are spending less).

I disagree re: Young and Owen. No-one would pay £30m for Young or £10-15m for Owen at the time, irrespective of their contracts. Kagawa I haven't seen enough of but you can be sure we wouldn't be interested at £30m.

I think a combination of wages and transfer fee's has to be used. If we aren't spending as much on transfer fee's, we can relax the wage structure to attract or keep better players and vice versa. At the moment we are spending significantly less on transfers but the same on wages, which has a net result of a relatively poor level of investment.

Courtesy of The Swiss Ramble:

24+Utd+Use+of+Funds.jpg
 
The exact value of Owen, Young and Kagawa is irrelevant, the point is that we paid less than they would be worth at 'market value' due to contract situations and that is not reflected by 'net spend' stats - you can't possibly argue with that?

Anyway, we seem to be in agreement that you must use wages + transfer fees (I'd call it 'squad spend'), as 'net transfer spend' alone is not meaningful indicator.
It may well be that we don't spend as much as a % of profit but in real terms we spend more than we ever have done on the squad and personally I think it is more or less sufficient, probably I would like to see it pushed about 10% higher.
 
Rood said:
The exact value of Owen, Young and Kagawa is irrelevant, the point is that we paid less than they would be worth at 'market value' due to contract situations and that is not reflected by 'net spend' stats - you can't possibly argue with that?
Click to expand...

Really? I think Young was very much the going rate, whether Owen was depends on his contract which we don't know (always likely to be paying wages for him in the treatment room), but we all hope Kagawa proves you right, even if he hasn't actually kicked a ball for us yet.
 
Count Orduck said:
Surely their market value is what they're worth... which is what we paid.
Click to expand...

Well maybe a better term is 'fair value' - not taking into account contract situations.

That is the way it used to be before the Bosman ruling took power away from clubs and gave it to the players. Now a player can walk away for free when their contract ends or nowadays it is more likely that they leave on the cheap with 1 year remaining - big names like Ballack and Owen have gone for free in the past, no transfer fee was paid for them but quite obviously they were not worthless!
 
711 said:
Really? I think Young was very much the going rate, whether Owen was depends on his contract which we don't know (always likely to be paying wages for him in the treatment room), but we all hope Kagawa proves you right, even if he hasn't actually kicked a ball for us yet.
Click to expand...

Sorry Grandad, but it is the year 2012 now and you don't get an England international winger for £15m, he has one year left so we got him relatively cheap - see the likes of Milner and inferior players like Bentley for comparison.

Whether Kagawa proves a success for us or not is irrelevant to his 'fair value' today - we are talking about one of the stars of the past couple of years in the Bundesliga, which is by no means a weak league. Again 1 year left so we got him cheap.

I assume these kind of things were common knowledge so Im suprised there is any disagreement on it TBH.
 
Yeah, I agree about Kagawa. Thing about Milner though is that virtually everyone thinks they overpaid for him, so bringing him into it kind of backs me up as far as the going rate goes. The fact that Owen had no chance of a contract and was just let go backs me up on that as well. Son. :)
 
Will Absolute said:
We paid £10M for the Tevez loan. The wages were extra.

We didn't get value on the pitch from those players. The reasons for their failure, or the recoupment of some cash in subsequent sales, or the possibility of a future miracle and Anderson fulfilling his promise, is irrelevant.

We spent 107M and got little return. If we had spent half that money on better players, we'd be in better shape.
Click to expand...

Actually the Tevez loan cost us £6 million for both years; this was confirmed by an indepth investigation by the Guardian into Kia's set-up:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/dav...011/aug/23/carlos-tevez-legal-battle-revealed

(9th paragraph):

"Joorabchian then loaned the Argentinian to Manchester United for two years, for £6m, before selling Tevez to Manchester City, receiving a fee from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan's club of £45m, netting a profit of £21m."

and then later on in the 24th paragraph:

"United are understood, in turn, to have agreed to pay Harlem Springs – Joorabchian's company – £3m in each of the two years Tevez played for the club, and United had an option to buy him permanently for £25.5m at the end of the loan."

Largely irrelevant to the actual topic, but it was annoying me seeing the wrong figures discussed when we have such an excellent source to the exact number.

And I'd say the little cnut was definitely a success, though more for the first year than second obviously.
 
711 said:
Yeah, I agree about Kagawa. Thing about Milner though is that virtually everyone thinks they overpaid for him, so bringing him into it kind of backs me up as far as the going rate goes. The fact that Owen had no chance of a contract and was just let go backs me up on that as well. Son. :)
Click to expand...

I agree Milner was overvalued, that's the City premium! But £20m would not have been unreasonable at the time.

BTW when I mentioned Owen earlier, I was talking about when he moved from Liverpool to Real, not now. However I actually got him mixed up with McManaman who went for free, they paid about £10m for Owen but he was probably worth double at the time.
 
Rood said:
The exact value of Owen, Young and Kagawa is irrelevant, the point is that we paid less than they would be worth at 'market value' due to contract situations and that is not reflected by 'net spend' stats - you can't possibly argue with that?

Anyway, we seem to be in agreement that you must use wages + transfer fees (I'd call it 'squad spend'), as 'net transfer spend' alone is not meaningful indicator.
It may well be that we don't spend as much as a % of profit but in real terms we spend more than we ever have done on the squad and personally I think it is more or less sufficient, probably I would like to see it pushed about 10% higher.
Click to expand...

I agree with all of that. "Squad spend" also takes into account the extra wages that you will inevitably spend on a player whose contract situation has caused a reduction in transfer fee.

At 10% I guess you'd be looking at around £17-18m extra per season on wages/transfers, which I'd say isn't far off.
 
So we had a meaningful discussion and came to a mutual agreement - makes a refreshing change on the Caf!

now, what can we argue about next ... :angel:
 
What you agree? Debt is good. Wheres GCHQ when you need him to extol the virtues of debt.
 
"Glazer's decision to take the team to an IPO is aimed in part at getting help with the high debt, although his insistence on maintaining complete control has turned off some potential investors. The dual structure class of voting stock make it certain Glazer will maintain control because of the lack of power certain investors will have in their voting rights, said the New York Times. New York was the best market to open Man Utd because the markets in Hong Kong and Singapore do not allow dual-structure voting.
Fourteen IPOs opened in America last year that featured dual class shares. Multiple sources are reporting the owners of the franchise opted for the U.S. because of the country's Wall Street deregulation in recent years."

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/364...-united-Man Utd-ipo-stock-exchange-soccer.htm

translation- roll over on to your stomach...
 
First bits of info about target amount and timings are starting to filter through - all subject to change of course ...


Manchester United targets $300m in IPO
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/979f3fa6-d129-11e1-8a3c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz213hlJsbD

Manchester United plans to raise $300m through an initial public offering in the US as the English football club looks to to pay down the company’s net debt of £425m.

The club, owned by the US-based Glazer family, is expected to launch its roadshow as early as next week with the aim of pricing its shares in early August, people familiar with its plans said...
 
Antisocial said:
Actually the Tevez loan cost us £6 million for both years; this was confirmed by an indepth investigation by the Guardian into Kia's set-up:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/dav...011/aug/23/carlos-tevez-legal-battle-revealed

(9th paragraph):

"Joorabchian then loaned the Argentinian to Manchester United for two years, for £6m, before selling Tevez to Manchester City, receiving a fee from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan's club of £45m, netting a profit of £21m."

and then later on in the 24th paragraph:

"United are understood, in turn, to have agreed to pay Harlem Springs – Joorabchian's company – £3m in each of the two years Tevez played for the club, and United had an option to buy him permanently for £25.5m at the end of the loan."

Largely irrelevant to the actual topic, but it was annoying me seeing the wrong figures discussed when we have such an excellent source to the exact number.

And I'd say the little cnut was definitely a success, though more for the first year than second obviously.
Click to expand...


Okay, but £10M was the figure widely quoted in the media at the time. Who knows where the press and the various football websites get their numbers from anyway? Half of them are probably inaccurate. But you've got to take info from somewhere.

As you said, the exact figures weren't critical to the point of my post.

In respect of Tevez, I agree that the player was a success, but the loan was a failure - we didn't hold on to him.
 
Will Absolute said:
Okay, but £10M was the figure widely quoted in the media at the time. Who knows where the press and the various football websites get their numbers from anyway? Half of them are probably inaccurate. But you've got to take info from somewhere.

As you said, the exact figures weren't critical to the point of my post.

In respect of Tevez, I agree that the player was a success, but the loan was a failure - we didn't hold on to him.
Click to expand...

And is it turns, probably a good thing that we didn't.
 
Will Absolute said:
I don't know where you dug up that website, but most its figures differ from the values mentioned in the press at the time. Tosic was quoted at £8M; Diouf never listed at anything less than £4M; I've never heard of Anderson being quoted at £15M!; the price of the Tevez loan was always stated as £10M;etc. Are you sure your brother-in-law doesn't run it?
Click to expand...

Tosic + Ljajic were quoted as £16.3m here. Then when we pulled out of the Ljajic deal, that alone was quoted as being worth £10m - link. That means Tosic's fee was £6.3m.

Diouf was quoted as £2m here and here.

As someone else said, it turns out the Tevez loan was actually worth £6m - link

Anderson was widely reported to have cost us £17m, however Porto claimed that we paid 30m Euros (£25.6m) for him:

RELEASE
The FC Porto - Futebol, SAD report that has entered into an agreement with the
Manchester United to the final transfer of rights of subscription sports player
Anderson in the amount of EUR 30 million, getting even with the right to receive, for
loan, a player of the tables in English club.
In the transfer agreement was also established that Manchester United is the only
responsible for paying all costs related to the mechanism of solidarity
established by FIFA.
Click to expand...

None of these figures have been officially released by United, so it's all heresay, rumour and guesswork anyway really.
 
decorativeed said:
Anderson was widely reported to have cost us £17m, however Porto claimed that we paid 30m Euros (£25.6m) for him:
Click to expand...

A bit over £20m iirc. That was the exchange rate at that time.


Anyway. Was thinking about the kit deal with Nike. Isnt that due for renewal?

Any idea how those deals are structured? It it spread evenly over the duration or a big amount paid up front and the rest spread over the duration of the deal?
 
prateik said:
A bit over £20m iirc. That was the exchange rate at that time.


Anyway. Was thinking about the kit deal with Nike. Isnt that due for renewal?

Any idea how those deals are structured? It it spread evenly over the duration or a big amount paid up front and the rest spread over the duration of the deal?
Click to expand...

The current Nike deal is until 2015. Usually if you want more upfront then you get less in total, but the structure of the deal just depends on the negotiation really
 
Ahh. I had 2013 in my head for some reason. I guess it was a 13 year deal and that confused me
 
Would have liked it coming up for renewal soon. Who knows what'll happen by 2015. Getting it in now could see a massive rise in what we get from them, at least double the last deal IMO. A guessing estimate but sensible I reckon.
 
I don't think any sane person could accuse Reuters of having an agenda, or being anything but non-partisan.

Here's a video from them on the IPO

 
From the FT

Man Utd pauses US listing plans

By Arash Massoudi in New York, Roger Blitz and Anousha Sakoui in London

Manchester United has temporarily paused plans to launch its $300m initial public offering in the US, where market volatility has soared in recent days as macroeconomic fears hit share prices.

The English football club had been looking to begin its investor roadshow as early as Monday of this week, with the aim of pricing and listing its shares in early August.

But United and its bankers are to reconsider when they will begin meeting potential investors later this week, said people familiar with the situation.

Jefferies, the investment bank leading the book running for United’s IPO, declined to comment.

The pause comes as US markets have been unsettled by further concerns over debt and economic growth in the eurozone, with the S&P 500 index falling 2 per cent since the start of the week.

The people familiar with United’s IPO plans suggested the current delay had to do with market conditions.

The Vix index, a widely monitored measure of implied volatility on the US market, has risen by more than 23 per cent since Monday. Bankers consider a sudden rise in the Vix as a sign of potential risk aversion from investors, making them less likely to participate in new offerings.

It was not immediately clear if United would still attempt to list its shares before the current IPO window closes in mid-August, ahead of the traditional market lull that runs through to the US public holidays in early September.

The club declined to comment.

It has been widely speculated that the club, which is owned by the US-based Glazer family, intends to use the proceeds of the fundraising to pay down the club’s net debt of £425m.

Sir Alex Ferguson, United’s manager, has taken his team on a preseason tour of the Asia, which the club’s owners, the US-based Glazer family, have always seen as a market ripe for exploitation.

But, since announcing its intention to go public last year, Manchester United has been forced to abandon plans to list in Hong Kong and then in Singapore after demand for its shares fell short. It had looked to raise as much as $1bn as part of its aborted Singapore float.

Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank are the other banks on the IPO syndicate but all declined to comment.
Click to expand...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c57a011a-d66d-11e1-bd9c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21eu4cVNw
 
Basicallly Glazers are asking investors to give them money in return for no control, no voting rights and no dividents and then are surprised that nobody is interested.
 
Was SAFs interview last week a cynical ploy to drum interest in it as demand was weak? Or am I overthinking it?

Certainly looks to be game over for the IPO for now anyway. :(
 
Sir Matt said:
There might not be, but the major reason for stopping it is probably related to Spain being on the financial precipice at the moment.
Click to expand...

It was a ridiculous time for an IPO. The markets are completely on edge, with China looking weaker just as Spain teeters.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.