Balanced thread regarding the Glazer ownership

The Oracle

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A lot of fans direct hatred towards the Glazers for their ownership of our club, so I have created a balanced thread to have a look at some of the biggest issues the fans have expressed since their takeover:

Stadium
The last expansion of Old Trafford was completed in 2006 when the north-east and north-west quadrants were installed, creating 2nd tiers to those parts of the ground and increasing seat numbers by around 8,000. Although the Glazer’s purchased the club in 2005, the plans for the quadrants were announced in 2004.
Upon completion of the quadrants, every part of the stadium had been expanded, apart from the South Stand (Sir Bobby Charlton Stand), and with a railway line running directly behind that stand, the complications and complexities involved in building up and over a railway line and entering the territory of houses, goes a long way in understanding why the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand has never been expanded (either before the Glazer ownership or since).

My verdict regarding the stadium:
It is my opinion that the Glazers couldn’t have done anything more to have increased the capacity of Old Trafford (which would have increased match day revenue). The age of the stadium is something that fans overlook, and you have to remember that Old Trafford isn’t the only stadium in the Premier League that doesn’t have a giant TV screen, as neither does another old stadium - Anfield. In terms of the stadium being run down and requiring updating, yes I do agree that improvements to the stadium should have taken place well before now. It’s important to remember that this season (2021/2022) marked the 10th consecutive year that season ticket prices have been frozen at Old Trafford (https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/14441880/man-utd-freeze-season-ticket-prices/). So whilst there may not have been improvements to the stadium, nor have match going fans saw any increases to the cost of their season tickets.

Players
It was only as recently as January of this year that it was reported that following the sale of Ferran Torres from Man City to Barcelona; Man Utd then had the most expensive squad in world football, coming in at an eye-watering £801m (twitter.com/ESPNFC/status/1479475420139507718)

My verdict regarding the players:
It is very clear that the Glazers have spent huge sums of money on assembling the squad. Is it down to the Glazers that the players don’t perform as expected once they are signed? I don’t think it is.

Managers
Let’s be honest about this, how many Pep’s and Klopp’s are there out there? Those are two outstanding managers that have taken, and continue to take, their respective teams to new levels of football that other teams (including ourselves Manchester United) are trying to catch up to.

My verdict regarding the managers:
Post Sir Alex Ferguson, we did have a manager that was known for delivering trophies (and did deliver trophies), and with his recent European semi-final win against Leicester with his current club Roma, he has now reached a major final with all of the clubs that he has managed (even if he didn’t get the chance to manage Spurs in their League Cup Final against City). My opinion is that Jose Mourinho should have taken over straight after Sir Alex Ferguson, as at the time he was the best manager available, and he had an outstanding CV and most importantly he did want to come to Old Trafford. Instead we hired David Moyes on a six year contract because Sir Alex Ferguson believed in him. From the point that Moyes was hired we started to decline, and the season after SAF retired, we had gone from being Champions to 7th in the league (even Moyes’ old club Everton finished above us). By the time Mourinho was hired in 2016, in my opinion it was 3 years too late; as we had already declined too much since 2013.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær was an overwhelmingly popular choice with the fans to become permanent manager after his good run as caretaker, and he was then hired permanently.
Fast forward to now, and Erik ten Hag was an overwhelmingly popular choice with the fans to become the permanent manager, and he will now be the permanent manager for the start of the 2022/2023 season.
It could be argued that the Glazers have listened to the fans when it has come to the appointments of our two most recent permanent managers (Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Erik ten Hag), and listened to our greatest ever manager when it came to hiring David Moyes (even if it was the wrong choice given hindsight).

Revenue
The Glazers have grown the commercial side of Manchester United to astronomical levels, and it is reflected on the pitch as recently as January 2022, when we had the most expensively assembled squad in world football (£801m). In 2009 Utd’s commercial revenue was £66m and by 2019 the commercial revenue was £275m. Matchday revenue remained relatively the same between 2009 and 2019, which was largely due to the freezing of season ticket prices (https://huddleup.substack.com/p/the-business-model-of-manchester?s=r)

My verdict regarding the revenue:
The Glazers really have performed incredibly well on the commercial side of Manchester United, and it can certainly be argued that because of how well they have done, we have been able to assemble the most expensive squad in world football. If Manchester United had of been taken over by someone other than the Glazers, would the other owners have performed as well as the Glazers have done commercially? It is a hypothetical question that we will never know the answer to. The only information that we do know for certain is that the commercial side of Manchester United is phenomenal, and we have the most expensively assembled squad in world football.

Structure of the club
Of all the things that are levelled at the Glazer’s, the structure of the club is where it has begun to unravel of where a lot of the problems that we are seeing on the field originate from (i.e. we are not seeing the expected results that the most expensive squad in world football should be delivering). Most notably we simply have not had the ‘Best in class’ in all areas off the pitch, and we have had people making football decisions who are not best placed to do so (i.e. their strengths are being able to create commercial revenue, their strengths are not necessarily being able to put together a cohesive football team).

My verdict regarding the structure of the club:
Without a doubt, commercially Manchester United is outstanding at generating revenue, and a big part of that is down to the Glazers. What the Glazers are beginning to realise is that having the ‘Best in class’ (in off field positions at the club), where they are brilliant at bringing in revenue; does not mean that they are best placed to make decisions regarding player recruitment, i.e. assembling a playing squad that has no cohesion will ultimately fail (even if it is the most expensively assembled squad in world football), and in my opinion this is what we are witnessing right now – a completely disjointed squad of players that has been put together by people who are not best placed to have done so – but who are the ‘Best in class’ at bringing in revenue.
In an ideal world everything would marry up – having the most expensive squad in the world should mean that we are a lot more competitive on the pitch, and should have been getting better results than we have been doing. I think the Glazers are listening to the fans and seeing it for themselves, as we are slowly beginning to see the changes now, especially with Ralf Rangnick being brought in as an interim to see first-hand with the squad just what has gone wrong and what needs fixing all round.
It is my opinion that the structure of the club is the crux of the problem, and is the reason why Manchester United is not getting the results on the pitch.

Overall, could it be that the Glazers do actually listen to the fans, despite some fans believing otherwise?

Are the Glazers really as bad as what the fans make them out to be?

Maybe the Glazers are an easy target when we are not winning, because we don’t seem to be unhappy when we are winning.

Just look at the recent walkout protest that was planned for the 73rd minute of the Brentford game at Old Trafford, yet by the 90th minute most fans were still in the stadium. Was it because we were 3-0 up by the time the planned walkout was due to begin?

What are your balanced opinions on the Glazer ownership of Manchester United?
 
It has been a massively successful deal for them. Very little money put in to begin with, everything leveraged against the club, running it like a business and not a football club as it is, and all the wasted money has been produced by the club and its fans and not the owners.
 
my unbalanced viewpoint is they're leaching cnuts and the day they finally feck off will be one of the biggest piss-ups of my life
 
Balanced view is that they are parasites in every way imaginable.
 
I saw what OP is trying here, and fair enough to try a balanced view. Also didnt mention the plans (finally) about revamping the stadium in the near future.

They've made a lot of mistakes along the way, and the commercial part has been very much to their benefit not the club. The very fact that we are more in debt than when we were first bought, whilst at the same time paying millions of pounds in dividends is nothing short of bloodsucking
 
Personally I think Woodward is far more directly responsible for a lot of the issues we have seen. The Glazers are responsible by proxy for placing trusting in him to run the football side of the club, which he has no business doing.

For all the complaints about dividends etc, they have never been shy about spending - Pogba, Maguire, Di Maria, Lukaku, the list goes on. That they were advised that these were good purchases falls more on Woodward's head for me.

I have some hope that the boardroom changes we have seen recently are the first steps in the right direction. I just hope it's not too late to fix the damage that a decade of mismanagement has wreaked.
 
Is this a wind up Malcom. Trolling right ! I honestly searched for white Text.

Stadium - They've ran this cash cow into the ground. If you think not increasing season ticket prices justifies neglecting the stadium then I'll have some of what you are smoking please. Absurd logic.

Players - Yes the glazers have spent shit loads of OUR own money on a merry go round of players and managers thinking this will just work out and decide to neglect every other aspect of how a giant modern day club should be run. From stadium, training facilities, science facilities, scouting systems, DOF etc, the list is endless. Will I ever be grateful that they spend loads of our own cash to buy players, will I feck. Half of the problem is that we have assembled the most expensive squad which is great for PR clicks but it's not been working for us for years and guess who's essentially responsible for allowing such a strategy, the Glazers.

Managers - Moyes (They let SAF choose his successor) LVG - Past his prime, Jose - Past his prime, warning signs were everywhere! Ole - steadied the ship then they gave him a new contract before sacking him a season later. Whilst we had a chance to get Klopp, the club screwed this up. Pep too perhaps. We're man united and we've not actually had a manager who's up and coming and in his prime for years! Just think about that. It's honesty a joke and no wonder the club is being audited.

The more I'm writing this the more I think you've trolled us @The Oracle :lol:

Revenue - Before the glazers came in you do realise, we were a well-oiled massive global club and whoever brought us and whoever they decided to play the part of Ed Woodward revenue streams would have been like always, huge. United built a huge fanbase, revenue stream, stadium, championship winning teams and so much more before Glazers took over. Why on earth should they be championed for continuing this to grow and then leeching from the profits.

My balanced view would be that the Glazers can feck off and any Glazer sympathises with them too. That's why standards have dropped, too many fans fooled by marquee signings and the glazers know if they top the spending charts with OUR money then fans like yourself will be fooled. You Sucker man :nono:
 
The Oracle said:
Players
It was only as recently as January of this year that it was reported that following the sale of Ferran Torres from Man City to Barcelona; Man Utd then had the most expensive squad in world football, coming in at an eye-watering £801m (twitter.com/ESPNFC/status/1479475420139507718)

My verdict regarding the players:
It is very clear that the Glazers have spent huge sums of money on assembling the squad. Is it down to the Glazers that the players don’t perform as expected once they are signed? I don’t think it is.
Click to expand...

This isn't balanced. It's clueless. If you construct all your footballing decisions around commercial criteria and treat players like glorified NFTs, you end up with the wrong players and the wrong culture. This mess didn't happen through bad luck.
 
They own the club, never had an issue with them taking dividends as I feel for the most part money for transfers has been available and we are up there in terms of wages. My gripe with them is how negligent they are with the sporting structure, it's like they don't care as long as they get their dividends. Big questions should have came to those involved in recruitment after the Mourinho failure as Jose and Lvg tenure proved that throwing money at the problem wasn't the solution.
 
So the only good thing they did was commercially? It could be argued that it was coming regardless of their ownership, the Premier League was just about to sky rocket I'm popularity with Manchester United being the biggest name in the league at that time (along with Arsenal, but having not long come off the treble, I'd say United were definitely o the verge of becoming a commercial juggernaut).

Yes there managed to maximise our noodle sponsorship, but that quickly gets lost in the sea of debt they put us in.

Basically, name one thing the Glazers have done that wouldn't have been done anyway? Now name all the bad things the Glazers have done? Answering those two questions will get your balanced view, which turns out ain't very balanced.
 
There is no balanced view when it come to the Glazers. They’re parasitic cnuts who don’t give a shit about bringing on pitch success to this football club. End of story.
 
The best compliment I can give them is that I don't think Liverpool were exceptionally better before Klopp.

Their Hodgson period was horrific.
 
They're effectively trying to repair their own damage.

At the start of their ownership, they couldn't give Fergie the funds he needed to rebuild the squad because the debt repayments were too high.

Then they re-financed and began to invest a lot in the team. However Fergie had already left.

So they ended up giving the money to the wrong managers.
 
Everyone thinks their own opinions are balanced. It's human nature.

The cold hard reality is that under their ownership we have gone from being one of the most successful and powerful clubs in world football, to being a top 4-6 side in England who are relatively irrelevant on the European and world stage.

There's your balance. All the rest is just window dressing.
 
The only balance I'd like to see is them on a tightrope with a ravenous tiger waiting on one side and a demented bull on the other.
 
It's incredibly popular to blame the Glazers for all of our on-going on-pitch struggles and I can get onboard with that to a certain extent - but like OP I am going to try and offer a balanced opinion with some hope for the future....

First and foremost, I think you have to split the Glazer ownership into two parts - the first before the restructuring of the PIK loans and the second after the restructuring of the PIK loans.

Period One - Before Restructuring of PIK Loans

I am not going to go over (again) all of the History of the circumstances and details behind the Glazers' purchase of the club, but in a nutshell, the Glazers, with the help of Ed Woodward, undertook a leveraged buyout of the club and used the clubs own profits to pay back their loans.

Now, from a football-fans point of view, this is abhorrent. United generating money through commercials interests and player sales, only to see that money go into the pockets of banks and American uber-Capitalists is disgusting...but it's common practice in industry. Some people struggle to offer a consistent opinion on this type of activity...it seems that the entire population become Socialists when we're discussing football clubs but it's part and parcel of the financial system.

Now, the very important point to note is that the PIK loans carried an extremely high rate of interest, largely because the Glazers borrowed so much money that the banks/financial institutions actually doubted their ability to pay it back, even using funds generated by the club. Football wasn't quite the cash cow it is now in 2004, so many at the time couldn't see how the Glazers would actually profit on this investment.

I don't have the actual figures to hand but I did a thread on this a couple of years back and from memory, I believe the annual interest payments alone from the first six years of Glazer ownership were £75m, totally £450m between 2005-2010. Now, this is a large sum now, in the context of a football club, but bear in mind we're talking about the noughties here....£450m could basically buy an entire World XI of superstar footballers. Instead, that money was drained from the club and paid back to banks. Sickening.

It's telling that during this period, United actually recorded a positive net-spend over a period of six years. This is absolutely key to starting the decline that we have experienced post-SAF. SAF himself famously repeated the mantra that in order to stay at the top, you had to strengthen whilst you were strong. United did not do this. Sure, we enjoyed huge on-field success during this period, and that distracted many supporters from what was going on behind the scenes. However, if you looked past the trophies, you could see all was not well and that the purse strings were definitely being tightened (many of us will remember the 'no value in the market' line we got fed every window).

We should have been looking to find the next Scholes, the next Ferdinand, the next Vidic, the next Rooney, the next Ronaldo etc....during this period...but instead, with a few notable exceptions, we largely bought in underwhelming and odd signings like Obertan, Manucho and Mame Diouf on the cheap.

Period Two - After the Restructuring of the PIK Loans

In 2010, the Glazers, following the recent increases in the size of the TV deal signed by the Premier League clubs and increasing commercial revenues, were finally able to restructure the clubs debt and make if far less expensive to manage. United still have debt today, but it doesn't actually cause us nearly as many issues as some supporters believe. Sure, it would be better not to have that debt, and without the Glazers the debt almost certainly would not exist...but it needn't necessarily hold us back.

Almost immediately, the interest rates dropped and I believe, again from memory, that we started to pay around £20m per annum, as opposed to £75m, to service the debt. Bear in mind, this was also happening against a backdrop of increasing profitability and revenues, so the debt payments were now very manageable and increasingly, largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Again, of course it would be better to have no debts and pay no interest...but this idea that we can never be successful under Glazer stewardship because of financial constraints doesn't really hold-up.

Even after more funds became available, we didn't necessarily rush out and become mega-active in the market, like many believe we should have, but we definitely made some effort to try to build for the future and replace key players. We signed the likes of Smalling, Jones, Kagawa, Hernandez and DDG during this period, all touted as genuine stars of the future. We also added RvP to give SAF the firepower he needed to win one last PL title.

After SAF left, the club made a war-chest available to Ed Woodward, now promoted to CEO and various managers. Again, this is not the place to debate how or why it all went wrong...but suffice to say having an investment banker with a physics degree and his mates oversee transfers with the input of various different hangers-on and managers with their own ideas and agendas is not a winning strategy.

What cannot be disputed, and this is important, is that the Glazers have 'allowed' United to spend £1BN net under Woodward's stewardship. Again, please do not come at me with stupid comments like 'it's the clubs money, of course we should be able to spend it' like that idiot LUHG Mike off Twitter. Nobody disputes that, but that's not the reality of our situation. The Glazers could have allowed us to spend none of that money and siphoned it all off for themselves. Again, this is the World we live in, they own the club, it's now 'their' money to do with as they see fit. That's before we even get into the insane amount we have spent in wages over the last decade...very few people think about that when they calculate our out-goings. All-in, we've probably spent more than any club in World football.

So, the key point I am making here is that whether you like the Glazers or not (and I am no fan) their ownership of the club need not prohibit further success. I get tired of seeing so many posters trot out lines they have heard on Twitter about how we cannot possibly win anything under Glazer ownership. With the budget they have allocated, it's perfectly reasonable to expect that if the club is managed correctly, we can compete on all fronts. Liverpool manage to achieve far more on a much smaller budget, yet nobody is campaigning for the removal of FSG because it just so happens the much smaller amount of money they make available has been spent incredibly well.

This is not an attempt to absolve the Glazers of responsibility or try to win people over and make them Glazer fans. Not at all. I was outside the ground protesting in 2004 and putting what little cash I had at the time into Shareholders United/MUST, so I'll have none of that thanks. I am just trying to offer a message of hope that it is possible for us to be a successful football team and be owned by the Glazer family. To suggest otherwise now, after the money spent, feels like sorry excuses for poor football decisions to me.
 
diarm said:
Everyone thinks their own opinions are balanced. It's human nature.

The cold hard reality is that under their ownership we have gone from being one of the most successful and powerful clubs in world football, to being a top 4-6 side in England who are relatively irrelevant on the Europea n and world stage.

There's your balance. All the rest is just window dressing.
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The cold hard reality is that the Glazers bought Utd in 2005 and Utd has won the following under their ownership --
- 5 Premier Leagues
- 1 CL
- 1 FA Cup
- 1 Europa League
- 3 EFL Cups

The cold hard reality is that Utd succeeded under SAF and David Gill, and have not succeeded to the same degree since. Yet for some reason, a subset of the fans really want to place the blame (but not the successes) on the owners.

IIRC, Utd fans hated the previous owners as well.

My own personal opinion is that the 'unrest' allows the club hierarchy to hide. They can be completely incompetent and the fans will not blame them for it. As I've said before, if fraud/graft is found in the day to day running of the club and the player acquisitions, I will not be in the slightest surprised.

My hope is that this year has made the Glazers see that they have to take control of the club top to bottom -- that assuming that the British core and various old boys know in any way what they were doing was a big mistake.

I expect unrest to rise because it's stoked by the old boys every time their personal fiefdom is threatened.

Not sure that's a balanced look, but it is what it is.
 
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Balanced view:
Anything pro-Glazer is anti-Manchester United
End of balanced view.
 
The balanced view is they have really capitalised on our brand and made us into a commercial behemoth, the flip side is they put Woodward in charge and happily just left him to it. Ask a Glazer if they want a PL title and they'll ask how much it would cost to deliver before making a decision, that's where football is these days you're either a cash cow, or owned by someone hoping to make you into a cash cow, or a sports washing project.
 
Pathetic thread. The put a load of debt on the club to buy it. then sucked out millions in fees, interest etc. They hampered spending until the PIKs were refinanced. They dont care about what happens on the pitch or if we ever win another trophy, they dont care that OT is leaking and third rate, they dont care what the fans think. Its somewhat astonishing that they entrusted the club to Woodward, then let him carry on even though he was utterly useless and wasted a billion plus, but given how much money they have made probably think so what. If they gave a sh^t they would have hired experienced professionals to run the club, as CIty did. They are leaches, everything we now see on the pitch and off it stems from their ownership and the rot that spreads from the top. Nothing else to say.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
The balanced view is they have really capitalised on our brand and made us into a commercial behemoth, the flip side is they put Woodward in charge and happily just left him to it. Ask a Glazer if they want a PL title and they'll ask how much it would cost to deliver before making a decision, that's where football is these days you're either a cash cow, or owned by someone hoping to make you into a cash cow, or a sports washing project.
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That is just cashing on the sucess of sir Alex Ferguson. Can they attract same sponsorship deals now?
 
tomaldinho1 said:
The balanced view is they have really capitalised on our brand and made us into a commercial behemoth, the flip side is they put Woodward in charge and happily just left him to it. Ask a Glazer if they want a PL title and they'll ask how much it would cost to deliver before making a decision, that's where football is these days you're either a cash cow, or owned by someone hoping to make you into a cash cow, or a sports washing project.
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No, ask a Glazer if they want a PL title they would say no. Trophies are irrevelant to their business plan.
 
C3Pique said:
Personally I think Woodward is far more directly responsible for a lot of the issues we have seen. The Glazers are responsible by proxy for placing trusting in him to run the football side of the club, which he has no business doing.

For all the complaints about dividends etc, they have never been shy about spending - Pogba, Maguire, Di Maria, Lukaku, the list goes on. That they were advised that these were good purchases falls more on Woodward's head for me.

I have some hope that the boardroom changes we have seen recently are the first steps in the right direction. I just hope it's not too late to fix the damage that a decade of mismanagement has wreaked.
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Glazers appointed him.
 
Shit thread really. BUT. it's a "be careful what you wish for" situation. How many owners would you truly feel proud of/happy with? The way they took us over wasn't good, but the debt isn't really of any concern, is it? The club is self sufficient and we are capable of giving the highest wages and paying the highest transfer fees without them inputting their own money. So it's kind "eh". The dividends I feel like is pretty standard practice and doesn't exactly stop us from doing things.

Ignoring the facilities and letting them stagnate and fall behind is their biggest problem. Squad building/managerial performance, I wouldn't really say is on them, not directly at least, and it's not something that can't be easily fixed. It's literally been "hire the right person to oversee all of this". Woodward was not it, very clearly. Maybe Arnold is. It's hard to say what the cause of the issue or success is. What I can say for sure is the manager easily has the biggest impact for pretty much all football related matters. If you have a top manager, he can easily still be successful and make the structure above him "look good". See Sir Alex. Hell, with our "disaster" of a structure and "poisioned chalice" job, we've been reasonably successful the past 9 years with some really bad choices as managers (and yes, that's all it was, bad choices as manager). Moyes was never going to be successful. Mourinho has shown pretty clearly for the most of the past decade that he is no longer a manager for a big club. Van Gaal has literally not managed any other club team all decade but while he was here, implemented his style (was just boring as feck). Ole finished 3rd and 2nd and reached multiple cup finals competing against Pep/Klopp ffs. None of them have/had it in them to really get us to being a top team, even if the structure was perfect. Get everything perfect, they're still the wrong selections as manager.

The biggest impact a good structure will have will be transition between managers and some more streamlined squad building. But like... that can't be determined until a long period of time. If a manager just stays 5-10 years, and he gets a system that is clear and the team has a normal record of success to failure signings, is that a functioning structure, or just a good coach?

Basically in summary - Glazers are shit, but it's not a big fix to get the team performing again. A good coach goes a long way towards that, and then just not making stupid signings and buying players that fit (which the manager should also have the balls to say no for players that don't fit).
 
choccy77 said:
Glazers appointed him.
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Yeah, but like.. they're not going to sell the club because one of their appointments didn't go well. Let's be real here. The extent of involvement that they need to have to be "fine" is just hiring someone that's right for the role and then delegating to him, which hopefully is the case with Arnold. That's literally it. We don't know how involved they get, but I don't think they've ever been too involved?
 
so many shills coming out of the wood-work

you know you've got shite owners when the best argument against them leaving is what if someone even more shite buys us
 
The facts don’t lie. We’ve gone from a perennial PL contender, often a PL winner, to a club which no longer seriously contends for a major trophy. We can all blame Ole, Pogba, or the medical staff or anyone else we want to blame, but the constant throughout our demise has been the owners.
 
diarm said:
Everyone thinks their own opinions are balanced. It's human nature.

The cold hard reality is that under their ownership we have gone from being one of the most successful and powerful clubs in world football, to being a top 4-6 side in England who are relatively irrelevant on the European and world stage.

There's your balance. All the rest is just window dressing.
Click to expand...

This. If they were hands on and really cared and it got this bad that might be a tiny bit better. This is the worst job anyone could have done on a major club. They are invisibly choking the club in debt while letting the facilities fall apart and giving arsehole players free reign over the manager. Horrible owners up to now and I suspect they always will be. Best thing they can do is put a structure in place and stay out of it and keep collecting their rent
 
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