Better the devil you know?

Nooooooo, please! Are you a glutton for punishment, haven't we suffered enough; why can't we have nice things, for once? Just want to highlight a couple of things, and leave it at that...
  • Even when one of Avram and Joel's sporting organizations is successful, you get a sense that they underperform (relative to what they would have achieved under better (or even league-average) owners). Consider United when we were successful under Ferguson — we had the chance to build a proper European dynasty (like Madrid in the 1950s and 2010s, Ajax and Bayern in the 1970s and Barcelona at the turn of the previous decade), but didn't because the Glazers tightened the purse-strings, sold our best player without appropriate replacement(s), and refused to level up as the chickens had come home to roost (which also had an impact on the domestic front...where City were coming up leaps and bounds). Now look at the Buccaneers, their NFL franchise — one of the worst-run organizations in the entire league (under the auspice of Avram and Joel), which suddenly had a chance to compete with the addition of the greatest quarterback of all time (by sheer happenstance); they won a Super Bowl in his first season, sure, but it was all downhill from there: stumbled in his second season, and then elevated subpar coaches at the behest of the outgoing Head Coach (which backfired spectacularly, leading to the ousting of the offensive coordinator and the re-retirement of the golden goose; clearly, no lessons were learned from the Moyes debacle). Even if United is successful under ten Hag, the Glazers' idiocy and greed will almost always hold us back — that should not happen.
  • Allowing the club to spend a portion of its own money is the rock bottom of expectations, not something that deserves praise — especially in a league where owners have spent hundreds of millions (if not several billions) of their own money to elevate the standing of their club and give it a competitive advantage over the rest (City being the most prominent example). Just to put things in perspective, United could have built world-class training facilities and completely revamped Old Trafford (if not built a brand new variant of Wembley Stadium, for example). If the Glazers don't leave, they will device new mechanisms to bleed the club dry, and cut corners at every other turn — these clowns are incredibly lucky that they inherited a club as robust and resilient to abuse as Manchester United (which had and has very few parallels), with the greatest manager of all time in situ to paper over the cracks. If they had taken over a midtable club, they would've been in The Championship by now (if not lower, staring into the abyss). Even Liverpool (a massive club in its own right, and one of the titans of the sport) started creaking after a few years of Gillett and Hicks. United is not too big to fail any more when it is a borderline Top 4 club rather than a perennial winner, this is not the late '90s and early 2000s where we were streets ahead of the chasing pack from an economic standpoint — the alarm bells have been ringing for quite a while, and unless ten Hag works miracles year-in and year-out for the foreseeable future, we're going to end up in a terrible situation because of these owners. They need to take what's being offered to them, and piss off; anything else would be a massive disappointment after ephemeral glimmers of hope.

 
A big part of me would rather they stay than the Qataris, who I am dead against. But I’m not sure how much longer the club can go on being bled dry by these parasites, it would have ruined almost any other club. I think the momentum Ten Hag is building will give us success even if the glazers stay but long term issues like the infrastructure and the debt will only remain and likely get worse.
 
Of course not and depending on a genius manager to perform miracles is a terrible strategy.

If they stay, I could easily see them pulling levers or something like that and this would be killing the club in the long term.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Interesting to hear if anyone out there thinks that the Glazers staying in charge might be the best option?

They seem to have finally stumbled on a decent manager and - for all their sins - have tended to back their managers in the transfer market. With the rumours of Avram Glazer being keen to hold onto the club, what happens if they raise a couple of hundred million through selling some equity in the club to give ETH a war chest for the summer?

We’ve a lot of fans (including me) who are uncomfortable with being owned by a nation state. And any private owner is going to have to raise 5 or 6 billion quid to buy the club. That’s a brutal outlay and it’s hard to see how that won’t involve more debt on the club and put us on the back foot in the transfer market.

So yeah, what are the thoughts on business as usual next season?
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And what happens when ETH leaves? Another period in the wilderness and loads of wasted money? This is like when we had SAF papering over the cracks of their ownership. Lack of investment in the club as a whole and poor decision making. In the short term these things can be, to some extent, compensated for by a good manager, but in the long term they are still extremely problematic for the club as a whole.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Interesting to hear if anyone out there thinks that the Glazers staying in charge might be the best option?

They seem to have finally stumbled on a decent manager and - for all their sins - have tended to back their managers in the transfer market. With the rumours of Avram Glazer being keen to hold onto the club, what happens if they raise a couple of hundred million through selling some equity in the club to give ETH a war chest for the summer?

We’ve a lot of fans (including me) who are uncomfortable with being owned by a nation state. And any private owner is going to have to raise 5 or 6 billion quid to buy the club. That’s a brutal outlay and it’s hard to see how that won’t involve more debt on the club and put us on the back foot in the transfer market.

So yeah, what are the thoughts on business as usual next season?
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Id be inclined to agree with you if it was how you laid it out, but rumours are they need to buy siblings out, 4/6ths of them. They don’t have £4bn themselves so it’d just be loaded onto the club anyway. Ratcliffe isn’t an idiot, so I’d rather him than them.
 
I’m a bit indifferent to the glazers to be honest I understand a lot of issues with them but they have always put the money up for players. I find it ironic just as all is good and on the up we can upset the apple cart by changing owner. Regardless of what any one thinks ownership change always creates a lot of instability and issues early on and last thing we all want is the ETH process being put off track
 
I'm not far off your thinking @Pogue Mahone

Certainly there re an Ineos takeover based on debt but with a ticket that is 6x what the Glazers paid

I'm not particularly bothered with the politics of state ownership but what I'm averse to is sorting everything out with a bigger wallet. I have no time for what the Qataris have done at PSG. Abu Dhabi though... you have to admit they run things pretty well at City and the whole cheating stuff is largely down to narrowing the gap and the club being an empty shell. Reckon they would do a good job of running us without having to cheat FFP. It's an outlier though.

My nightmare scenario is going back to the days of Woody's Disneyland.
 
Hmmmm… maybe I’m not explaining the situation well enough. If we could travel back through time and choose an owner other than the Glazers and their leveraged buy out then that’s a no brainer. Someone like Jim Radcliffe could buy the club relatively cheaply and run it a lot more profitably. We’d be in a better place, no doubt. Sadly that’s a pipe dream.

Back to 2023. The Glazers can raise a shitload of money in return for equity in the club. Nobody else has that option. Instead, a new owner has to pay a staggering sum of money, up front, in order to buy the club. And we all need to realise that there are only two types of people who will pay that staggering sum. People like the Qataris, or hard-nosed business men who will want a return on that staggering sum of money. And I don’t see how they generate that return without screwing a lot more money out of the club than the Glazers need to do if they choose not to sell.

I genuinely don’t know which option is my personal preference. I guess I want rid of the Glazers because I always have wanted rid of the Glazers. But it’s hard not to be anxious about all of the alternatives.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The whole point is that they can generate funds without additional debt by selling off some equity in the club. An option not a available to new owners.
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I think that’s what FSG will do but 4 of the 6 Glazers want to sell and they aren’t going to be investing that money back into the club. I don’t see how Avram/Joel can keep a majority share and raise funds for the infrastructure spending required without either putting more debt on the club or selling a share of our future revenues. The club posted a loss of 110m last season even before the 220m summer spend and without any infrastructure spending - our commercial revenues have completely stalled - with Chelsea, City and Newcastle all having access to vast external funding - I don’t see any scenario where they stay and the club reaches its huge potential - massive investment is needed to do so and even if they did a total sea change and decided to put money in rather than out they don’t have the means to do it.
 
Ibi Dreams said:
Sadly there just aren't any good options. There aren't even any ok options, really. They seem to range from bad to horrible. I genuinely don't know what I want. Well, I do - a debt free, well run club with the investment it needs. But seemingly the one option that will provide that is also the worst ethically. I can't really get behind any of the possibilities
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Agree.
 
Mickeza said:
I think that’s what FSG will do but 4 of the 6 Glazers want to sell and they aren’t going to be investing that money back into the club. I don’t see how Avram/Joel can keep a majority share and raise funds for the infrastructure spending required without either putting more debt on the club or selling a share of our future revenues. The club posted a loss of 110m last season even before the 220m summer spend and without any infrastructure spending - our commercial revenues have completely stalled - with Chelsea, City and Newcastle all having access to vast external funding - I don’t see any scenario where they stay and the club reaches its huge potential - massive investment is needed to do so and even if they did a total sea change and decided to put money in rather than out they don’t have the means to do it.
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Fair point. But who the hell (other than an oil state) can afford to buy out 6 out of 6 of the Glazers and raise all those additional funds, without doing all the above?
 
If it's not the Qataris I think there's a good chance any takeover would be by someone who believes they can screw more money out of the club than the Glazers can, despite paying considerably above the stock market value, so yeah the Glazers staying might be better. I include Saint Jim in that.

It will be the Qataris though, unless the Glazers cock up the brinkmanship bit that is.
 
The only owners worse than the Glazer leeches were those chicken farmers who ruined Blackburn
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Fair point. But who the hell (other than an oil state) can afford to buy out 6 out of 6 of the Glazers and raise all those additional funds, without doing all the above?
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And doubt the siblings will take market value over Qatar valuation. Hmm.. Here's 500m, but Qatar were offering £800m!
 
We might do well on the pitch for a while, but it won't last with those parasites in charge. The club needs significant investment that they can't afford.

I hate all the current options, but having new owners will likely mean the current debt will be gone, and the new rules won't allow a leveraged buyout so no more debt added.

They've been terrible and it's in the best interest of the club if they sell. 100%.
 
No to the power of feck no. If they stay, it'll get worse and we'll fall further behind
 
Spiralling debt, lack of hopes and dreams - or filthy gas money.

I'll take the latter.
 
It’s definitely crossed my mind too, especially with Boehly being so hands on with Chelsea, and rumours of Qatar owning us. Maybe having owners who let you get on with it isn’t that bad after all. I really don’t want us to be another sheikh club, and we do look like we’ve turned a corner.

Personally I haven’t gotten involved in any of the takeover chat so far as I can’t do anything about it and when it happens I’m sure I’ll hear about it anyway. But I’m not really keen on any of the options I’ve heard about.
 
Camilo said:
I'd prefer the glazer's to Qatar. No owner, apart from disgustingly rich ones who inevitably earned their money through dodgy means, is going to actually spend money.
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What have the Qataris done that is dodgy and the Glazers supporting a halo?
 
2 man midfield said:
It’s definitely crossed my mind too, especially with Boehly being so hands on with Chelsea, and rumours of Qatar owning us. Maybe having owners who let you get on with it isn’t that bad after all. I really don’t want us to be another sheikh club, and we do look like we’ve turned a corner.

Personally I haven’t gotten involved in any of the takeover chat so far as I can’t do anything about it and when it happens I’m sure I’ll hear about it anyway. But I’m not really keen on any of the options I’ve heard about.
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"turned a corner"

Just wait until we finish top 4 and the Glazers spend feck all again and we end up signing Weghorse permanently out of desperation. There's only so much Ten Hag will be able to do
 
hobbers said:
Even if the Glazers morphed into respectable people with football acumen, them staying on will still inevitably lead to the club trapped in a financial black hole.

They've reached a ceiling with the debt levels and the cost of borrowing. They cant afford to get the investment the club needs even if they wanted to.
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Of course they can. They bought the club for under a billion and it’s currently valued at over five times that. It would be a walk in the park to raise a few hundred million to invest in their asset.
 
I think the new Woodward-less structure seems like we’re finally moving forward again. That said the only way I’d be ok with them staying is if they moved the debt off the club and paid the interest on it themselves. That’s the big issue and the reason so much money has been sucked out the club.
 
With the investors from Qatar as our new owners I can for the the next decade take my grandkids to the new 100k Old Trafford and enjoy wonderful moments together. Match days will become happy days and 2025 I maybe will go to Doha with my wife on holiday. We both like exploring new places.

What’s not to like?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Of course they can. They bought the club for under a billion and it’s currently valued at over five times that. It would be a walk in the park to raise a few hundred million to invest in their asset.
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The problem is the club can’t afford to pay it back and compete. They’ll have people queuing up to lend to them at these interest rates but paying it back will be a problem unless they dip into their own pockets which isn’t how they operate.

Debt and losses are increasing, investment in infrastructure is a pipe dream and funding the first team will get tougher and tougher. Unless ETH can work miracles it’s a bleak future under the Glazers. We don’t know what any new owners will bring but the future under the Glazers is just a long painful death until they sell anyway.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
So more debt. We’re really caught between the devil and the deep blue sea!
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Debt is fine though, issue with an LBO is the debt is loaded onto the asset. Boehly has raised a huge amount of debt (more than we have) but Chelsea aren’t liable for it.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
So more debt. We’re really caught between the devil and the deep blue sea!
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I can live with debt against the parent company. There is no way we can lump more debt onto the club to pay the billion plus needed for infrastructure whilst competing with Chelsea, City and Newcastle (and whoever Qatar buy if it isn’t us) though.
 
Mickeza said:
I can live with debt against the parent company. There is no way we can lump more debt onto the club to pay the billion plus needed for infrastructure whilst competing with Chelsea, City and Newcastle (and whoever Qatar buy if it isn’t us) though.
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But selling equity in the club wouldn’t put it in any more debt.

I’m sketchy about the difference between debt on the club vs debt on the parent company anyway. Surely any investor will want each asset to wash its own face? They won’t want debts incurred by United to be paid for by other, more successful, businesses. Especially if they have to answer to shareholders (INEOS is a public company, right?)
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Back to 2023. The Glazers can raise a shitload of money in return for equity in the club. Nobody else has that option.
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And what next? Take all that money for themselves like they did after the previous equity sale?
 
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