Champions league Semi Finals 2020-21 - April 27-28 and May 4-5

Can't believe in 2021 and there's supposed Utd fans who still don't see the clear difference in us spending our money that was earned to clubs spending money given to them by their owners. It couldn't be further away from rocket science, and yet some still seem confused.
The problem is that where the money comes from is not the only problem, it's how money in general is the biggest factor in the game.
 
It’s going to be city isn’t it? Still only their first and It won’t be easy getting number two.
 
The problem is that where the money comes from is not the only problem, it's how money in general is the biggest factor in the game.

It's a global entertainment business, money was always going to become a bigger factor as more and more eyes were on it. Plus it kind of just the way of the world now. It's wealth obsessed.
 
You realise other clubs complained about us as well, said that clubs like United have ruined football with our money.

If you cared about teams winning by spending you would have complained when it was working for us.

I don't like City or the way their money affects football but I understand it when fans from other clubs don't care about our whining.
I don’t really care what biased opposition fans say to be honest. People don’t like Utd because we were successful despite the fact we did it the right way through respectable values. It was never really about the money, that just came from our success. I don’t disagree in rival investment, but when clearly corrupt money elevates teams above decades worth of sporting merit that’s a real problem. Teams have shown over the years you don’t need that stupid amount of money to compete. The likes of Arsenal, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leicester etc have all done well without the need for state funding. In now way have the made the game better for anyone expect a small pool of club fans.
 
I don’t really care what biased opposition fans say to be honest. People don’t like Utd because we were successful despite the fact we did it the right way through respectable values. It was never really about the money, that just came from our success. I don’t disagree in rival investment, but when clearly corrupt money elevates teams above decades worth of sporting merit that’s a real problem. Teams have shown over the years you don’t need that stupid amount of money to compete. The likes of Arsenal, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leicester etc have all done well without the need for state funding. In now way have the made the game better for anyone expect a small pool of club fans.
I bet city fans say the same about us.

Funny how things turn around when you're not the main ones benefitting from the big spending.
 
It's a global entertainment business, money was always going to become a bigger factor as more and more eyes were on it. Plus it kind of just the way of the world now. It's wealth obsessed.
Yes but this has been in a lot of people's eyes as the main problem. City, Chelsea, and PSG are just the natural progression of it.
 
No, but I don't agree that just because we got our money through normal business means it's ok, and a good thing for football.
Eh? So you’d rather the owners keep it? I don’t think we have really outspent similar clubs across Europe with similar stature to us historically (at least not by a lot).
 
Sir Alex spent under £547 million on 99 players and he went on to win these major trophies : 13X Premier League Titles.. 5X FA Cups.. 4X League Cups.. 2X Champions Leagues, 1X European Cup Winners' Cup... plus these non-major trophies : 1X Intercontinental Cup.. 1X Club World Cup.. 1X UEFA Super Cup.. 10X Charity Shields/Community Shields.. :devil:
 
Eh? So you’d rather the owners keep it? I don’t think we have really outspent similar clubs across Europe with similar stature to us historically (at least not by a lot).
I don't really care what they do with the money.

The similar stature part isn't really important. Stature shouldn't mean you have such a massive advantage over smaller teams. Money either rules football or it doesn't.
 
Sir Alex spent under £547 million on 99 players and he went on to win these major trophies : 13X Premier League Titles.. 5X FA Cups.. 4X League Cups.. 2X Champions Leagues, 1X European Cup Winners' Cup... plus these non-major trophies : 1X Intercontinental Cup.. 1X Club World Cup.. 1X UEFA Super Cup.. 10X Charity Shields/Community Shields.. :devil:
How does that compare to the other teams at the time?
 
What time was that then? Because there was no time when United could vastly outspend their rivals.

In my memory (and obviously that could be wrong) it was always Utd who could consistently outspend their rivals. I’m talking over, say, a 5 year period. I know that Newcastle and Blackburn had short spells where they may have outspent you but I’m fairly sure if you looked at your spending on transfers & wages between say 1993 and 2003 you’d be comfortably ahead of everyone else. What’s difficult is is actually proving whether I’m right or wrong, does anyone have any details of those wage bills and transfer spends in the first decade of the Premiership?
 
Sir Alex spent under £547 million on 99 players and he went on to win these major trophies : 13X Premier League Titles.. 5X FA Cups.. 4X League Cups.. 2X Champions Leagues, 1X European Cup Winners' Cup... plus these non-major trophies : 1X Intercontinental Cup.. 1X Club World Cup.. 1X UEFA Super Cup.. 10X Charity Shields/Community Shields.. :devil:

Thanks for cheering me up!
 
I bet city fans say the same about us.

Funny how things turn around when you're not the main ones benefitting from the big spending.
You clearly can’t see a difference in legitimate money and corruption fuelled cash. Unfortunately most other fans will agree with you purely due to how much they hate Utd and like to see anyone else on top.
 
I don't think anyone's really saying that City bought the title this year. It's just that the entire club is built on a foundation of financial doping. They didn't do anything to earn it, they just became the arbitrary vessel for an Arab state's desire to whitewash their global image through football. In that sense, they've bought everything they have. None of it was earned through growth, integrity and hard-won success, it was just granted to them.
That is true, however their team is not build on star players (aka PSG). They have an expensive squad but hardly world class level. Team that beat PSG - Ederson, Mahrez, Walker, Zinchenko, Dias, Silva, Foden - hardly players that everybody in the market wanted. de Bruyne and Gundogan are their only world class players, with Sterling dropping form and Aguero injured. Surely some credit has to go to Pep for that, especially for making them so good defensively.

Their journey to the top has been fueled by oil money, nobody denies it. To be honest I'd be angry like some people on here if we were spending like last years under Fergie ("no value in the market"), but since we've been amongst top spenders recently, I don't see this as an excuse.
 
You clearly can’t see a difference in legitimate money and corruption fuelled cash. Unfortunately most other fans will agree with you purely due to how much they hate Utd and like to see anyone else on top.

You got it. We were the best supported team in the land even through the Dippers years of dominance, go figure.
 
Overmars was about £5 million. Vieira was a steal at around £2.5 million.

Pires was £6 million. He replaced Overmars who they sold for £25 million.

Henry was £11 million. They got Pires and Henry using the Overmars money and still had £8million left over.

For reference we bought Rio soon after for £30 million.

Henry cost a third of Rio.

You're miles off on this one.
And Ferdinand, adjusted for inflation, would cost over £150m now, one of the most expensive transfers of all-time.
 
You clearly can’t see a difference in legitimate money and corruption fuelled cash. Unfortunately most other fans will agree with you purely due to how much they hate Utd and like to see anyone else on top.
There is a difference, I said there was.

The problem is you have your head in the sand about the problems with the huge amounts of money in football we have benefitted from.

This corrupted money in football is just a natural progression of the way which money has dominated football, which we have benefitted from.
 
That is true, however their team is not build on star players (aka PSG). They have an expensive squad but hardly world class level. Team that beat PSG - Ederson, Mahrez, Walker, Zinchenko, Dias, Silva, Foden - hardly players that everybody in the market wanted. de Bruyne and Gundogan are their only world class players, with Sterling dropping form and Aguero injured. Surely some credit has to go to Pep for that, especially for making them so good defensively.

Their journey to the top has been fueled by oil money, nobody denies it. To be honest I'd be angry like some people on here if we were spending like last years under Fergie ("no value in the market"), but since we've been amongst top spenders recently, I don't see this as an excuse.
Ruben Dias ?
 
Doesn't have the head for the Premier League.

See him losing it when they were losing? Now imagine that in our midfield when we go 1-0 down to Wolves or Burnley. Red card walking.

Nice player, shite mentality.

he could be our new Cantona'...fantastic player who wears his heart on his sleeve
PSG are finished, I can see a clear out of their top players & Manager
 
You realise other clubs complained about us as well, said that clubs like United have ruined football with our money.

If you cared about teams winning by spending you would have complained when it was working for us.

I don't like City or the way their money affects football but I understand it when fans from other clubs don't care about our whining.

We were never the biggest spenders in the league. In the early years Villa, Blackburn, Leeds and Liverpool all spent more than us. Even City a good few years before they went down. Then Newcastle and Arsenal before Chelsea and then City took over.

I think there have been 4 seasons since the PL began where we had the biggest transfer window, but at no point in the last 30 years have we been the biggest overall spenders in the league.

Don't let a few big signings fool you. What Chelsea and then City have done has eclipsed anything we ever spent. That's before you take into account how the funds we used were raised.
 
The big boys competition. Fair play to City playing some lovely stuff. This is what Pep and City have been building up to the last few years.. all the hard work.
 
So it took 1 Billion and I don't know how many years for Pep to get City to a CL final! :D
 
I agree. The landscape that a lot of fans seem to want to go back to is not the one where any team can win the league, it’s the pre-City, pre-Chelsea one where Man Utd are the financially dominant force and rules such as FFP mean that there is no possible way that other clubs can compete over any length of time. I’d want that too if I was a Utd fan but let’s not dress this up.

That’s not it at all, it’s not about preventing competition, it’s the opposite. If that were true then why did United fans campaign (and win) against the BSkyB takeover in 1997?

The problem is, nobody likes “Man Yoo” because we were successful for so long. I get it. It must have been incredibly tiresome to watch and hear about constantly. Especially because winners are usually, by definition, bad losers.

However, don’t let that blind you to what we (the Utd fans) are saying. We campaigned against the BSkyB takeover because it was bad for football. We campaigned against the Glazer takeover (and continue to do so) for broadly the same reason, although admittedly now unlike with the BSkyB takeover these owners hurt us rather than help us.

Problem 1 - When oil barons buy up football clubs and pump them full of dirty money it turns fans off football. As another poster said, this is only the start. “City” will continue to spend and build relentlessly and we could see a situation where they win two or more trophies every year. The issue is, apart from 40,000 “City” fans, nobody is interested. People respond with apathy. We are already bored. There’s no sporting merit. It’s not just “City” to be fair, who really wants to see three of the final four CL spots taken up by PSG, Chelsea and City? For the neutral (and for the good of the game) far better it was Barcelona/Real, Manchester Utd/Liverpool, AC Milan/Juventus, Bayern/Dortmund...real football teams, who have grown organically, with global fanbases

Problem 2 - You allude to this at the end of your post. The ESL is a direct response to the rudderless FFP rules failing to curtail the oil clubs. Yes, the likes of Utd, Liverpool and Real wanted to boost their revenues but the other key driver was to introduce much stricter FFP rules as a condition for playing in the ESL. This is why City, Chelsea and PSG were all so torn. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. Join and have their spending heavily curtailed and struggle in an “elite” league. Don’t join and see their revenues fall dramatically behind. This hasn’t been focused on much at all by the press but is a key part of the problem. It the FAs/UEFA can’t or won’t do something about these clubs, the “establishment” will be forced to take matters into their own hands. Again, this would be a disaster for the game as a whole.
 
How does that compare to the other teams at the time?

In Ferguson’s first five years he spent the same amount as Spurs (£19m) and less than Liverpool (£24m). Whilst United’s spending was more than the average team, we were by no means blowing others out of the water in the same way that Chelsea and City have done


1992-1998 net spend
Newcastle: £40,570,000 (> 4000% more than United)
Arsenal: £31,070,000 (> 3100% more than United)
Liverpool: £29,625,000 (> 2900% more than United spent)
Chelsea: £27,705,000 (> 2700% more than United spent)
Spurs: £18,630,000 (> 1800% more than United spent)
City: £12,070,000 (> 1200% more than United spent)
United: -£40,000

United rank: 7th biggest spenders


1999-2003 net spend

United: £90,050,000
Liverpool: £60,110,000 (United spent 50% more)
Newcastle: £56,950,000 (United spent 58% more)
City: £54,662,000 (United spent 65% more)
Spurs: £46,552,500 (United spent 93% more)
Chelsea: £40,760,000 (United spent 121% more)
Arsenal: £17,916,000 (United spent 403% more)


1992-2003 net spend
Newcastle: £97,520,000 (8% more than United spent)
United: £90,010,000
Liverpool: £89,735,000 (United spent 0.3% more)
Chelsea: £68,465,000 (United spent 31% more)
City: £66,732,000 (United spent 35% more)
Spurs: £65,182,500 (United spent 38% more)
Arsenal: £48,986,000 (United spent 84% more)

United rank: 2nd biggest spenders

https://therepublikofmancunia.com/did-united-buy-success-like-chelsea-and-city-course-not/

Also highest spenders every year
https://www.football365.com/news/the-biggest-spender-in-every-pl-season-and-how-they-fared-2
 
I'd say he is right now but not when they got him.
Exactly. I don't know what is the general football world opinion now about City individuals, but I'm pretty sure most of them were not considered world class when City bought them. De Bruyne and Gundogan are the exceptions, as I mentioned before. Fairly modest for CL finalists, Premier League winners and League Cup champions.
 
That’s not it at all, it’s not about preventing competition, it’s the opposite. If that were true then why did United fans campaign (and win) against the BSkyB takeover in 1997?

The problem is, nobody likes “Man Yoo” because we were successful for so long. I get it. It must have been incredibly tiresome to watch and hear about constantly. Especially because winners are usually, by definition, bad losers.

However, don’t let that blind you to what we (the Utd fans) are saying. We campaigned against the BSkyB takeover because it was bad for football. We campaigned against the Glazer takeover (and continue to do so) for broadly the same reason, although admittedly now unlike with the BSkyB takeover these owners hurt us rather than help us.

Problem 1 - When oil barons buy up football clubs and pump them full of dirty money it turns fans off football. As another poster said, this is only the start. “City” will continue to spend and build relentlessly and we could see a situation where they win two or more trophies every year. The issue is, apart from 40,000 “City” fans, nobody is interested. People respond with apathy. We are already bored. There’s no sporting merit. It’s not just “City” to be fair, who really wants to see three of the final four CL spots taken up by PSG, Chelsea and City? For the neutral (and for the good of the game) far better it was Barcelona/Real, Manchester Utd/Liverpool, AC Milan/Juventus, Bayern/Dortmund...real football teams, who have grown organically, with global fanbases.
So in other words preserve the status quo and don't dare challenge them, or for want of a better phrase something similar to the ESL proposals.

Also funny you mention Bayern, pre 1960 they had a mere two major honours (for perspective that is half as many as WHU currently while we had more in the decade pre Roman alone), so did they make a deadline that others missed? Why was it all right to challenge the status quo in 1960 but not the 00s?
 
Is he? Was he world class when they got him? Genuine question. I thought there was a discussion that we went for Lindelof instead of him for whatever reason.


doubt you went for Lindelof instead of Dias, not sure Dias had made his debut for Benfica when you signed Lindelof.

Dias wasn't classed as WC when he signed for City, in some area's he was marked and another expensive flop in the making.
 
That’s not it at all, it’s not about preventing competition, it’s the opposite. If that were true then why did United fans campaign (and win) against the BSkyB takeover in 1997?

The problem is, nobody likes “Man Yoo” because we were successful for so long. I get it. It must have been incredibly tiresome to watch and hear about constantly. Especially because winners are usually, by definition, bad losers.

However, don’t let that blind you to what we (the Utd fans) are saying. We campaigned against the BSkyB takeover because it was bad for football. We campaigned against the Glazer takeover (and continue to do so) for broadly the same reason, although admittedly now unlike with the BSkyB takeover these owners hurt us rather than help us.

Problem 1 - When oil barons buy up football clubs and pump them full of dirty money it turns fans off football. As another poster said, this is only the start. “City” will continue to spend and build relentlessly and we could see a situation where they win two or more trophies every year. The issue is, apart from 40,000 “City” fans, nobody is interested. People respond with apathy. We are already bored. There’s no sporting merit. It’s not just “City” to be fair, who really wants to see three of the final four CL spots taken up by PSG, Chelsea and City? For the neutral (and for the good of the game) far better it was Barcelona/Real, Manchester Utd/Liverpool, AC Milan/Juventus, Bayern/Dortmund...real football teams, who have grown organically, with global fanbases

Problem 2 - You allude to this at the end of your post. The ESL is a direct response to the rudderless FFP rules failing to curtail the oil clubs. Yes, the likes of Utd, Liverpool and Real wanted to boost their revenues but the other key driver was to introduce much stricter FFP rules as a condition for playing in the ESL. This is why City, Chelsea and PSG were all so torn. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. Join and have their spending heavily curtailed and struggle in an “elite” league. Don’t join and see their revenues fall dramatically behind. This hasn’t been focused on much at all by the press but is a key part of the problem. It the FAs/UEFA can’t or won’t do something about these clubs, the “establishment” will be forced to take matters into their own hands. Again, this would be a disaster for the game as a whole.

Fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to explain that. Although I don’t fully agree it’s a logical and well thought out answer, and I’d be lying if I said I knew much about the Sky takeover, or about the financial constraints of the new ESL, about which I’d heard nothing, which certainly supports your point.

It’s at best very convenient though, that a central consequence of getting rid of the factors in football that fans on here claim to have a purely ethical problem with, would be that Man Utd would return to being by some distance the richest club in the league. Which would likely mean getting the best players, winning the biggest trophies. You must agree that in the back of every Utd fans mind they know that that would be the likely outcome.

I’m sure I could google it but what exactly was the problem with the Sky takeover, and was it fan power that stopped it happening?
 
The last 10 years spending really kicked in, but really dropped at the end with the new owners cutting back.

Before that though spending was really low. Money just became more and more important.

Not sure what you mean by last 10 years. The 01 year period from 92-2002/03 was broken into 2 5 year periods.

There was also a thread on transfer spend instead of just net spend. That also showed how we weren't the biggest spenders.

F365 gave year wise breakdown too.