Club ownership | Senior management team talk

decorativeed said:
Yes, they are. But theyre not daft enough to think that selling the nuts and bolts holding it all together for a few quid is going to let them turn things around. At best it'll pay the wages of one flop for 6 months.
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Is that what you seriously think is being done?. Do you think that the expectation is this will turn things round. You don’t even know who is losing their jobs or what they do or whether they are actually required.

What do you want the club never to sign another player or appoint another manger or DOF in case they are a flop and that money could have gone to other employees?.

This is cost cutting across the board, that was known about for months. It’s not because of Ashworth or ETH, let’s just hope it’s done fairly and people are given more than statutory.
 
Giggsyking said:
The biggest club in the country. The biggest stadium, the most visited club by both matchday and regular days visits, I can go on.. But there are no clubs of the size of united.
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Matchday staff is something different, this isn’t about them. There are other big clubs, do we need hundreds and hundreds more staff than Arsenal for instance. Maybe we do or maybe we don’t, you’d have to be pretty incompetent to just assume we do though because we’re bigger.
 
Roboc7 said:
Is that what you seriously think is being done?. Do you think that the expectation is this will turn things round. You don’t even know who is losing their jobs or what they do or whether they are actually required.

What do you want the club never to sign another player or appoint another manger or DOF in case they are a flop and that money could have gone to other employees?.

This is cost cutting across the board, that was known about for months. It’s not because of Ashworth or ETH, let’s just hope it’s done fairly and people are given more than statutory.
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To be fair, you're right on that. Because almost all the people I knew who were still there last year were made redundant in the last round. Most of those were well regarded, time-served members of staff with bags of experience. God knows who's even left at this stage, but somehow they were deemed good enough to keep 6 months ago.

Tell me, though: if this isn't being done to turn the Fortunes of the club around, why is it being done at all?

And no, I just think that a club willing to risk spending £70m on young players with less than 100 senior matches under their belts in the hope that they some day justify that expense can also afford to pay out 3-5% of that cash in salaries to 100 people.
 
decorativeed said:
To be fair, you're right on that. Because almost all the people I knew who were still there last year were made redundant in the last round. Most of those were well regarded, time-served members of staff with bags of experience. God knows who's even left at this stage, but somehow they were deemed good enough to keep 6 months ago.

Tell me, though: if this isn't being done to turn the Fortunes of the club around, why is it being done at all?

And no, I just think that a club willing to risk spending £70m on young players with less than 100 senior matches under their belts in the hope that they some day justify that expense can also afford to pay out 3-5% of that cash in salaries to 100 people.
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It’s being done to save money because the club spends more than it brings in.

Every signing is a risk, if Hojlund was scoring 30 goals a season would you be happy for workers to not have that 3-5% or would you rather have the player?. Because you can’t have it both ways, football clubs spend a lot on players, they don’t pay other staff anything comparable. That’s the same anywhere, people haven’t had an issue with it before but now it causes offence.
 
acnumber9 said:
Maybe a larger club with a larger stadium etc needs more employees?
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This isn’t about matchday staff so you can rule that out. Maybe we don’t need hundreds more staff than other big clubs, it’s not exactly inconceivable.
 
Roboc7 said:
This isn’t about matchday staff so you can rule that out. Maybe we don’t need hundreds more staff than other big clubs, it’s not exactly inconceivable.
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Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is that it will have next to no impact on what players we can sign and considerable impact on those being let go.
 
Since when do we ever hear about the day to runnings of football clubs? The media are doing a job on the fanbase and too many people are biting. The club has been mismanaged for two decades now, this isn’t an overnight thing since Ineos. I’m not jumping with excitement that these are our part owners now but let’s give them a bloody chance. Ruben Amorim being backed and improvements on the field is what we need to worry about, for now.
 
Ronaldo's ego said:
Since when do we ever hear about the day to runnings of football clubs? The media are doing a job on the fanbase and too many people are biting. The club has been mismanaged for two decades now, this isn’t an overnight thing since Ineos. I’m not jumping with excitement that these are our part owners now but let’s give them a bloody chance. Ruben Amorim being backed and improvements on the field is what we need to worry about, for now.
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I agree, just look at the tone of the articles, people need to stop biting.

insert person made redundant is "from a United supporting family" to get that little emotional hook in there.

It's shit but every single source said we were bloated massively, this is on the Glazers. I will say, it has to be done by this summer though, we know it is unlikely we will make EL/CL next season, that revenue loss should be factored in already, Ineos need to be setup as they deem necessary by the start of next season latest.
 
acnumber9 said:
Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is that it will have next to no impact on what players we can sign and considerable impact on those being let go.
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Of course no one disputes that, some people will do well out of it, some won’t but initially it’s shit for anyone losing their job.

But it’s not necessarily wrong or evil and we can’t expect the club to be held to a higher standard when all over the country people are going through the same thing. Utd spend more money than they make, they are doing what they should have done previously.

Arsenal let a similar percentage of their total staff go around COVID time because they were cutting costs.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
I agree, just look at the tone of the articles, people need to stop biting.

insert person made redundant is "from a United supporting family" to get that little emotional hook in there.

It's shit but every single source said we were bloated massively, this is on the Glazers. I will say, it has to be done by this summer though, we know it is unlikely we will make EL/CL next season, that revenue loss should be factored in already, Ineos need to be setup as they deem necessary by the start of next season latest.
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Sorry, but where are all these sources that you mention? Because they don't reflect the reality I, my friends and family were living in. As I mentioned already, many departments were already bare minimum in terms of staff numbers. One electrician on the maintenance staff for the whole ground, for example.
 
Ronaldo's ego said:
Since when do we ever hear about the day to runnings of football clubs? The media are doing a job on the fanbase and too many people are biting. The club has been mismanaged for two decades now, this isn’t an overnight thing since Ineos. I’m not jumping with excitement that these are our part owners now but let’s give them a bloody chance. Ruben Amorim being backed and improvements on the field is what we need to worry about, for now.
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tomaldinho1 said:
I agree, just look at the tone of the articles, people need to stop biting.

insert person made redundant is "from a United supporting family" to get that little emotional hook in there.

It's shit but every single source said we were bloated massively, this is on the Glazers. I will say, it has to be done by this summer though, we know it is unlikely we will make EL/CL next season, that revenue loss should be factored in already, Ineos need to be setup as they deem necessary by the start of next season latest.
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Agree with you both, I’m glad there are some sane / level headed fans out there. It’s sad there are more redundancies but we’re a loss making machine at the moment so action needs to be taken. You can’t say they aren’t doing what they can on the football side to trim the squad of its highest earners too, I’m sure we’ve been desperately trying to get rid of Casemiro in January but we can’t just get rid of him for nothing due to PSR regulations.

People hammering INEOS as if this is all their fault really bemuses me. They’ve been in charge for a year, yet the mess we’re talking about has been caused through a decade of mismanagement before them both on and off the field. All the major problem players / contracts are from the Glazer era, sorting that doesn’t happen in just one year, it’s going to take 2 to 3 years. In that time we also need to improve our recruitment and get ourselves back in the top 4 over consecutive seasons to really stabilise ourselves. I’m actually very confident that INEOS will be able to get us to this stage, but getting us back at top and winning things will be very challenging.

What INEOS have been terrible at is optics and PR, which surprised me somewhat. Take the outrage around Sir Alex losing his highly lucrative ambassadorial role example. Could they not have avoided cutting him completely off, reducing his responsibilities and pay significantly (let’s say from 3m to 0.5m a year) framed it as Sir Alex is winding down due to age / health capacity. Some of cuts like the M&S Christmas voucher seem extreme I must admit, but perhaps it’s just an indication of how bad things are financially right now.

Like you say, fans need to stop biting at this INEOS stuff and shift the focus back to the Glazers, they are the problem, always have been.
 
Well we are not bloated operationally , nor have we been horribly mismanaged operationally for a decade. There aren't metrics to back that up.
Its a convenient fallacy to point to our 1100 staff (pre cost cutting) and say- see, we have the most staff in the PL therefore we are overstaffed, bloated etc. Such a narrative is convenient because it obviously provides a justification for deep cuts. Gives the impression that the new guys are making the "hard choices", being proactive, doing stuff out of necessity for the greater good.
In reality, cutting ordinary joes from the staff is the easy choice for INEOS and the Glazers. The meek shall inherit the earth but not its mineral rights if they are not contractually protected..
We are the biggest club in the PL and the most supported club in the world. It stands to reason we should have staffing levels that reflect that. In terms of revenue, we are fourth in 2025 Deloittes Football Money League.
The other big hitters globally carry as many staff. Real Madrid carry more staff, Bayern have over 1000 staff, Barcelona have 1300 permanent staff. Liverpool have 1000 staff. So our staffing relative to our peers is commensurate with our size, our scope, our outreach.
Now, I am going to mention the dreaded "Ebitda" because it's a measure of how profitable a club is operationally. It simply is the difference between revenues and cash expenses (wages and regular running costs).
Our Ebitda is higher than any club in the PL. It's higher than Bayern, Barcelona, Liverpool, PSG, Real Madrid, Man City. Again, from an operational point of view, we are not failing wrt to our peers. Our problem is a rather singular combination of being utterly shite at payer trading while carrying shite debt costs.
Our Eibtda margin, a measure of efficiency (or inefficiency) is again higher than the aforementioned. Man City with much fewer staff, bigger revenues (much of it not truly earned in a staffing sense), and more football success are simply not operating as efficiently as us. So having a lot of staff means very little when these things are looked at rationally, and relatively.
All of the cuts we are witnessing are to our regular cash expenses, designed to improve our Ebitda and Ebidta margin further still. Financially, it makes sense- cash availability and profits improve even with stalled revenues.
But let's not dress this up as moral crusade by earnest men to eject the dreaded evils of overstaffing and operational inefficiency.
I suspect when we get back on track eventually (and we will), our staffing numbers will creep back up and very few will notice and no one will be alarmed.
 
roseguy64 said:
Similar in amount to Liverpool though and not that much more than Arsenal.
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Club accounts for the year ended June 30, 2023, reported that United’s monthly employees had risen to an average of 1,112. Liverpool, by comparison, had 1,008 employees in the same period, while Arsenal reported 723.
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Also, according to Tottenham's annual report for 2023 they had 793 employees.

Seeing sources saying Chelsea had 827.
 
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Perfectly valid for people to question the choices made by the new guard - everyone makes some wrong calls, and their record with Nice and Lausanne is hardly inspiring.

However I'm getting weary of the constant and unnecessary jibes of 'Brexit Jim, Tory billionaire, yet there'll be more expensive overpaid signings', etc, whenever there's reports of staff cuts.

If the figures going around are accurate - that we had way more staff than any other PL side, and over twice as many as Man City, when INEOS took over then it's no surprise at all that they're looking at that and thinking that's way too many and that we should be more streamlined and in line with all the other PL clubs.

It's an easy dig to start bemoaning that 'everyday people are losing their jobs at the hands of billionaires' - and I'm not surprised to see the media go down that route. But they've inherited this complete mess from top to bottom - and it looks like just one aspect of the mess is that we're employing way too many people, far more than any other club, and the only way to address that mistake is to relieve a number of them from their roles.

Obviously, there's no quick or easy solution to getting us back to the top. And none of these areas, individually, are going to be the crucial difference. But, collectively, recognising the many issues and sorting each of them out is part of the long road back that we need to take. And reducing the seemingly ridiculously high number of staff that we've been employing is clearly just one of those.

People have digs about the players high wages v all these 'everyday' staff losing their job. However we don't have way too many players, what we have are some that are paid way too high and those are also being addressed and the average wage aimed at being reduced. That's reflected in the new signings, but it just takes a lot of time with departures when you've inherited those high wages and are stuck with their contracts. It's quicker and easier to address all the non-playing staff ones who you can let go. Getting the highest paid players sold is a much harder task, but one they're trying to do as well

So they're addressing all the areas - from top to bottom. The bottom (lower earners) are just easier and quicker to address - but also make a good narrative in order to have digs at the owners.
 
Bertie Wooster said:
Perfectly valid for people to question the choices made by the new guard - everyone makes some wrong calls, and their record with Nice and Lausanne is hardly inspiring.

However I'm getting weary of the constant and unnecessary jibes of 'Brexit Jim, Tory billionaire, yet there'll be more expensive overpaid signings', etc, whenever there's reports of staff cuts.

If the figures going around are accurate - that we had way more staff than any other PL side, and over twice as many as Man City, when INEOS took over then it's no surprise at all that they're looking at that and thinking that's way too many and that we should be more streamlined and in line with all the other PL clubs.

It's an easy dig to start bemoaning that 'everyday people are losing their jobs at the hands of billionaires' - and I'm not surprised to see the media go down that route. But they've inherited this complete mess from top to bottom - and it looks like just one aspect of the mess is that we're employing way too many people, far more than any other club, and the only way to address that mistake is to relieve a number of them from their roles.

Obviously, there's no quick or easy solution to getting us back to the top. And none of these areas, individually, are going to be the crucial difference. But, collectively, recognising the many issues and sorting each of them out is part of the long road back that we need to take. And reducing the seemingly ridiculously high number of staff that we've been employing is clearly just one of those.

People have digs about the players high wages v all these 'everyday' staff losing their job. However we don't have way too many players, what we have are some that are paid way too high and those are also being addressed and the average wage aimed at being reduced. That's reflected in the new signings, but it just takes a lot of time with departures when you've inherited those high wages and are stuck with their contracts. It's quicker and easier to address all the non-playing staff ones who you can let go. Getting the highest paid players sold is a much harder task, but one they're trying to do as well

So they're addressing all the areas - from top to bottom. The bottom (lower earners) are just easier and quicker to address - but also make a good narrative in order to have digs at the owners.
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Again, its all relative. We are "bigger" than any other club in the PL. City better us revenue wise, but, as mentioned, they are not as operationally efficient as us and let's be blunt they don't have to earn their commercial corn. We do not have a "ridiculously high number of staff" relative to our peers. As the 4th biggest club in world football by revenue, our staffing numbers are in line with the other big cats. Again this "overstaffing" nonsense is just an excuse to make cuts more palatable.
 
The fervor with which some of you lads respond to anything even mildly critical INEOS and Jim is really odd. I can at least somewhat understand it with managers and players, but for the owners? Really?

Some of you are far too invested in them :lol:
 
giggs-beckham said:
Harsh on Shaw
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:lol:

Redjazz said:
Well we are not bloated operationally , nor have we been horribly mismanaged operationally for a decade. There aren't metrics to back that up.
Its a convenient fallacy to point to our 1100 staff (pre cost cutting) and say- see, we have the most staff in the PL therefore we are overstaffed, bloated etc. Such a narrative is convenient because it obviously provides a justification for deep cuts. Gives the impression that the new guys are making the "hard choices", being proactive, doing stuff out of necessity for the greater good.
In reality, cutting ordinary joes from the staff is the easy choice for INEOS and the Glazers. The meek shall inherit the earth but not its mineral rights if they are not contractually protected..
We are the biggest club in the PL and the most supported club in the world. It stands to reason we should have staffing levels that reflect that. In terms of revenue, we are fourth in 2025 Deloittes Football Money League.
The other big hitters globally carry as many staff. Real Madrid carry more staff, Bayern have over 1000 staff, Barcelona have 1300 permanent staff. Liverpool have 1000 staff. So our staffing relative to our peers is commensurate with our size, our scope, our outreach.
Now, I am going to mention the dreaded "Ebitda" because it's a measure of how profitable a club is operationally. It simply is the difference between revenues and cash expenses (wages and regular running costs).
Our Ebitda is higher than any club in the PL. It's higher than Bayern, Barcelona, Liverpool, PSG, Real Madrid, Man City. Again, from an operational point of view, we are not failing wrt to our peers. Our problem is a rather singular combination of being utterly shite at payer trading while carrying shite debt costs.
Our Eibtda margin, a measure of efficiency (or inefficiency) is again higher than the aforementioned. Man City with much fewer staff, bigger revenues (much of it not truly earned in a staffing sense), and more football success are simply not operating as efficiently as us. So having a lot of staff means very little when these things are looked at rationally, and relatively.
All of the cuts we are witnessing are to our regular cash expenses, designed to improve our Ebitda and Ebidta margin further still. Financially, it makes sense- cash availability and profits improve even with stalled revenues.
But let's not dress this up as moral crusade by earnest men to eject the dreaded evils of overstaffing and operational inefficiency.
I suspect when we get back on track eventually (and we will), our staffing numbers will creep back up and very few will notice and no one will be alarmed.
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Good post mate. It's useful to have some points of comparison to other clubs of comparable size.
 
Redjazz said:
Again, its all relative. We are "bigger" than any other club in the PL. City better us revenue wise, but, as mentioned, they are not as operationally efficient as us and let's be blunt they don't have to earn their commercial corn. We do not have a "ridiculously high number of staff" relative to our peers. As the 4th biggest club in world football by revenue, our staffing numbers are in line with the other big cats. Again this "overstaffing" nonsense is just an excuse to make cuts more palatable.
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Important point. We should be compared to Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. How much staff do they have. Commercially we are much bigger than any Premier league club, maybe bar Liverpool, so of course we need more staff.
 
Ronaldo's ego said:
Since when do we ever hear about the day to runnings of football clubs? The media are doing a job on the fanbase and too many people are biting. The club has been mismanaged for two decades now, this isn’t an overnight thing since Ineos. I’m not jumping with excitement that these are our part owners now but let’s give them a bloody chance. Ruben Amorim being backed and improvements on the field is what we need to worry about, for now.
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Exactly this. Anything that happens at United... spin negative headlines, fans will jump at it click on it, journalists make money, fans will lose their heads...
What I worry from a fan point of view is the lack of awareness and common sense from alot of our fans who are here blaming this on INEOS.

I read that comparatively to PL teams we employed over 1000 staff whereas City for example have 500.. INEOS are cutting staff for multiple reasons, 1. Over staffed, have to cut to make it more efficient. 2. Mismanagement for the past decade.

Its not on INEOS to clear the debt... they have just paid billions to take a share of the club, invested 50m into the training ground and a further 150m.

Why do fans lose sight ? this is on the Glazers... they have not paid of the debt and INEOS have to try and make the club work financially whilst the Glazers do nothing.
 
romufc said:
Exactly this. Anything that happens at United... spin negative headlines, fans will jump at it click on it, journalists make money, fans will lose their heads...
What I worry from a fan point of view is the lack of awareness and common sense from alot of our fans who are here blaming this on INEOS.

I read that comparatively to PL teams we employed over 1000 staff whereas City for example have 500.. INEOS are cutting staff for multiple reasons, 1. Over staffed, have to cut to make it more efficient. 2. Mismanagement for the past decade.

Its not on INEOS to clear the debt... they have just paid billions to take a share of the club, invested 50m into the training ground and a further 150m.

Why do fans lose sight ? this is on the Glazers... they have not paid of the debt and INEOS have to try and make the club work financially whilst the Glazers do nothing.
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We are a much bigger club than City and should compare ourselves to Bayern, Liverpool and Madrid. Our staff was comparable to those clubs.
 
Lyng said:
We are a much bigger club than City and should compare ourselves to Bayern, Liverpool and Madrid. Our staff was comparable to those clubs.
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Yes on paper we are but lets not act as if City have not been one of the better run clubs in the last 10 years...
 
Lyng said:
They have been, but they still dont have even close to our commercial reach, let alone fanbase.
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What does the fan base have to do with number of staff the club employ?

I dont know how we can question efficiency?

I will give a basic example.... United hire staff in the health and safety dept, in the catering department.

With all the staff we had, like the football there was no responsibility, which is why we received a 1 out of 5 hygeine rating... if the people tasked to do their job are not doing it well, like in the football dept they need to be sacked.

We are inept in so many different departments, its a joke and INEOS are trying to get things back together, they have sacked footballing staff too. You can see players wise, the same is happening, they are trying to get rid of the players on high wages not performing.
 
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