Club ownership | Senior management team talk

Woziak said:
I didn’t say SJR I said INEOS, their credit rating has been revived down for a reason
Read they have huge financial issues right now. SJR has his own money but he might need to use £1 billion if that personal wealth to keep his INEOS main businesses afloat?

https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/fitch-revises-ineos-group-outlook-to-negative-affirms-idr-at-bb-21-01-2025#:~:text=Fitch%20Ratings%20%2D%20London%20%2D%2021%20Jan,Finance%20LLC%20at%20'BB%2B'.

We could still get relegated this year I original got 250/1 now it’s 80/1 that means there’s a chance. How will they get better in the summer without European Football, you’ve already lost £60-70m this year on revenue due to no CL Football, next season you would have Revenue of under £600m and still have huge interest charges to service Legacy and transfer debt.
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INEOS aren’t in trouble, they operate in a highly leveraged and volatile industry and their credit rating fluctuating is not a huge deal.

As for next season we are going to have to be better with a smaller wage bill and net spend. Who we sell and who we buy will define next season but that’s the same as always. The money lost from no European football will have to be offset by some of the high earners leaving. It’s by no means an easy task and it’s not all going to be fixed quickly.
 
golden_blunder said:
It’s a really important point that we all need to remember.

That’s hard for most because it’s a ‘now’ world, with social media putting the pressure on more than ever, and driving toxicity

It all adds up to fans having no patience.

I get the concerns about INEOS, and their own financial difficulties has me wondering about the impact on United but as you say more than a decade of mismanagement is not going to magically disappear overnight.
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Exactly, this is the issue, now now now. I just cant believe some fans expected us to change how we run and become efficient in 1 year.

So many times, different people have explained how far back this football club is in various parts of it. INEOS came in and changed all the high level staff as the first thing they did and got their own footballing men... who were then tasked to carry out a forensic review of the club.

They have found that the club is in a terrible financial state, harsh decisions have to be made. Whilst no one likes to see job losses, none of us work for the club or have seen the books to know how bad it is.

There is always a period of hardship when a failing business gets taken over, otherwise there would be no point of INEOS. Even clubs that are run well take a while, look at Chelsea for example.

Whilst INEOS are making these decisions, yes some of them may seem like they dont know what they are doing, why cant we just give them some time.

I see fans who have their favourite player or manager, saying give them 1-2 years but wont give INEOS that time to try sort this mess?
 
JediSith said:
Tbf, and I’m turning more and more against INEOS, sponsoring Spurs or any other team is not a good look.
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The INEOS relationship with Spurs goes back to late 2020, when Spurs signed a long contract with INEOS Hygienics (one of the groups companies, which they have put up for sale) for the purchase of hand sanitiser and other products.
INEOS went on to sign a multi-year sponsorship deal with Spurs in December 2022, to promote INEOS Automotive’s Grenadier 4x4.
All of this was long before the INEOS Sport division purchased a share of Utd.

There’s a sponsor of Utd whose owner has shares in another EPL team.
 
Cutch said:
Media are absolutely loving this. We get that there's serious cost cutting measures going on, some of it likely ridiculous, but it's certainly not helping lift the constant negativity around the club with daily updates of it all.

Finding it extremely tedious at this point.
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Media are also rehashing old stories and passing them off as recent news
 
croadyman said:
We will never see multiple games called off after all the furore and threats from the scouse postponement. I wish we could find some kind of consortium to buy these leeches out but INEOS saved their bacon sadly so have no intention of a full sale
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Again I say this as someone who is a foreign fan with no ability to contribute boots on the ground, but can’t some match going fans start gathering momentum for a movement of long term mass protesting? There just seems to be an air of preemptive defeatism hanging around the sentiment of a large scale fan led pushback.
 
Red in STL said:
United are a tiny company in business world terms
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Well yes, the company I worked for that I used as a comparison made ten times United's revenue. But still the equivalent position to Berrada, overseeing a similarly big part of the organisation was four levels above me in the hierarchy.

So I'm genuinely shocked to see that number.
 
stefan92 said:
Well yes, the company I worked for that I used as a comparison made ten times United's revenue. But still the equivalent position to Berrada, overseeing a similarly big part of the organisation was four levels above me in the hierarchy.

So I'm genuinely shocked to see that number.
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That school of management where showing that employees are forced to save money is more important than actually getting anything out of those saving is just pure cancer.
 
The INEOS Group’s financial situation is no different and in many cases nowhere near as bad , as many large corporations in the current global economic environment.
Much larger corporations are in far worst trouble.
Giants like VW Group ( hundreds of $$$billions in debt, with half their earnings previously coming from China and now in free fall), Nissan (insiders have leaked they have only about a year left and their proposed merger with Honda and Mitsubishi, designed to save them from bankruptcy, has collapsed).
There are others.

The chemical and petrochemical industry in Europe is in trouble, due to falling demand, as the engineering and manufacturing industries (their customers) are contracting rapidly. INEOS are not the only player in the chemical market who are having to tighten their reins and reduce operations and overheads.
They are not going under, or anything like it.


.
 
stefan92 said:
Well yes, the company I worked for that I used as a comparison made ten times United's revenue. But still the equivalent position to Berrada, overseeing a similarly big part of the organisation was four levels above me in the hierarchy.

So I'm genuinely shocked to see that number.
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Based on everything we've heard so far about major decisions being made by Ratcliffe or Brailsford, it doesn't sound like Berrada has much actual power
 
stefan92 said:
Well yes, the company I worked for that I used as a comparison made ten times United's revenue. But still the equivalent position to Berrada, overseeing a similarly big part of the organisation was four levels above me in the hierarchy.

So I'm genuinely shocked to see that number.
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Have to take it all with a pinch of salt, with so many employees leaving there is going to be a huge amount of rumours and gossip in amongst some truth as well.

A lot of these kinds cost cutting and penny pinching methods are happening all over the place. I know a lot of people who have to pay for expenses themselves and then reclaim them now rather than having corporate cards. Paperless offices without any stationery has now become the norm as well.

Utd has probably been a place where very little has changed in decades and now so much is changing overnight. Some is clearly over the top but there is also a lot of change that is probably just bringing the place in line with everywhere else.
 
Lemoor said:
That school of management where showing that employees are forced to save money is more important than actually getting anything out of those saving is just pure cancer.
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They’re following a classic PE firm playbook here. Buy a chunk or whole of a distressed company, aggressively lower costs through job cuts and lower capital investments, while trying to keep revenues flat or increasing slightly in the short term. This boosts profitability in the short term, which looks good if they want to sell on, in part or as a whole.

Job cuts, worse product, worse service, complete lack of capital investment in the long term, these are all a given.

The stadium would be a capital investment though that INEOS won’t want to pay for. So the goal is to get all the planning approved, rope in the government, and then United will look like a very appealing proposition for someone to invest into. This can be a total buyout or the Glazers selling another chunk, at a premium now since INEOS have put the business in a better spot.
 
Squeaky_Bum_Time said:
They’re following a classic PE firm playbook here. Buy a chunk or whole of a distressed company, aggressively lower costs through job cuts and lower capital investments, while trying to keep revenues flat or increasing slightly in the short term. This boosts profitability in the short term, which looks good if they want to sell on, in part or as a whole.

Job cuts, worse product, worse service, complete lack of capital investment in the long term, these are all a given.

The stadium would be a capital investment though that INEOS won’t want to pay for. So the goal is to get all the planning approved, rope in the government, and then United will look like a very appealing proposition for someone to invest into. This can be a total buyout or the Glazers selling another chunk, at a premium now since INEOS have put the business in a better spot.
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They are treating the club as a fecking soulless corporation. No emotions whatsoever for the fans, employees or the legends of the club. Really bunch of unlikeable group.
 
UnitedSofa said:
This would probably be the reason for that

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This has to be a joke. We used to have a very convoluted approval flow where some of the country directors and even VPs couldn’t approve certain spend categories above a low threshold, but it wasn’t really doing anything for cost control. In reality if actually diluted responsibility where people felt they could just go on and spend whatever has been approved, and pretty much anything would get approved because there is no way to execs are actually physically looking into documents they approve when they get 50 of them a day.

We reverted that, simplified approval flow and empowered people to make decisions, and costs in most places have come down because everyone feels responsible and compelled to manage their departments budgets.

Serious corporations that employ serious people don’t usually try to place excessive amount of controls at every step.
 
Rolaholic said:
'Best scummiest in class'
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If there’s any truth to that story and if it hasn’t been twisted out of context, then it’s very likely the staff involved will have been working for Utd for years.
This could be another example of the sort of long standing incompetence within the club that the new management team are trying to weed out.

.
 
FrankDrebin said:
Worst captain ever!
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Being a good guy doesn't make you leadership material, so I wouldn't drag this into the discussion about the captaincy.

I think nobody actually denies that Bruno is a well meaning guy who really cares.
 
Forgive my naivety, but after reading the financial statement published yesterday, I can't help but think:

We have millions of fans worldwide, and in many places, we have organized supporter groups that could potentially participate. Would it be feasible to initiate a massive lawsuit against the Glazers? Would such a case hold up in a UK or US court?

I understand that legislation on leveraged buyouts was recently abolished, which only highlights the absurdity of its existence in the first place. How is it possible for someone to burden the club with £1 billion in interest payments and approximately £730 million in debt?

This should be irrelevant to our footballing success. That money belongs to the club and could have been invested in infrastructure, the academy, and other key areas. That’s why I wonder whether something formal could be organized against these leeches. They should be held accountable for that debt.
 
Squeaky_Bum_Time said:
They’re following a classic PE firm playbook here. Buy a chunk or whole of a distressed company, aggressively lower costs through job cuts and lower capital investments, while trying to keep revenues flat or increasing slightly in the short term. This boosts profitability in the short term, which looks good if they want to sell on, in part or as a whole.

Job cuts, worse product, worse service, complete lack of capital investment in the long term, these are all a given.

The stadium would be a capital investment though that INEOS won’t want to pay for. So the goal is to get all the planning approved, rope in the government, and then United will look like a very appealing proposition for someone to invest into. This can be a total buyout or the Glazers selling another chunk, at a premium now since INEOS have put the business in a better spot.
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Thank you, this feels spot on. For me it helps align their virtue signaling like hiring a bunch of experts to fix operations, with their incompetence like axing 200 low-level staff to save £2M while casually burning £20M on Ashworth and ETH. If this really is the endgame, United fans are about to experience a whole new level of misery.

How ironic that the Glazers themselves leveraged the club in a classic PE-style buyout, aiming for a high-profit flip. After selling the club outright for 10x their purchase price failed, they now rely on their handyman, Brexit Jim, to finish the job, with Jimmy pocketing a hefty cut for himself. Maybe this is how a 70-year-old Chelsea fan justifies investing his last few years in a broken club?

Time will tell if this is fear mongering or if they really have long term plans for the club.
 
ShamrockD said:
Forgive my naivety, but after reading the financial statement published yesterday, I can't help but think:

We have millions of fans worldwide, and in many places, we have organized supporter groups that could potentially participate. Would it be feasible to initiate a massive lawsuit against the Glazers? Would such a case hold up in a UK or US court?

I understand that legislation on leveraged buyouts was recently abolished, which only highlights the absurdity of its existence in the first place. How is it possible for someone to burden the club with £1 billion in interest payments and approximately £730 million in debt?

This should be irrelevant to our footballing success. That money belongs to the club and could have been invested in infrastructure, the academy, and other key areas. That’s why I wonder whether something formal could be organized against these leeches. They should be held accountable for that debt.
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What would they sue them for? And if they're not shareholders, how would they have any standing in court?
 
ShamrockD said:
Forgive my naivety, but after reading the financial statement published yesterday, I can't help but think:

We have millions of fans worldwide, and in many places, we have organized supporter groups that could potentially participate. Would it be feasible to initiate a massive lawsuit against the Glazers? Would such a case hold up in a UK or US court?

I understand that legislation on leveraged buyouts was recently abolished, which only highlights the absurdity of its existence in the first place. How is it possible for someone to burden the club with £1 billion in interest payments and approximately £730 million in debt?

This should be irrelevant to our footballing success. That money belongs to the club and could have been invested in infrastructure, the academy, and other key areas. That’s why I wonder whether something formal could be organized against these leeches. They should be held accountable for that debt.
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Wouldn't it be better to just buy shares rather than this crazy idea to sue the glazers?
 
romufc said:
Exactly, this is the issue, now now now. I just cant believe some fans expected us to change how we run and become efficient in 1 year.

So many times, different people have explained how far back this football club is in various parts of it. INEOS came in and changed all the high level staff as the first thing they did and got their own footballing men... who were then tasked to carry out a forensic review of the club.

They have found that the club is in a terrible financial state, harsh decisions have to be made. Whilst no one likes to see job losses, none of us work for the club or have seen the books to know how bad it is.

There is always a period of hardship when a failing business gets taken over, otherwise there would be no point of INEOS. Even clubs that are run well take a while, look at Chelsea for example.

Whilst INEOS are making these decisions, yes some of them may seem like they dont know what they are doing, why cant we just give them some time.

I see fans who have their favourite player or manager, saying give them 1-2 years but wont give INEOS that time to try sort this mess?
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They have made a complete mess of every major decision since running the club, and have a pretty poor record of running sporting ventures. It's definitely enough to be somewhat concerned
 
stefan92 said:
Being a good guy doesn't make you leadership material, so I wouldn't drag this into the discussion about the captaincy.

I think nobody actually denies that Bruno is a well meaning guy who really cares.
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Bruno gets mind numbingly ridiculous amount of abuse from a lot of clueless United fans. He’s a decent guy by the sounds of it, probably our most dangerous and creative player since he joined.

He’s not “a bad captain”, he’s a quality player playing at a broken club. I’d say Roy Keane wouldn’t last half a season with the man children and “poor me, freedom!”clowns the club has been signing. I’d say even Bryan robson would struggle, pulling his hair out. In modern football it seems more like captains don’t necessarily play the traditional captain role of galvanising the team.

For United, the captains armband has been a pox. Look at maguire as captain and his response to losing it. Bruno still performs to an extremely high level, right now captain whose performance levels remain high is as good as we could hope.
 
ShamrockD said:
Forgive my naivety, but after reading the financial statement published yesterday, I can't help but think:

We have millions of fans worldwide, and in many places, we have organized supporter groups that could potentially participate. Would it be feasible to initiate a massive lawsuit against the Glazers? Would such a case hold up in a UK or US court?

I understand that legislation on leveraged buyouts was recently abolished, which only highlights the absurdity of its existence in the first place. How is it possible for someone to burden the club with £1 billion in interest payments and approximately £730 million in debt?

This should be irrelevant to our footballing success. That money belongs to the club and could have been invested in infrastructure, the academy, and other key areas. That’s why I wonder whether something formal could be organized against these leeches. They should be held accountable for that debt.
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Everything they did was absolutely legal at the time they did it. There is no ground for a case.

And as a fan you have zero standing anyway. You are not a shareholder, so you aren't even considered a stakeholder which could have a reason to sue.

If you want to use the massive fanbase to do something good: Get organized. Raise money. Buy the club. Manage it better.
 
ShamrockD said:
Forgive my naivety, but after reading the financial statement published yesterday, I can't help but think:

We have millions of fans worldwide, and in many places, we have organized supporter groups that could potentially participate. Would it be feasible to initiate a massive lawsuit against the Glazers? Would such a case hold up in a UK or US court?

I understand that legislation on leveraged buyouts was recently abolished, which only highlights the absurdity of its existence in the first place. How is it possible for someone to burden the club with £1 billion in interest payments and approximately £730 million in debt?

This should be irrelevant to our footballing success. That money belongs to the club and could have been invested in infrastructure, the academy, and other key areas. That’s why I wonder whether something formal could be organized against these leeches. They should be held accountable for that debt.
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What’s the crime here?

If it’s taking loans that incur interest, then I suspect jails would be full quickly.
 
Squeaky_Bum_Time said:
They’re following a classic PE firm playbook here. Buy a chunk or whole of a distressed company, aggressively lower costs through job cuts and lower capital investments, while trying to keep revenues flat or increasing slightly in the short term. This boosts profitability in the short term, which looks good if they want to sell on, in part or as a whole.

Job cuts, worse product, worse service, complete lack of capital investment in the long term, these are all a given.

The stadium would be a capital investment though that INEOS won’t want to pay for. So the goal is to get all the planning approved, rope in the government, and then United will look like a very appealing proposition for someone to invest into. This can be a total buyout or the Glazers selling another chunk, at a premium now since INEOS have put the business in a better spot.
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But Utd aren’t going to be an attractive investment, it will be a struggle to break even let one make any kind of profit.

The debt isn’t going anywhere, the stadium requires huge investment if it is to happen and you’ve got the leeches to pay off. Their price is going to always be higher than the value and INEOS only own a 28% so it’s a lot of effort for not much reward for them.

For Utd to be attractive to buyers the situation needs to get worse, the price needs to drop considerably. We saw last time the club was for sale the value of the brand wasn’t what people thought it would be, people weren’t queuing up to pay a premium in price for something that has continues to be going downhill and just needs more and more money spent on it.
 
A billion quid wasted because some pricks, that nobody wanted, could steal a football club and use it like a piggy bank.

What was the point? What exactly was the fecking point. Regional pot noodle sponsorships and journeymen playing pianos in their announcement videos, doing shitty poses and making memes? I genuinely believe you could've left the club in the hands of a rotting corpse and it couldn't have gone worse. We wouldn't be on the verge of bankruptcy, for one.
 
stefan92 said:
Everything they did was absolutely legal at the time they did it. There is no ground for a case.

And as a fan you have zero standing anyway. You are not a shareholder, so you aren't even considered a stakeholder which could have a reason to sue.

If you want to use the massive fanbase to do something good: Get organized. Raise money. Buy the club. Manage it better.
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I do not know if any minor shareholders could be convinced to initiate that. Also, could people who work at the club be considered stakeholders?

As I said, forgive my naivety regarding legislation. However, it seems absurd to me that this takeover was ever allowed. Do we have more details about the takeover and the legislation at the time? I assume there should have been certain conditions that needed to be met—e.g., you cannot buy a club and then let it rot in debt. I am looking for loopholes that could be, perhaps, exploited. Was there ever a discussion about that?

What you are saying, however, sounds more idealistic to me, even though I agree. You can never raise the necessary money, no matter how well-organized you are. They will never sell you the club. The debt will never be erased—it would take decades unless a super-rich owner, such as one from Qatar, does it for you.
 
The Mitcher said:
Wouldn't it be better to just buy shares rather than this crazy idea to sue the glazers?
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You could buy all the shares that are pubicly available and it wouldn't make one iota of difference because they have a fraction of the voting power of the shares that the Glazer's have
 
ShamrockD said:
I do not know if any minor shareholders could be convinced to initiate that. Also, could people who work at the club be considered stakeholders?

As I said, forgive my naivety regarding legislation. However, it seems absurd to me that this takeover was ever allowed. Do we have more details about the takeover and the legislation at the time? I assume there should have been certain conditions that needed to be met—e.g., you cannot buy a club and then let it rot in debt. I am looking for loopholes that could be, perhaps, exploited. Was there ever a discussion about that?

What you are saying, however, sounds more idealistic to me, even though I agree. You can never raise the necessary money, no matter how well-organized you are. They will never sell you the club. The debt will never be erased—it would take decades unless a super-rich owner, such as one from Qatar, does it for you.
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Lveraged buyouts are common legal business practice, they were in 2005 and still are today, to us fans it's a football club, in reality it's a business that's no differnt to a supermarket or an insurance company
 
Matt851 said:
They have made a complete mess of every major decision since running the club, and have a pretty poor record of running sporting ventures. It's definitely enough to be somewhat concerned
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Okay, lets see.

First job.

Sack CEO, DoF - Arnold and Murtough - In your opinion that was a mess.
Hire Footballing structure - Berrada, Wilcox, Ashworth, Vivell - In your opinion, they are all a mess and not good enough for United.
Sack Ten Hag - They didn't sack him in June but did in October, so either you saying sacking Ten Hag was a mistake?
Hire Amorim - I take it you were not a fan of us hiring Amorim.
Wage Structure - I take it you are not a fan of reduced wage structure?
Infrastructure - Invest in Carrington - I take it you think its a waste of money investing in the training ground
New Stadium Taskforce - I take it you are not happy with new stadium planning, would rather keep at current OT?


Mistakes made:
Fans - Charging fans for Glazers incompetence - A mess agreed
Ashworth - If he was not the man for the job, why keep him? Sometimes you interview, hire someone and they dont work out... Not the first time this has happened in business, wont be the last
Ten Hag - This was debated quite heavily on here, they wanted to see what he can do under a new structure, mistake.

I like to see this poor record, their sailing team does well, Team Sky cycling won alot of titles, Mercedes are competitive in F1.
 
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