Your hypothetical is nonsense :P so it's an even more convoluted discussion. Not sure we can learn anything from the direction this discussion is now heading.
Club ownership | Senior management team talk
- Thread starter golden_blunder
- Start date
Your hypothetical is nonsense :P so it's an even more convoluted discussion. Not sure we can learn anything from the direction this discussion is now heading.
Disgusting behaviour. I know a few people who work at United, and they work to create a brilliant atmosphere at the club. This is cold and brutual, with a cost cutting that seems more designed to make a point than any actual saving - when you consider the obscene amounts they waste yearly.
I'm pretty sure we will have further stories of people playing Football manager in the transfer market too.
I'm pretty sure we will have further stories of people playing Football manager in the transfer market too.
The worst thing a person could ever do is buy the club and give it to the fans?Worst possible thing anyone could ever do.
Joel you really should sell the club.
Yeah, blame the bad Banks but not the ones caring about repaying debt or taking care of finances
My worry is that for whatever reason, Ineos don't seem actually concerned about repaying the debt.
I hope I am wrong and they and the Glazers have a plan to clear it, but if it was high among Ineos' concerns, I would have thought they would have tried to deal with it as part of their share purchase. That's the point at which they had all of the leverage: the Glazers were desperate for investment / a sale, and Ratcliffe was the only viable candidate. Something similar to the clause they forced the Glazers to agree to on not taking dividends for a few years, but for debt: an agreement that x% of the purchase proceeds would be reinvested into the club to replace the debt with a non-interest bearing director's loan. If it were a UK company and UK directors, that arrangement would likely also save the director's a tax bill, although that may be less relevant here since the Glazers already moved Man Utd to the Cayman Islands...
That view is understandable, but just because something is understandable doesn't make it right. What people really need is for the Glazers not to have near bankrupted our club, but here we are. That doesn't change where the club is.
This pretty much sums up the level of argument I keep seeing.
Here lies the problem.. No minority owner in their right frame of mind will pay off 700m out of their pocket without anything in return.
The Glazers have 0 interest in reducing the debt as well, if they did they would have used the money INEOS gave them to reduce it.
Do people actually think, that the debt was never mentioned in negotiations? It is clear the Glazers have said, we are not reducing the debt.. end of.
The Glazers are also not open to a full sale, they have just gone through the process, no way they do it again so soon.
Unfortunately, the only way for anything to change this is, if the banks called in the debt, which they wont as they are making 80m interest on it yearly, or if our finances got so bad that the Glazers are forced to sell and we are a long way from that happening.
They will sell the naming rights of the stadium before considering a full sale.
Cold and brutal it may be, which is most unfortunate to those directly affected, but why “disgusting”?
This is the cold reality when a company is allowed to deteriorate to the state Utd is in today.
The Glazers and their clueless executive appointees have brought us here.
Now the new Utd management and executive are having to deal with the mess and impending dangers.
What else should they do, carry on with excess staffing levels, inefficiencies, unnecessary functions and activities, and whatever else they’ve found?
It may be worst, they may be having to get rid of some people who do make a useful contribution, but the financial overhead of keeping them means they have to go as well.
Hopefully they’ll all get a fair pay off and can find alternative work.
.
There is a known Iraqi proverb "the pot rolled over and it found it's cover"
This is used to describe two people or more find each other and end up with each other perfectly suiting each other. Sums up the Glazers and INEOS.
This is used to describe two people or more find each other and end up with each other perfectly suiting each other. Sums up the Glazers and INEOS.
I don't follow your logic. The people criticising Ineos aren't saying that the Glazers aren't also to blame for their terrible ownership, they are disagreeing with the necessity and the viability of the 'cutting everything to the bone' approach.
If somebody attacks you and breaks your arm, and you go to the hospital and the doctor decides to break your other arm so you are symmetrical, he can't avoid liability by saying "what are you blaming me for? What you really need is to have not been attacked, then you'd be fine".
So you are implying INEOS are in it for the money, if that is the case, why did they invest 250m in the club?
Why would a 73 yr old spend 1.5bn to buy a club if the main aim was to make profit? How is he going to make profit on it?
Why would he spend time drafting a redevelopment plan that will take 7 years?
If the aim was to make money, how is this going to make him any money?
You might think you’re dunking on me but I doubt Mason Mount brought much commercial value to the club. If he did, he’d do well to payback the investment in him even if he wasn’t contributing on the pitch.
We shouldn’t stop signing players but we should absolutely stop giving non-sensical 5 year contracts to players and pay massive fees to sign players in the last year of their contract. The contracts need to be heavily incentivized based on appearances. If they turn it down, then good riddance. It’s better to not sign a player than pay over the odds to sign him.
Yeah you are right, footballers bring no commercial value to the club. Selling player shirts etc is not bringing in value.
Right, so we should start giving players 2 year deals and wait for them to be free.
I think you are right, we should only get free transfers on incentivised wages, it works so well for other clubs right?
Its more like breaking your arm and then blaming the person trying to put it in a cast because its painful. The only reason there's a problem is due to what came before.
Do people think that Inoes would be making these cuts if United were cash rich and successful? They're doing it because we're out of money.
And what exactly is the counter proposal? Raise ticket prices? Spend less on players? I'm not sure what people want, other than a world where this isnt happening.
The scouts have been ignored and repeatedly overruled by the non-football people since SAF retired. Very unfair to blame them for the current predicament.
I agree, but I don't understand how you can believe this and then get annoyed at people criticising Ineos for being the Glazers' handmaids.
By your own logic, we should be criticising Ineos for either failing to deal with the debt during the sale negotiations, or being happy to conclude a deal that resulted in them being the largest single shareholder of an entity with a financial position so tenuous that it requires Michelle from marketing bringing her own packed lunch to work to keep the club afloat.
This 100%
We are owned by crooks and finding time to blame banks instead of Glazers says a lot
I actually think they would agree to a money spinning super league now and damned with the consequences. As would probably a big portion of our impatient fanbase.
Good, glad we are in agreement then. They should definitely do it. No one’s worried about players like Mason Mount being available for free.
Their 4 year plan being in the europa league seems at odds with the idea that they want to win the league in 2028
You know what caused the 100m loss despite being EBIDTA positive?
We'll circle back to it.
First, our salary/benefit costs were 55% of the our overall revenue. Which doesn't suggest we have this "bloated" workforce that keeps getting mentioned on here. In general practice our club has always tried to keep the salary costs below 50%; however 55% is not that huge a departure from that 50% number that we needed to cut the workforce by 40% or stop lunch provided as a benefit to the employees. If you knew how to read financial statements then this wouldn't be the line item that would get the alarm bells ringing.
Our operating expenses actually reduced by ~9% to balance out the ~10% increase in salary costs due to our CL participation.
Those two combined were well within limits and I am sure better than what most clubs are spending on those two expenses in a financial year.
Our problem start below that, what killed us is:
- A very high amortization cost
- Finance cost due to the Glazers debt (~63m)
- An exceptional expense to get a new investor (~47m)
Thing to note, the loss of >100m was only in the last financial year due to this "exceptional expense". The loss the season before was ~28m. This season's books will look automatically better as we are not in the process of getting another Jimmy.
Now you'd expect Jimmy to come in and work on improving the football aspects of the club, which has been the real issue. Instead, they extended and fired a manager, hired and fired a Dof, spent money on more duds, paid money to release a manager from their club. Without wasting money on those things our finances for this financial year would have automatically looked better. Now to compensate for their incompetency, they are going after ordinary folks jobs, sandwiches and scotch tapes. Cannot believe it is being justified and getting applauded.
It's is so fecking infuriating and embarrassing.
They budgeted for it, they're not planning for it. Those are two different things
Yeah it's a pity Ratcliffe didn't partner up with someone else to buy them out completely, nope instead he took the option of negotiating minority ownership and they couldn't believe their luck.
I was never in favour of INEOS as owners in the first place, then it became minority owners which is even worse.
However; we can sit here criticise what should have been done, could have been done but lets be honest, the ball was in the Glazers court. If not INEOS it would have been another minority stakeholder.
So while INEOS have been in charge, I have looked at all the things they have done and not tunnel visioned into Ten Hag and Ashworth, which most people have done.
They have put in a structure, something we all called for. I remember so many posters saying this club is rotten from the core, meaning from low level staff to CEO.
So the first thing they did was get rid of CEO, DoF and high level staff, employed their own footballing people, who conducted a review.
They are trying to implement a wage structure and dont want to buy overpaid, 30 year olds, instead younger players.
Whilst they have got loads of things wrong, womens team, ticket prices and other things, I cannot expect them to get 100 /100 right decisions.
Cutting costs is very natural to new ownership / new structure, most companies, small to large all go through the same. I have been at successful companies and a new MD is hired and the first thing they do is look at overheads, how to make the workforce more efficient.
Well, if the club is making 100m losses a year, free lunches is easy overheads to reduce. You cant expect a club that is 15th, not doing well to give you free lunches.
Fair enough. I like your username
Fire, fire, 100m losses, fire, fire, 100m losses....shut up with it already. Half of that loss is due to a the Glazer hiring an outside agency to get a minority investor in. It's not a recurring loss.
You are taking a lot on pure faith:
"Ineos wouldn't be making cuts if United were successful" - says who? The Glazers increased ticket prices, cut costs and failed to invest when we are very successful on the pitch. Necessity is always the excuse used for cuts and price hikes. The choice to cut, and then what to cut, is always there.
"They are only doing it because we have no money left" - Ratcliffe's entire business model has been to buy failing businesses at a low price, cut costs and increase profit. It's hardly implausible that his intention is to do the same with United and use the 'we have no choice, it's the Glazer's previous mismanagement and profligacy' as cover.
"These cuts will make us successful in the future" - given Ineos' record in football and their decisions so far, can you see why most fans have less faith than you? Especially when modern football isn't exactly rich with tales of clubs who scrimped, saved and cut their way to the Champions League.
In terms of what fans want as the alternative, I'm sure that differs for each fan. Some would rather we spend a few million less on players in the summer so that more staff could keep their jobs, some are angry that Ineos gave the Glazer family a life raft, some are in favour of 50+1, some want a rich Sheik etc. Ultimately it doesn't matter - you can criticise without having an immediately actionable counter-proposal. Ineos and the Glazers clearly don't care what fans want besides assigning it a monetary value in relation to their asset. We're giving our opinions on their decisions on an internet forum for a bit of catharsis / stave off boredom, or to recruit other users into an elaborate ponzi scheme, in my case.
There are so many more areas where the club is absolutely wasting money, being financially reckless and irresponsible, that really need to be addressed.
Players cutting holes in their socks and giving shirts away should have to pay for that kit that won't be reused.
There is no need for Amorim, nor the physios and set piece coaches and the rest of the hangers on that sit on the bench to be dressed in matching club tracksuits. If they want a tracksuit they can pay for it, they can attend matches in their own jeans and a pullover.
Hiring of a plane for mid week European games, absolutely excessive. Go on EasyJet, and if they have missed the last flight back because of the time of the game, sleep on the seats at the airport and get the early flight back. That is usually the cheapest anyway.
I see no reason for anybody on the coaching or support staff other than Amorim and the physio to travel to away games. I've never seen one of them get up and do anything, and all our games are televised, they can watch from home.
Travel to away games need to be coach. Flying down to London or the South coast, again an absolute waste of money when coach hire is relatively cheap.
Why do we need pay Alan Keegan to be an announcer at Old Trafford ? One of the subs is perfectly capable of taking the mike and doing that.
Professional grounds man ! Look at how many people in Manchester have a lawn mower and probably aren't using it on a Friday, or Tuesday. We could ask for volunteers to use their mowers and trim the grass once a week. Set up a rota with the players, I'm sure most of them live in a house with a lawn.
One of the players can take it in turns to take the kit home after each game, have their Mrs wash it and bring it back for the next match.
With these sort of cost cutting methods we could make the club great again.
Players cutting holes in their socks and giving shirts away should have to pay for that kit that won't be reused.
There is no need for Amorim, nor the physios and set piece coaches and the rest of the hangers on that sit on the bench to be dressed in matching club tracksuits. If they want a tracksuit they can pay for it, they can attend matches in their own jeans and a pullover.
Hiring of a plane for mid week European games, absolutely excessive. Go on EasyJet, and if they have missed the last flight back because of the time of the game, sleep on the seats at the airport and get the early flight back. That is usually the cheapest anyway.
I see no reason for anybody on the coaching or support staff other than Amorim and the physio to travel to away games. I've never seen one of them get up and do anything, and all our games are televised, they can watch from home.
Travel to away games need to be coach. Flying down to London or the South coast, again an absolute waste of money when coach hire is relatively cheap.
Why do we need pay Alan Keegan to be an announcer at Old Trafford ? One of the subs is perfectly capable of taking the mike and doing that.
Professional grounds man ! Look at how many people in Manchester have a lawn mower and probably aren't using it on a Friday, or Tuesday. We could ask for volunteers to use their mowers and trim the grass once a week. Set up a rota with the players, I'm sure most of them live in a house with a lawn.
One of the players can take it in turns to take the kit home after each game, have their Mrs wash it and bring it back for the next match.
With these sort of cost cutting methods we could make the club great again.
EBITDA is a meaningless metric for football clubs because the "DA" - transfer fees and other player acquisition costs - is a core part of the business.
Agree with you on most other points though.
With respect you're on a forum discussing the corporate side of things. So you do care.
Because we all know the corporate and the football results are interlinked.
But unfortunately it's a business and if a person isn't really needed you can't just keep firing money their way.
Obviously I'm working on the assumption here that the staff level was bloated. If cuts are made and the people left remaining are given a crushing workload to make up for it that's not on.
When you sign players, you add to the wage bill. The transfer fees also add to the £300m+ of transfer repayments that already exist. Therefore, adding new players to the wage bill has visible and 'invisible' costs to both debt and the bottom line, which is cited as the reason for the cuts.
It is not a good way to run a business when you make redundancies to offset the cost of superfluous new hires.
Realistically, you're talking over £1bn in both glazer leveraged and transfer debt. That's when you look at the disrepair of what was once, comfortably, the best club stadium in the UK. It is now the theatre of bad dreams, and the answer to that is (apparently) a new 100k stadium. That will comfortably cost over £3bn by the time it has been finished, but that is at today's rates. Could be more. So realistically, the club *could* be £4bn in the red and still not have a squad to match.
To me, it reeks of dinosaur mentaility by SJR - force everyone back into the office, then complain about the costs of running said office with people in, then get rid of a load of loyal club people, and then no doubt the next problem with be that the club lacks soul and is disconnected from its legacy. I'm somewhat astounded that we haven't seen more green and yellow scarves considering this must be the lowest of low points for the club in the last 40 years.
Rather we could let people go through normal attrition and turnover.
Fair enough, you never wanted them but you have a higher tolerance for some of the penny pinching because you see it as part of an overall improvement and modernisation.
I agree that we should look at their minority ownership holistically, and I also agree that new management will always tend to want to do a review, and often that will involve looking to reduce overheads and increase efficiency.
I just currently can't help thinking that their ownership looks more likely to strip the last few 'United' things from Man Utd than get us back to a club that supporters can be proud of.
From experience these consultants are a waste of money. If they knew so much about how to run a successful football club they would be running a successful club...
Warren and Charlie think EBITDA is a meaningless metric when evaluating any business. However, I only wanted to point out that it's not operating and salary expenses that has got us here, but I & A that are a real problem due to the debt and the amortization costs due to bad purchases. The solution they have come up with though is to neglect those and target other expenses which are well within limits.
Mind you, I am not suggesting that despite being within limits all those are justified. I simply mean that we are going after the low hanging fruit and creating news.
@Big Ben Foster I was reading back some posts and noticed that I said "EBIDTA is a meaningful" instead of "EBIDTA is meaningless". My bad, it was a typo and you were correct in pointing it out.
Last edited:
Firstly, no one is arguing that our revenue is up there with the best in the world. So you can keep on bringing EBIDTA all you like but the bottom line figure is all that matters. If I earn 100k a week and spend 200k a week, it makes me broke.
We all know and agree the finance cost of 63m a year is killing us.
The Glazers putting the legal fees for new investor on United, again another reason why they are hated.
You are incorrect, we made 113m loss in 2024, 28m in 2023, 115m in 2022 and 92m in 2021. So its only in the last year.
Now you say they have wasted a lot of money because they fired a manager, so would you say they are competent if they did not sack Ten Hag? Because that is the ONLY way, we would have not spent the money to sack him?
Go have a look, when was the last time we made 100m in sales? They got that last season.
I have had a look at City and Liverpool, two clubs who have been more successful than us in the last 10 years, have much lower staff than we do.
Liverpool have 701 non footballing staff, City have 381 and Arsenal have 625, guess who has the highest? Manutd at 811. The worst performing club has the most employees and most successful in recent times has more than 50% less staff.
Obviously, being narrowminded you think that the reason they are cutting costs is because they spent 14m to sack Ten Hag / Ashworth, when in reality its to get the club efficient. Its got nothing to do with that but the business as a whole.
I would like to add a couple:
- Instead of using The Lowry before match-days, the players should be made to sleep in temporary tents at the ground to save expense.
- When we are away, they should be housed in the nearest trailer park.
Yep had that thought when I saw the statement