The standards are on the floor.
I no longer recognise my club.
Who are we now?
We have a billionaire family and another billionaire owner and we’re in the mud.
I’m disgusted.
Club ownership | Senior management team talk
- Thread starter golden_blunder
- Start date
The standards are on the floor.
I no longer recognise my club.
Who are we now?
We have a billionaire family and another billionaire owner and we’re in the mud.
I’m disgusted.
Without trying to sound like I'm condoning or defending these decisions.
Do all the other big clubs provide all these free meals and travel etc.. ?
I'm just wondering if United were over generous for all these years. Take clubs out of it, do all large companies provide free meals etc for their employees?
It still sucks to take pleasures away and cutting so many jobs. The question is were all these jobs actually needed. I wonder what the workforce is like in numbers for the likes of City, Madrid, Barca etc..
Just a food for thought
Do all the other big clubs provide all these free meals and travel etc.. ?
I'm just wondering if United were over generous for all these years. Take clubs out of it, do all large companies provide free meals etc for their employees?
It still sucks to take pleasures away and cutting so many jobs. The question is were all these jobs actually needed. I wonder what the workforce is like in numbers for the likes of City, Madrid, Barca etc..
Just a food for thought
Yes, but you have to realise that footballing decisions have impact on other areas, especially if you are a football club.
The Glazers are in charge though.
I know you never specifically said that these cuts would make us successful, that's why I mentioned that it's faith - you believe that these cuts are necessary to give us the chance to be successful on the pitch in the future.
I also appreciate you saying that if they handle the future planning wrongly, then the cuts will put us in a worse position than before as we will have tanked morale and reduced operational capacity.
Personally, I tend to be more cynical and view the cuts as the well worn playbook that a vulture capitalist like Ratcliffe reaches for at the first opportunity to maximise his investment whilst he crosses his fingers and prays to Ayn Rand that the strategy can also lead to success in football.
Ok, let me rephrase: would you still be supporting cutting staff and making these hard decisions in the short term if it was JUST the Glazers in charge, or is your tolerance of the approach / view that it is necessary pain dependent on the fact that it's someone new (and hopefully competent) leading them?
Yep, I am pretty much done with this club. Have supported since I could barely walk, first match saw Gordon Hill in full flow. Lots of bad days before Fergie, but always hope. Now it feels utterly destroyed, the soul has gone. Glazers have sucked the corpse dry and Radcliffe is kicking the corpse.
Joel would be the most palatable insult that you'd get!
No, it would be different but let me tell you why. Glazers are the reason for the debt, not INEOS.
Glazers are the ones who took dividends, not INEOS.
If you are playing hypothetical, I will do the same.
If Glazers, got rid of the debt, didn't take dividends and said and we were making 100m losses yearly, we need to be serious now...
Then hired a CEO who is from a successful football club, a director of football and build a purpose built structure, not bankers and then I would support it too.
For free meals, it's pretty normal for sports teams that do in-house catering.
The rationale is fairly obvious: if you are hiring chefs and nutritionists to make the healthy stuff that you need your first team players to eat during the day, it doesn't cost much more to ask them to increase the volumes and give your other staff a nice perk. I have a friend who does specific personal training for professional sports clubs and if he's down in Brighton, he'll get a free lunch in the canteen with the players and the coaches and staff.
It's also common in the catering world, although each place there varies. Some restaurants give their staff a free meal, some from a specific smaller menu, some just a discount if they eat at work etc.
The 'HR theory' is that you increase staff welfare by making sure your staff are healthy and well fed, develop more camaraderie by everyone eating together and socialising, minimise the time and disruption of them going away and getting lunch each day, attract better quality staff and have better retention by offering a free meal as a perk, etc. Whether that is worth the extra cost is obviously open to debate and depends on the organisation.
In terms of numbers, I think United has a lot of staff but I believe I read that we have less than Liverpool after the first round of redundancies. Obviously you'd probably expect us to have more staff than any other team given we are largest and likely have a bigger ticket office, marketing department etc.
One question for the mods/ site admins?
There are several members here that work for the club that have passed on great info and have been noticably quiet in the last week or so.
Given the appalling threats made by senior club officials about "leaks" leading to dismissals - Is there any process for existing members who are staff to get a "dummy' profile they can use to continue to provide insights from within the club, rather than their current profiles that might be being monitored by the club?
There are several members here that work for the club that have passed on great info and have been noticably quiet in the last week or so.
Given the appalling threats made by senior club officials about "leaks" leading to dismissals - Is there any process for existing members who are staff to get a "dummy' profile they can use to continue to provide insights from within the club, rather than their current profiles that might be being monitored by the club?
Jimmy should buy a Macca's franchise and bring it in and give staff the option to buy their lunch. Everybody wins. On a serious note, I would just hope when the performances improve on the pitch and revenues come back with finishing higher in the table they can review and bring things line the canteen back.
Last edited:
It is definitely a nice perk.
I have a mate that works at a hardware store and they have a cafe, each staff member have a 20% discount and one free meal a week. It's a completely lower scale of operation compared to a large football club but just for the sake of culture and perks in a company I bring that up.
Yes I understand the theory. It does suck to have a nice perk like that then it's taken away. Being a common folk and seeing how bad the players are playing must be frustrating for them after having perks taken away.
I know United have markets pretty much all over the world but maybe their workforce was simply too big.
Again, it's not me trying to defend INEOS. They are being the bad guys by having to do all these cuts. My point is maybe the club were over generous (which isn't a bad thing) compared to culture of other clubs/companies.
The finances seem a whole mess.
Indeed. And Bayern, Madrid, Barcelona. The traditional elite clubs of Europe in terms of revenue. The next cut would see the club have fewer staff than Chelsea, Spurs, and petro fueled PSG. It's not about correcting for inefficiency or normalization.
The Glazers are never leaving are they.
Not until the club is dead, sucked dry it seems.
Not until the club is dead, sucked dry it seems.
I worked in companies who offered that service and I assure you that its a tedious to manage but highly important perk. You only notice how important it is when you tweak around it. For example there was a time when the canteen was going to be refurbished. The organization gave a fair allowance in exchange with the idea of phasing the canteen out (there was issues with the contractor) if the scheme proved to be popular among the employees. Turned out that it wasn't the case as the HR department was bombarded by a horde of people constantly asking when the canteen is going to reopen again, whose going to take the tender etc. HR also pushed for a healthy eating day once a week with a bigger choice of salads etc instead of hot meals. Once again they were inundated by complaints as people working outside or doing physical work (ex maintenance people etc) who weren't happy with the change at all.
The company introduced a 'theme day' (ex international culinary once a week) on a Friday. Anyone who works in the sector knows that its a day were people tend to do a Luke Shaw on it so to speak. The rate of sick leave plummeted because of it. Because of that success a cake and coffee day was introduced on a Monday as well with equal results.
It’ll save £1m a year basically, enough to pay 3 weeks or so of Casemiro’s wage.
I certainly do. You only have to look on here to see the wide and varied opinions about every little thing. Fans are overly emotional creatures.
I wouldn’t even trust the fans to appoint a board successfully without fall out and recrimination.
Look at Bayern.
Exception that proves the rule, plus United fans are a unique breed.
Even if they manage to appoint a board it would take a couple of losses and it'll be sack the board, repeat and rinse
I'm 30 and I was very young opening my business which will be 10 years this year. It's a food business.
I don't have any experience working within a company culture as most of my working life so far has pretty much been working for me. That's why I might sound silly asking these questions.
Any lads doing psychical work want a good feed. I have a fast food takeaway and anytime tradesmen etc.. come in, it's a really big feed they'll get.
It's also because it's comforting to them after a hard days work. A lot see healthy eating as a chore. It's just not what they want after physical labour.
It's interesting how many times the company tried to change the eating culture.
Perhaps a perk like this at United wasn't really worth cutting for the sake of morale etc..
Exactly! It would be a proper shitshow!
All these cuts, will still amount to less savings than what the glazers will take out of the club in dividends at the end of the financial year.
Actually the won't, part of the Ratcliffe deal was there would be no dividends for at least 3 years
They will have structured it as repayments of shareholder loans, which isn’t a dividend but achieves the same outcome.
No dividends this year- part of the Ineos investment terms involve the Glazers agreeing to not take any dividends for 3 years. Poor guys. And people say they don't make any sacrifices for Man Utd.
No dividends then overpays them on the share value
The Glazers contractually cannot take dividends for 3 years. That takes us to 2027 when the Glazer debt becomes repayable and will likely need to be refinanced. Given our financial predicament and much higher interest rates the money likely won’t be available for dividends at that point either.
Unless they are willing to give up equity, the Glazers days of creaming riches off this club are all but over.
Yes exactly, a culture was created and now it’s been torn to shreds
I worked all sort of work from office work to physical work. The latter requires far more protein then the former. I had a colleague who nearly fainted 6 stories up because he insisted on a purely salad diet. I am sure that there's a way to work it out but it's far from easy.
I also noticed how diverse a workplace can be. You have people (mostly foreigners) who came to a country to make as much money as possible (probably to afford opening a business home). These people tend to be insanely hardworking, they'll take every shift (including the worst shifts) and tend not to have many if any friends. By giving them a free cooked meal whom he can eat among colleagues/ their only friends you'll ensure their loyalty and it will act as an incentive for them to work more. I worked with people who popped into work almost every day because of it.
I'm sure it's been pointed out many times already, but can you imagine what state the ownership under the Glazers would be looking like now, if INEOS hadn't come in?
Quite likely they would have stuck with Erik after the FA Cup final win and signed the same players he wanted.
Just feels like INEOS have become a distraction to deflect the attention and anger away from th Glazers. Perhaps they would have done some shady deal with a US investment fund for extra funds, but at least all our frustration could be concentrated on the sole cause of our demise.
Quite likely they would have stuck with Erik after the FA Cup final win and signed the same players he wanted.
Just feels like INEOS have become a distraction to deflect the attention and anger away from th Glazers. Perhaps they would have done some shady deal with a US investment fund for extra funds, but at least all our frustration could be concentrated on the sole cause of our demise.
I completely understand that. It makes sense. That worker in particular, of course if he had a better diet that wouldn't have happened but the point is they need a good feed and if they do hard work and long hours, it goes back to my point of comfort food also.
Most companies are diverse because a lot of the time it just happens to work out that way. We have a factory in my town and it employs over 1k people. 60 percent probably Irish, then you have Polish, Lithuanian mostly. A few Brazilians are there (not many).
When you mention that, a lot of people might live alone, so a free meal where they don't have to cook and pay for it can go a very long way.
It’s got to be said but the Glazers have performed an absolute business masterclass in many ways. The leveraged buyout, the dividends and pumping up sponsors, even inheriting Fergie and some success initially, and now get paid handsomely to have somebody step in to take the blame.
Fans need to wake up and get off INEOS back because it should come as no surprise that they’ve actually run us into the ground and somebody else has luckily stepped in to at least try to do something about it. I can’t listen to anymore people say Ratcliffe doesn’t want best for the club because it’s the only reason I can see why he’s got involved with this mess. Business wise it’s just throwing away money and time right now.
If the Glazers sold the club for £4 billion (which is a more realistic price), they would earn more in interest by just shoving it in a bank than they get paid in dividends. Don't know why they're still hanging around, stinking the place out.
I understand the call to focus attention on the damage done by the Glazers, but it's naive in the extreme to think that Ineos are just here because they love the club and want to save it.
Ratcliffe's entire business model is buying distressed assets that aren't worth what they should be, cutting costs and stripping them down to make them leaner and more profitable. Preferably whilst avoiding as much tax and receiving as much taxpayer money as possible.
He's here because he thinks he will make money out of it in the long run, probably from the stadium redevelopment, the superleague or media rights.
Never nice for people to lose jobs, but for me, the bigger issue isthe message the management team are putting out there.
The team is in utter turmoil, in the first half against everton, we looked like a bunch of poorly coached league one players, and if they were even half the team they think they are, we would have been dead and buried before half time.
So, given the state of things, and no real chance of turning it around in the rest of the season, the very last thing you would think management want is more negativity. But no, here they are, no more food, another couple of hundred laid off. All of this could wait until the summer, but instead its endless, grinding doom and gloom.
That will impact the employees left, and the team itself. AT eleite level sport, its as much a mental game as it is a physical one. We already have a weak mentality throughout the team, ad the management are making it worse. Whether its just the general negativity or players blaming themslves for people losing their jobs, the only change it can make is a negative one.
Good leadership would know better. This lot do not.
The team is in utter turmoil, in the first half against everton, we looked like a bunch of poorly coached league one players, and if they were even half the team they think they are, we would have been dead and buried before half time.
So, given the state of things, and no real chance of turning it around in the rest of the season, the very last thing you would think management want is more negativity. But no, here they are, no more food, another couple of hundred laid off. All of this could wait until the summer, but instead its endless, grinding doom and gloom.
That will impact the employees left, and the team itself. AT eleite level sport, its as much a mental game as it is a physical one. We already have a weak mentality throughout the team, ad the management are making it worse. Whether its just the general negativity or players blaming themslves for people losing their jobs, the only change it can make is a negative one.
Good leadership would know better. This lot do not.
Seems like the people running the club are delusional about the state we're in and at a complete loss on how to get us out of this mess. We're more likely to be battling relegation again next season than we are to finish in the top 8.
The club was heading towards the abyss financially and It almost certainly would have meant investment loans from the US. The Glazers may be terrible owners, but they can read a balance sheet. They knew that they had no other option.