Club ownership | Senior management team talk

DarkLord1984 said:
I see.

So, what is the plan for the debt then? It doesn't seem to be decreasing. Does it just keep getting bigger until our awful owners agree to a full sale?
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The original purchase debt from the leveraged buyout matures in 2027. I suspect there will be a debt for equity swap at some point, and Sir Jim will gain further control of the club. Otherwise it will have to be refinanced and the interest rate is a lot higher now than it was when the current debt was arranged!

I think the stadium project will be used to drive his stake in the club up too btw.
 
Great interview but Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

The main takeaways are, he understands that "it's the fans' money" via ticket sales. "Do we want to spend the fans' money on free lunches or new players who will win silverware?"

If the problem was reversed and we had no money to buy players but were giving free lunches out, there would be outrage.
 
UpWithRivers said:
He comes across as a nice guy but
1) He is clueless about football.
2) He is old school. He doesn't get how modern life works.
3) He thinks he can run United like a Greggs or any normal business. You can't. No club has ever been successful by not spending money.
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1) That’s why he employs Berrada, Wilcox, Brailsford and Blanc etc….
2) What’s your point here?
3) He’s not about not spending money. He is about not spending money unnecessarily, which seems fair enough really. Never a bad thing to cut out waste.
 
I’m not going to analyse the rights and wrongs of every job and expenditure cut because I don’t think I’m in a position to - and some of it seems bonkers - but what I will say is the fact we hired an extra 250 staff whilst losing 300m plus in losses the last few years is downright fecking insane and I don’t think it’s completely beyond the realms of possibility that we’ve been wasting as much money off the pitch as we did on it.
 
All in all it was a good and honest interview.

Things I liked: He was pretty honest and clear about the state of the club and the reasons behind their actions. He also seemed to have a lot of confidence that we'll come out of this with a great stadium and a much better run club.

Things I didn't like: His insistence that the Glazers putting cash into the club wouldn't solve our issues. He went out of his way to avoid pointing fingers at them, which I understand. Yes we need to run the club better, but we're in so much debt because of the Glazers, and having owners that have no intention whatsoever of investing any money into the club that they saddled with debt certainly doesn't help.

Also it seems most of the cruel measures taken didn't have much thought put into them, when neville asked about throwing a charity instead of cutting 40k from former players, his response was that nobody thought of that. And that's simply because no one in that decision making process gave a shit.

Conclusion: Ratcliff took on something much bigger than he had anticipated. He's making a lot of mistakes but he's trying to get it right. His vision for the club is good, but he needs to put more thought into his decisions and the impact it has on the club. I still don't like him, but if he learns from his mistakes there's a chance things might work out. I still have no idea how we're going to fund the stadium, or back Amorim in the summer.
 
Mickeza said:
I’m not going to analyse the rights and wrongs of every job and expenditure cut because I don’t think I’m in a position to - and some of it seems bonkers - but what I will say is the fact we hired an extra 250 staff whilst losing 300m plus in losses the last few years is downright fecking insane and I don’t think it’s completely beyond the realms of possibility that we’ve been wasting as much money off the pitch as we did on it.
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It's like the idiots running the club actually had the same "it's not your money" mentality of those in the summer transfer forum. It's downright incredible how badly it has been run.
 
Jim is a business man. He is not here for football operations. We are suffering from almost 20 years of debt, mismanagement, neglect etc. Do people really expect that to change overnight? Before Jim and Amorim, Ragnick was the only person who said it as it is. Open heart surgery is needed to restore the glory days. That takes time, anyone who has worked in change management knows this. From the business side to the football side, the club is rotten to the core. It's embarrassing that a premier league club infrastructure leaks in a press conference, a huge sign of neglect.

Ticket price increases, redundancy, cost cutting, they are all needed. They are not nice but we are living in a period of time where we suffered from high levels of inflation, interest rates are our of control and economic uncertainty glooms over. Football is a busienss these days.

I was shocked to hear we may have run out of cash by the end of 2025. That's the clearest sign of administration. How true is this statement, i don't know, all I can do is reach to his statement.

I've thought over and over again, selling our youth players may be the only way to save our future. 70m for Kobi, yes please. These FFP rules are ridiculous, selling a promising youngster may be the only option we have left.

I'll personally give Jim another year. The summer coming up is key. You can see the changes on the football side already. Recruitment was better in the summer versus what we have seen before the addition of high rated youngsters brings some excitement.

Time is telling, we don't know all of the facts.
 
Someone said:
All in all it was a good and honest interview.

Things I liked: He was pretty honest and clear about the state of the club and the reasons behind their actions. He also seemed to have a lot of confidence that we'll come out of this with a great stadium and a much better run club.

Things I didn't like: His insistence that the Glazers putting cash into the club wouldn't solve our issues. He went out of his way to avoid pointing fingers at them, which I understand. Yes we need to run the club better, but we're in so much debt because of the Glazers, and having owners that have no intention whatsoever of investing any money into the club that they saddled with debt certainly doesn't help.

Also it seems most of the cruel measures taken didn't have much thought put into them, when neville asked about throwing a charity instead of cutting 40k from former players, his response was that nobody thought of that. And that's simply because no one in that decision making process gave a shit.

Conclusion: Ratcliff took on something much bigger than he had anticipated. He's making a lot of mistakes but he's trying to get it right. His vision for the club is good, but he needs to put more thought into his decisions and the impact it has on the club. I still don't like him, but if he learns from his mistakes there's a chance things might work out. I still have no idea how we're going to fund the stadium, or back Amorim in the summer.
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They’re bound by a non-disparagement clause (can’t slag each other off basically) so I get that bit.

I’m also with him on the “no free lunches” bit as well. Janet in accounts shouldn’t be getting her chicken salad for feck all.
 
acnumber9 said:
His employees certainly wouldn’t think so.
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Not defending him because only time will tell but we never should have had 500 more employees than any other club in world football.

They never should have been hired in the first place. He is having to try fix a problem someone else built
 
Fair play for him being honest about things and for actually putting money into the club rather than taking it out. I think he's trying to help us, of course he's a billionaire so he's not likeable but I don't care about that, just that he helps us get back in track as a normal well run club... Which will take time
 
MrBest said:
Jim is a business man. He is not here for football operations. We are suffering from almost 20 years of debt, mismanagement, neglect etc. Do people really expect that to change overnight? Before Jim and Amorim, Ragnick was the only person who said it as it is. Open heart surgery is needed to restore the glory days. That takes time, anyone who has worked in change management knows this. From the business side to the football side, the club is rotten to the core. It's embarrassing that a premier league club infrastructure leaks in a press conference, a huge sign of neglect.

Ticket price increases, redundancy, cost cutting, they are all needed. They are not nice but we are living in a period of time where we suffered from high levels of inflation, interest rates are our of control and economic uncertainty glooms over. Football is a busienss these days.

I was shocked to hear we may have run out of cash by the end of 2025. That's the clearest sign of administration. How true is this statement, i don't know, all I can do is reach to his statement.

I've thought over and over again, selling our youth players may be the only way to save our future. 70m for Kobi, yes please. These FFP rules are ridiculous, selling a promising youngster may be the only option we have left.

I'll personally give Jim another year. The summer coming up is key. You can see the changes on the football side already. Recruitment was better in the summer versus what we have seen before the addition of high rated youngsters brings some excitement.

Time is telling, we don't know all of the facts.
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FFP is irrelevant to how bad our financial situation is. Selling a youth player had the same financial impact long before it even existed.
 
r3idy said:
When have the Glazers Ever put themselves up for interview or scrutiny? The court of public opinion means nothing to them.

Fair play to Nev on asking some tough questions on what Ineos have done and what the Glazers have done historically
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Ratcliffe is willing to be the face, part of the deal with the devil. No different to Arnold having a drink with fans.

Yes having watched it fully Neville asked some “tough questions” but were they questions he could have avoided without everyone raising eyebrows. More importantly did he follow up with tougher questions in response to some of Ratcliffe mediocre answers ? Not really.
 
rooney2009 said:
To be fair I’ve just seen the full interview and Gary asked all the difficult questions and credit to stingy Sir Jim for fronting up and answering the questions.
It’s more than we’ve got from the parasites that are the Glazers
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He has made plenty of mistakes himself
 
Plant0x84 said:
1) That’s why he employs Berrada, Wilcox, Brailsford and Blanc etc….
2) What’s your point here?
3) He’s not about not spending money. He is about not spending money unnecessarily, which seems fair enough really. Never a bad thing to cut out waste.
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1) He said signings were a joint decision between him, Ten Haag and Wilcox/Brailsford? If he knows fk all about football then he should not be involved. That's one example. If he knows fk all about football, he should not give interviews and talk about football if he knows fk all about it. I can go on
2) My point is that he doesn't understand the modern fan or the modern game. He said the protests were about being 14th in the table. No it's not. He says you save pennies, then the pounds will look after themselves. A fking multimillionaire that owns United talking about pennies. No fkr wants to hear that. It's old school thinking. He says the real fans are the ones that buy season tickets. Well that's a fk you to the 99 percent of all the rest of the fans. He doesn't understand modern football, he doesn't understand the modern fan. And by modern I mean not off the 50's. Neville asked why cant Bruno and Maguire do a dinner to raise money for the veteran players. 'Oh we didn't think of that'. Course, you didn't, you are 1000 years old.
3) Totally agree but saving 40 grand for veteran players is fkd or dinners for staff
 
I’m really impressed with the way Gary went in on the Glazers about putting some money in for once rather than taking it out. Ratcliffe tried to dodge it but Nev kept at him and the end he all but conceded the point.

They won’t give a shit obviously, but it made them look absolutely horrendous and really painted a vivid picture of them taking money out of the club while veteran players and club staff are losing their incomes.
 
GazTheLegend said:
I realise that it's never nice to see jobs go but has anyone seen the comments made by Jim Ratcliffe about how we were paying a 'body language consultant' £180k a year????? :lol:
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So that's where Rashford and Martial got their posture from. Maybe if we had paid a more market value for such role both players would have played like Ronaldinho.
 
Big Ben Foster said:
What the hell were his people doing during the diligence period then?
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Oh they definitely knew.

I just think that they genuinely thought with the investment over the summer that we'd make Champions league football. Hafway through they realised oh shit we won't and had to adapt accordingly.

It was a gamble that didn't pay off.
 
Good interview, he came across well.

Obvious he's not invovled in micro-decisions (and rightly so) but is getting the flack for it. At the end of the day, what he says is true - the ship needs steadying - and then from then we can work on everything.

It's just a shame he isn't the full owner, I still don't fully understand what is going on there at all.

As with Amorim, with everything currently in the club, it needs some time to fix the errors of the past.
 
UpWithRivers said:
He said signings were a joint decision between him, Ten Haag and Wilcox/Brailsford? If he knows fk all about football then he should not be involved.
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He knows business and finance. He’d also be across club budgets etc. Being involved in ‘transfer business’ doesn’t necessarily mean he picked the players himself. I’m sure he’s learned enough becoming a self made billionaire to leave those decisions to the specialists.
 
Ole'sgunnarwin said:
That was one depressing interview.
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Depressing. Enlightening. Worrying. A real insight into quite a few things going on behind the scenes. Much of it was like watching a slow motion car crash. I kept wondering why he'd put himself through that. Why allow such awkward questions on matters he'd clearly rather not address at this time.

He essentially confirmed just how bad our finances are. And, as clearly as he could, spelled out who was to blame.

Credit to him for fronting up. Like it or not, we have to give him time and it probably won't get much better this summer. The glazers are the cause of our problems and making life more difficult for this guy won't help the club.
 
Good interview by SJR. There is no easy fix. Recruitment has to be sorted and it is a 3-5 year project. The only was to accelerate that time line is to have phenomenal recruitment (i.e signing the next Salah, Ronaldo etc. on the cheap).

Just playing the devils advocate - ticket prices were frozen for roughly 10 years. Just adjusting for inflation, which is perfectly reasonable would have seen them increase by approx 35%. UK wages are up approx. 45% in that time (not median salary) but statistically it is a lot cheaper to attend a game now then it was 10 years ago. I am not advocating for it, but just presenting the facts.
 
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, 60 years in business and never had a meal on expenses.

Yeah right.

He's a cost cutter and pocket stuffer, i dont believe a word.
 
Plant0x84 said:
He knows business and finance. He’d also be across club budgets etc. Being involved in ‘transfer business’ doesn’t necessarily mean he picked the players himself. I’m sure he’s learned enough becoming a self made billionaire to leave those decisions to the specialists.
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He didnt say that and you are making assumptions
 
Anybody else buzzing about the stadium talk at the end? If Nev is that excited by it, it must be pretty special as he hates all things in life regarding United at the moment
 
UpWithRivers said:
My point is that he doesn't understand the modern fan or the modern game. He says you save pennies, then the pounds will look after themselves. A fking multimillionaire that owns United talking about pennies. No fkr wants to hear that. It's old school thinking.
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You might not like it, but It’s the thinking that got him to where he is. He’s a self made billionaire off the back of watching the pennies.

Also you can’t complain about all the debt on the club but also complain when somebody makes changes to help the club be self sufficient again. You have to choose one way or another. Simply expecting an owner to pump good money after bad into the club is unrealistic. If he goes that route eventually he goes bankrupt and so does the club.
 
UpWithRivers said:
1) He said signings were a joint decision between him, Ten Haag and Wilcox/Brailsford? If he knows fk all about football then he should not be involved. That's one example. If he knows fk all about football, he should not give interviews and talk about football if he knows fk all about it. I can go on
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If you watched the interview, you'll hear him say that the Glazers let the management team "get on with it" for years and were completely removed from decisions that were made. Neville correctly called it negligence.

The owner cannot let his management team run the club without justifying their decisions to the owner. That's what got us in this mess in the first place.

You're also being disingenuous to imply he was making footballing decisions, as if he's sat around telling our chief scouts and football directors what players we should sign - there was nothing in that interview that suggested that. If he's responsible for the finances of the football club any huge outlays should be with his approval and involvement, that's the way it works at any sensible football club.
 
laughtersassassin said:
Not defending him because only time will tell but we never should have had 500 more employees than any other club in world football.

They never should have been hired in the first place. He is having to try fix a problem someone else built
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Man United are not the only business he has had issues with staff in.
 
Ole'sgunnarwin said:
That was one depressing interview.
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Pretty much sure he’s playing a mid game not the long game, by being nice to the Glazers but also admitting the club could go bankrupt in Xmas 2025, he can leverage any more investment and especially a new stadium bought by INEOS for majority share holding in the club.

He clearly has 2/3 year plan to increase his stake to a majority. You’ve heard of the smiling assassin, well SJR is the miserable assassin!

Fair play for Gary calling him out over the £40,000 year fund for older players from 60’s and 70’s, Gary gave him a simple solution and he looked dumbstruck how easily he could have avoided that major banana skin!
 
Honest interview and laid out that we are a finical mess that he is trying to sort. Fair play for being upfront rather than the rats in Florida.
 
diarm said:
I’m really impressed with the way Gary went in on the Glazers about putting some money in for once rather than taking it out. Ratcliffe tried to dodge it but Nev kept at him and the end he all but conceded the point.

They won’t give a shit obviously, but it made them look absolutely horrendous and really painted a vivid picture of them taking money out of the club while veteran players and club staff are losing their incomes.
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I have always wanted to ask and maybe I should start a thread about this but…Why do so many United fans put more emphasis on Glazer taking out dividends Vs bad general management?

I personally think the biggest impact into our finances has been the Glazers letting Ed Woodward and those that followed after him to make so many bad financial decisions when it came to football. Ed Woodward went almost a decade making signings.

Just looking at the current squad…Antony, Sancho and Hojlunds fees minus any wages = more money than the Glazers have taken out in dividends. THIS is what has killed us financially!
 
AdNani said:
Anybody else buzzing about the stadium talk at the end? If Nev is that excited by it, it must be pretty special as he hates all things in life regarding United at the moment
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Well if it depends on the goverment regenerating South Manchester then don't keep your hopes up.

Government has promised investment in the North of England for years....
 
UpWithRivers said:
2) My point is that he doesn't understand the modern fan or the modern game. He said the protests were about being 14th in the table. No it's not. He says you save pennies, then the pounds will look after themselves. A fking multimillionaire that owns United talking about pennies. No fkr wants to hear that. It's old school thinking. He says the real fans are the ones that buy season tickets. Well that's a fk you to the 99 percent of all the rest of the fans. He doesn't understand modern football, he doesn't understand the modern fan. And by modern I mean not off the 50's. Neville asked why cant Bruno and Maguire do a dinner to raise money for the veteran players. 'Oh we didn't think of that'. Course, you didn't, you are 1000 years old.
3) Totally agree but saving 40 grand for veteran players is fkd or dinners for staff
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Spending more money than you earn is not acceptable in the old game, and it's not acceptable in the modern game. What is it about the "modern game" that makes you think you can make a loss of £100 million every year?

He's not cutting pennies, he's cutting millions of pounds.

I'd be inclined to think someone who has run multi billion pound businesses might have a better idea of how to run a multi billion pound business than an angry fan on the internet.
 
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