Yes, obviously. Our worst, most disastrous season since the advent of the PL was last season finishing 6th but clearly we would become relegation fodder if we don’t sell our soul to the Qatari state.
Club Sale | It’s done!
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Even ignoring your flip flopping on whether the club really is in debt or not, your broader point about the difference between our debt and Newcastle's makes no sense either. Both clubs ended up in debt because of decisions by their owners about how to balance the books at the club they owned. It's exactly the same situation. The only important difference is the size of debt. If we want oil rich sugar daddies to write off our debt, it will take a hell of a lot more oil money to make us break even than Newcastle needed from the Saudis. Which will undermine the whole "at least we're wealthy from money we earned organically" argument we've been using to slag off City for years.
To achieve glory again, we need oil money is your argument, yet you say it's different because the others never achieved it in the first place.
On the point of Liverpool, they'll be as dirty as others if a Sheikh is the reason they become as competitive as City.
It's simply restoring us to what we should be - a debt free club. When that's done we'll be subject to FFP just like everybody else. It seems City are the only ones willing to cheat and risk expulsion from the league.
BerbaWUM
Maybe it's you that needs to admit that you made a mistake in presenting your opinion, which one can do, rather than doubling down and claiming that I can't read words on a screen?
You said "It isn't our debt" twice, and then claimed that you've never said that. It's literally there in my post.
Whether you like it or not, most clubs will be state or billionaire consortium backed in the coming years. Minority or majority ownership.Yes, obviously. Our worst, most disastrous season since the advent of the PL was last season finishing 6th but clearly we would become relegation fodder if we don’t sell our soul to the Qatari state.
What's wrong or dirty about a Sheikh owning a club, as opposed to a Sir?
Nothing wrong with a billionaire consortium. State ownership is the issue.
Swap "sheikh" for "nation state with terrible record of human rights abuses" and you'll see what he's getting at.
It wasn’t down the decisions of the owners though. Our debt came from financing our own takeover. Everything after that is legitimate on all sides. Bad owners isn’t an excuse but taking 800m out of the club that has no benefit whatsoever to said club 100 percent is.
That credit line is gone now. That should have be spent on stadium upgrades or training ground refurbishment. Instead it went into the pockets of the Glazers while those costs in waiting hasn’t gone away.
That’s the difference in debt, other clubs got money spent on themselves.
Oil money, or any other income not generated by football-related activities was anti-competition even before the FFP.
So what? The Glazers own the club. They decide how much debt the club can bear and balance the books accordingly. Just like Ashley did at Newcastle. How that debt was incurred is completely irrelevant.
Newcastle's training ground is being upgraded. Hopefully whoever buys us wasn't selling us a pup just to get their hands on their United for whatever endgame.
He exactly knows what I implied by the "Sheikh" there but my bad to allow him an opportunity to completely twist the argument.
This is exactly what will happen, and it will taint any future success for the club.
I get the selling out arguments and for sure if City win the treble it will be because of being state owned, that is the truth of the matter, not because they suddenly became a great club after there last promotion.
Do I want that for Utd? I think we have to look at the future and embrace change because state ownership of football clubs is becoming more and more a reality, so we have to simply accept it
or get left further and further behind.
Do I want that for Utd? I think we have to look at the future and embrace change because state ownership of football clubs is becoming more and more a reality, so we have to simply accept it
or get left further and further behind.
Any new owner will need to clear the debt, I imagine, or at the very least remove it from the club. Debt which should never have been put on the club in the first place (debt used to finance the takeover of the club itself)
In any case it doesn't undermine the fact that the club generates large revenues (without fiddling the books)
Yeah it isn't even debt to build a stadium or finance purchases (initial debt anyway). It is debt for those leeches to buy the club in the first place and god help us they still took dividends out of the club, for setting us back for years as an actual football club, not a sponsors paradise.
This is exactly what I was saying. Other clubs huge debts are from building stadiums in most cases or teams such as Arsenal choosing to sail close to FFP with a spending spree to fund Arteta. Purchasing or building assets.
it’s not even an argument really, go into any other badly run club forum and ask if they would want the debt paid off they would all say yes.
Hard to see the argument here
Has Qatar registered a bid to buy United?
All the human rights problems is why no club should be bought by a state be that Qatar, Saudi or even the United Kingdom.
So much murder and horrible choices in the past, present and the future.
So much murder and horrible choices in the past, present and the future.
The American's history on civil rights isn't that clever either.
I wasn’t aware that there’s been a bid for the club which is backed by the US government?
It's different because the current clowns turned us into a club massively in debt which we never were.Those other teams are buying their success where as we already had success. We need the oil money to get us back to what we were, debt free and successful. They need to it to try and become what we were.
Most clubs are already owned by billionaires as it is.
Being owned by a state is a different argument all together. The Sheikh bought City to promote Abu Dhabi primarily and it's companies such as Etihad. Qatar will be doing something similar with us if they win this auction.
The PL should have never allowed the Sheikh or Newcastle's takeovers in my opinion. PL football clubs shouldn't be used as marketing and sportswashing tools for the Middle East.
They could have stopped all this but they choose greed.
In a nutshell, this. You might not agree with Qatar owning us but going on and on about why anyone would ever consider their offer a good one for the club is just being disingenuous
Ratcliffe or Jassim announced before kick off?
Etihad sponsor an incredible amount of things they don’t own in addition to City. Banning them from owning football clubs won’t stop them sponsoring events and venues. Too late for the premier league to ban certain owners from buying clubs, so the reality is it’s going to happen.
Still no idea how this ‘sports washing’ works, Qatar got the World Cup and it further exposed their issues toward migrant works and homosexuals to a world wide audience, not at all glossing them over as they were hosting a major sporting event. If their bid is successful they will remain under the spotlight, it’d be far better for them not to bother.
Qatar aren't really trying to buy Manchester United when Jassim can't even outbid Ratcliffe.
We have actual history and weight to our shirt? This is the club of George Best, Bobby Charlton, Roy Keane and the club where Cristiano Ronaldo became the world's best player. We won 20 league titles and 3 european cups while spending our own money. It's disingenuous to suggest that we're in any way comparable to City, PSG and Newcastle.
Sign on the pitch?
I don't have a dog in this either way, as I'm neither pro SJR or Jassim, but I don't get this argument that's constantly made here.
When someone points out UK or US benefitted greatly from oppressive practices as well, people just say the UK or US govt isn't bidding. Well that's because the capitalist practices in those countries built on back of the oppression allowed for wealth to filter through to private organizations. In case of ME they are not yet at that stage. So basically you are saying it's okay for an organization to benefit from atrocities as long as there is a hundred or so year gap between them?
Similarly, if there is a genuinely nice person in a Qatari or ME family who genuinely wants the welfare of the club, he shouldn't buy it because not enough time has passed since his family committed those atrocities?
Insert the im very clever meme here.
To be fair this is a version of mental gymnastics I haven't seen before. Your justification is at least somewhat original.
When I bought my first house over 30 years ago I needed a loan from my local bank. To help me the bank technically needed a loan from my country’s federal reserve. So who’s the real owner of my house? Me, the bank or the people in charge of the federal reserve?
The NTF will be the legal buyer of MU. SJ will be in charge but the majority of the funds will probably come from the Qatars equivalent of the federal reserve, or maybe some foreign investment bank.
So many of you throw the word “state owned” around in a negative sense without knowledge of the power structure of the NTF or if the Qatari government is involved.
I don’t know that either but that’s why I prefer to see SJ as a private investor using all tools available to him to succeed. What else?
I don’t think for one second that the Emir of Qatar has any saying in how SJ is running MU as long as it don’t give the nation of Qatar badwill or affect their economy. Why would he?
So in that sense both SJR and SJ are equal because they both have to run United as good as they can otherwise it will affect their personal wealth and personal reputation. Their legacy. Maybe, and I just say maybe that both has a desire to take United back to their former glory.
As a by product we can argue that they will both benefit of sport/greenwashing. Is that their main goal or is it to show the world that United under their leadership can be successful and that satisfaction is their main driving force?
Qatar has a long way to go to become a modern society with equal rights for all people. A young man born in Qatar but educated in GB probably know that more then anyone. We have no idea what his thoughts are about the way his country is run. Maybe he has ideas how to develop equality and human rights, maybe not. Maybe showing the world by investing funds and passion in United’s women’s team is his way of showing progress.
I don’t know but I prefer to be optimistic and believe the best instead of the opposite. Because then nothing changes. Being naive and hopeful is in my world a much more pleasant then to cancel everything I don’t like. Cancel culture is a bad way of expecting progress and a behavior I don’t like.
The NTF will be the legal buyer of MU. SJ will be in charge but the majority of the funds will probably come from the Qatars equivalent of the federal reserve, or maybe some foreign investment bank.
So many of you throw the word “state owned” around in a negative sense without knowledge of the power structure of the NTF or if the Qatari government is involved.
I don’t know that either but that’s why I prefer to see SJ as a private investor using all tools available to him to succeed. What else?
I don’t think for one second that the Emir of Qatar has any saying in how SJ is running MU as long as it don’t give the nation of Qatar badwill or affect their economy. Why would he?
So in that sense both SJR and SJ are equal because they both have to run United as good as they can otherwise it will affect their personal wealth and personal reputation. Their legacy. Maybe, and I just say maybe that both has a desire to take United back to their former glory.
As a by product we can argue that they will both benefit of sport/greenwashing. Is that their main goal or is it to show the world that United under their leadership can be successful and that satisfaction is their main driving force?
Qatar has a long way to go to become a modern society with equal rights for all people. A young man born in Qatar but educated in GB probably know that more then anyone. We have no idea what his thoughts are about the way his country is run. Maybe he has ideas how to develop equality and human rights, maybe not. Maybe showing the world by investing funds and passion in United’s women’s team is his way of showing progress.
I don’t know but I prefer to be optimistic and believe the best instead of the opposite. Because then nothing changes. Being naive and hopeful is in my world a much more pleasant then to cancel everything I don’t like. Cancel culture is a bad way of expecting progress and a behavior I don’t like.
I'll add some more. The US (and UK) governments also have 0 scruples when it comes to dealing with the likes of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Funny how "human rights" don't get in the way of business. These countries are just "allies".
And? I think speak for the vast majority that don’t want Qatar when I say that I don’t like the UK government’s relationship with those countries either.
I know, was just saying it's not all black and white.
I'm so tired, Robbie.
I guess I'm for Ratcliffe, the devil we don't know. It's all very depressing.
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