There's been a hell of a lot of assuming and stereotyping by those against the Qatar bid. It's a very old tactic to claim the people you are arguing against think what you want them to think so you can argue against that rather than the points they're actually making.
Club Sale | It’s done!
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There's been a hell of a lot of assuming and stereotyping by those against the Qatar bid. It's a very old tactic to claim the people you are arguing against think what you want them to think so you can argue against that rather than the points they're actually making.
If it is Qatar I don't want wanky, high profile signings like we've just hired Ed Woodward back.
That's my biggest concern with them
That's my biggest concern with them
I mean outside of shed loads of cash what is it that Qatar offer? We don't know the owners at all, what sporting merit is there?
Outside of money im confused as to what Qatar offer.
It's money, but not necessarily for signing Mbappe or the like, it's money for the stadium, the training ground, the removal of debt
I'm sure were there a 3rd bidder who wasn't borrowing heavily, keeping the debt in place and didn't have poor previous form at owning/operating football clubs people would be all over it, but there isn't. It's SJ or SJR and a lot of people have concluded SJ is the least worse choice out of those 2 based on the above
Not having money flow out of the club to service payments. Appointing a level of footballing exec leadership ( with a mission to reform recruitment/sales procedure, from scouting to negotiation and squad management - contract lengths, ensuring flow from youth team up to first team, ensuring manager looks to integrate youth teamers or manage then loan them to sake of FFP sales, and not having manager also be chief scout or sole final refusal on players) commensurate with top-table clubs, rather than relying upon second-rate mainstays and residues from the Glazer regime, and instilling culture of genuine competitiveness. Other big clubs make short-term miscalculations at times, but correct them, whether that's Bayern or Madrid, or City (although they've both been more 'perfect' on the surface and more corrupt, so they might be a lesser example): a player gamble here or there, or a manager gamble for a season doesn't affect their commercial profile nor their ubiquity as 'competitive' clubs with a strategy around best-in-group recruitment..
Also investing in the local area (and in the facilities, stadia, ordinary supporter experience along with potential for 'high-end' product). Things which would make a club like this more sustainable and meeting the demands both of a 'community institution' with local/regional fanbase and history, and of a 'global brand', both of which have been handled embarrassingly by the Glazers and their selected leadership on the whole.
NB: Glazers have been known as the 'slowest' in decision-making, most divided and incoherent set-up, with the lowest reputation amongst agents and other clubs in terms of managing their asset operationally (directly and through CEO/intermediatories). If the league was run properly, they would have been audited and forced to adopt new practices, including liquidating their own other assets to service the debt from their own income and appointing new execs, or forced to sell. Of course, with a better league set-up, we wouldn't have allowed the purchase in the first place.
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It's all gone very quiet
Storm before the calm.
A question for you all to pass the time on the weekend. Try putting everything aside and view this solely from the perspective of excellence on the pitch.
How would you rank our three ownership options (Glazers, 92F, INEOS) in terms of an unwavering commitment to winning and accountability, and why?
Of course, we only truly know what the Glazers would do (and have done) in charge of Manchester United, but just curious to hear some differing perspectives and rationales on what you would expect.
How would you rank our three ownership options (Glazers, 92F, INEOS) in terms of an unwavering commitment to winning and accountability, and why?
Of course, we only truly know what the Glazers would do (and have done) in charge of Manchester United, but just curious to hear some differing perspectives and rationales on what you would expect.
Do you genuinely think there are a lot of United fans who would prefer Ratcliffe because he's white and British?
Conversely do you also think there's a fair amount of United fans who might lean towards Jassim because he's Arab/Muslim or not White/British?
I'm interested why race is being brought into it as a factor.
Plenty of people have been open about wanting the owners they believe will invest the most in the club - including the first team. It isn't a "gotcha" moment or stick to beat people with.
Jassim is hotter than Jim, if we're going there
Surely Jassim can afford air con
That’s subjective tbf. We’ve had ‘twerking for Qatar’ as a well used phrase… but we’ve also had declarations that Old Jim being denied would remove all the ‘romance of football’ for certain posters.
It takes all kinds.
Get you're Ratcliffe out for Jim?
So as it has been reported Jassim asked the PSG owner for his opinion as he has over a decade of experience with PSG and everyone in Qatar knows him and all that.
So if Jassim buys us what good advice can PSG give him?
We are somehow sure Qatar will invest in infrastructure.
So apart from potentially a new stadium or an upgrade, or facility upgrades, what PSG best practices can Jassim get from them?
- How many youth players have made it at PSG since take over?
- And equally important, due to infrastructure investment and set-up, how many youth prospects even if they have not made it at PSG, have they managed to sell for how much to raise money and improve the net spend?
- Have the owners tried to align everything including player and manager recruitment towards a cohesive system / style of play?
Happy to hear about other good stuff as well.
It would be very helpful if PSG could tell Jassim something more useful than just stuff like
“If Barcelona manage to annoy you you just pay a couple of hundreds of millions to buy one of their star players”
or
“If one of your own star players wants to leave you just give him insane money and everything else in order to shut his mouth for 1-2 seasons and then it all starts again.”
So if Jassim buys us what good advice can PSG give him?
We are somehow sure Qatar will invest in infrastructure.
So apart from potentially a new stadium or an upgrade, or facility upgrades, what PSG best practices can Jassim get from them?
- How many youth players have made it at PSG since take over?
- And equally important, due to infrastructure investment and set-up, how many youth prospects even if they have not made it at PSG, have they managed to sell for how much to raise money and improve the net spend?
- Have the owners tried to align everything including player and manager recruitment towards a cohesive system / style of play?
Happy to hear about other good stuff as well.
It would be very helpful if PSG could tell Jassim something more useful than just stuff like
“If Barcelona manage to annoy you you just pay a couple of hundreds of millions to buy one of their star players”
or
“If one of your own star players wants to leave you just give him insane money and everything else in order to shut his mouth for 1-2 seasons and then it all starts again.”
You could be right, I certainly don't think Ratcliffe would be doing all that for purely altruistic reasons nor has he promised to.
But with that in mind it makes you wonder what is Jassim's motivation to pay £5-6b for the club, pay another billion or so buy all the class A shares, remove all the debt, build a new stadium for a few billion, invest another billion in the training ground and surrounding area and let the club keep all it's profits?
PSG can advise on mistakes. They're recruiting much more efficiently now in terms of buying in form the French market and in midfield especially, as well as clever free transfers. They've also continued to invest in youth - Paris is a hotbed for young players, especially in the less-affluent banlieus, and they could keep more and more of these players 'in the family' rather than Barca or PL clubs recruiting them at 15-16. Passage to 1st team wasn't as clear due to skewed Galaticos policy (even then, Galaticos had Pavons, and also didnt win as much as they could have), but I think there's more of an onus upon sustainability, at least up to a point - Man City might be a precedent. It's still v. hard to make it there but Foden, then Lewis and Palmer to an extent, along with others for cup games, and quite a number being sold at a profit upon being developed.
I don't like Jim, I have said so before but I add it as a seemingly necessary caveat.
But what you propose there doesn't sound particularly outlandish at all. He's an old man. The idea of him wanting to buy United and be known as the "savior" of United (his boyhood club) seems much more likely to me than the idea that he's trying to squeeze a relatively measly profit out of the "brand" (rather than investing his money elsewhere).
I don't give a shit about what you think in all honesty. "Genuine anxiety"there are worse things in life worthy of real and serious anxiety than football
You don't get it. That's fine. I was on the verge of a ban with what I typed a moment ago but you're not worth it. You're just a symptom not the disease.
Well when it’s Jim, people have been open to the notion that it’s a ‘vanity project’ as @Chesterlestreet has done just a few posts up. That he just wants the prestige of turning Man Utd around and competing at the top…
But such a notion doesn’t get entertained for Jassim so easily for some reason.
Perhaps Jassim’s a spoiled, privileged rich kid who wants to be famous for turning Man Utd around? Maybe billionaires from the ME also want to have legacies like people are ok to accept that Olde Jim does?
By all accounts Jassim is a genuine Utd fan who happens to be extremely wealthy, his motivation is to put the club back at the top,
and to obviously increase the profile of Qatar as a global sporting powerhouse.
For Jassim and the Qatari state as a whole a think 'brand' awareness is an incalculable benefit for them
I think it's fairly outlandish. He's still very active in his core business. He's not exactly a nonagenarian. There's many, many successful people far older who are still active.
He's also not likely to be buying us outright. He's going to borrow shitloads to buy control, another sign this is a business investment rather than a vanity/legacy project. Banks do not fund vanity projects.
Even if loans secured against Ineos or a parent company that the two entities will be rolled into which will be responsible for the security of the loan, JP Morgan and friends don't give £4bn and change unless they had some kind of assurances what the money would be used for. "I'm going to buy an asset for several billions that I've no plan to make money from, just fancied it for a laugh" isn't a plan that's going to secure funding and certainly not to that level.
Far more likely this whole "lifelong red, uncle Jim" act is a disingenuous front to win the PR battle with fans rather than his actual intentions for ownership
Probably because this is all done. Dotting the T’s and crossing their thighs. Qatar are in. Jassim jism everywhere.
No I don't think that at all, I was posting something deliberately outlandish to show how ridiculous it is to claim that you know others people's motives without any proof to back it up. Taking that to its extreme you can claim any motive for the other side and claim you know it's true
Yes, but really: how much do you think he expects to gain from it? How much can he realistically gain from it? Short term, mid term, long term?
Look at United's profit in the last decade or so. Then look at how much he'd need to pay to buy United. Does it make sense?
I mean, it's technically a profitable company (on average, over the last decade or so) - but compared to what INEOS makes per year...it's nothing, it's not even small potatoes. Why the feck would he get involved in a huge song and dance and spend billions to buy something that generates...what? A few million pounds per year at the most?
What in gods name are you going on about?
Well I thought it was funny
I thought it was reported that it was the Glazers that asked him for help not Jassim?
Here's the thing though, people on here barely even question why Jassim/Qatar want to buy the club or how they're funding it.
But we've had probably thousands of posts at this stage telling us there's no chance Jim going to buy United for billions without United having to foot at least some of the bill.
Perhaps he is but by all accounts JIm Ratcliffe is also a United fan and wealthy.
Don’t care about if or why Glazers got in touch.What in gods name are you going on about?
Well I thought it was funny
I thought it was reported that it was the Glazers that asked him for help not Jassim?
But it has been reported including at the beginning of the process that the PSG owner has been asked for his view and it was also reported that he gave his OK for the take over (weird anyway that his ok even if “informal” is needed).
Dunno, but he did the exact same with Chelsea just a year ago so it can’t be because ‘it’s Man United’, can it.
Maybe he wants to buy football club to leave to his children… he’s a 70 year old man after all
A passionate Utd fan that tried to buy Chelsea a year ago and is also a Chelsea season ticket holder, and has never been known to come to Utd games regularly despite literally being the ‘wealthiest man in Britain’…
Ok, yeah.
Don’t think he’s even mentioned anything about infrastructure - yet?
Maybe, maybe not especially if it really is a private bid.
There could be other benefits for Jim/Ineos too that aren't apparent.
It's just odd that no one ever questions Jassim's motivation for buying United.
Fair enough mate, though I have seen other posters make similar claims about the reason some United fans prefer Jim.
The banks would have wanted assurances on their investment. Despite undoubtedly nose-bleed high revenues, Ineos's net profit after paying their obligations, which includes their own debt repayments, in recent years mostly didn't have enough left over to finance interest repayments on a hypothetical £4bn loan.
Banks would want some assurances and wouldn't agree to finance a vanity project. They don't lend like you might to a sibling looking for a few quid to buy a few rounds at a mates birthday outing.
I think the benefit to owning an asset like United is borne out in what we see today. It's in the appreciation over time. Ratcliffe, like Malcolm Glazer, has kids. Clearly Malc was too old to reap those benefits too when he bought us.
So basically comparing an oven with a fridge.
I'm not saying he is I genuinely don't know. I don't know if Jassim is a United fan either and one hastily taken photograph of him in this seasons home shirt isn't exactly convincing evidence.
I mean you don't even have to look that far outside of football. This is the Manchester United fanbase we're talking about - the one sports fanbase who've got things wrong more than any others in the last 10 years.
The only fanbase in football who thought OGS was anything but a joke of a football manager.
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