Club Sale | It’s done!

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My enthusiasm was obliterated the minute I saw news that even if an agreement of some kind was reached this second, we wouldn't have new owners before the beginning of next season.
 
Sultan said:
Ok. Let me take another route. The Qatar royal family are wanting to purchase the club if we agree Jassim is just a front. What have millions of general Qatari people done wrong to deserve this reputation? If anything the rage should be directed at the decision-makers.

Should we blame North Korea or its people for the wrongdoings of their dear leader?
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I agree but is anyone blaming Qatari citizen's for their governments human rights record? If they are then all of us are more or less stuffed if judged on that basis as most governments do things we disagree with.
 
JediSith said:
I think to completely dismiss the possibility that none of United’s profits will ever be used is also naive.

No one knows how United might grow as a business, or if INEOS profits might fluctuate.

People seem to think the money has to be paid either from INEOS or Man United, ignoring the possibility that it could easily come from both. With INEOS most likely/logically paying off a bigger yearly proportion. But for United even £20m a year over 5 years would be £100m, enough to upgrade Carrington
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yeah I agree, I don’t think that will be the case either.. but it’s a possibility

in the end it’s a moot point for me as I can’t see the guy beating Qatar
 
Guardian - The sense is publicly and privately that Sheikh Jassim edged ahead of Ineos
https://amp.theguardian.com/footbal...uffer-slow-torture-as-glazers-bide-their-time

Guardian said:
Purgatory spiced with speculation, hope blunted by stasis. So it goes for Manchester United supporters, for week after interminable week.
It is nearly seven months since the Glazers put the club up for sale – the “anniversary” is Thursday. Yet the family remains in situ, still inflicting the sort of slow torture that would make Torquemada flinch, still desperate to make every last penny before they depart. If they depart.
At least the Glazers have been consistent. They started their 18-year-old reign at the club by stiffing fans. They appear to want to go out the same way. But every week that passes without a sale risks jeopardising United’s chances of improving again next season. If you were an agent of a player lined up for a move to Old Trafford, wouldn’t you wait to see if the Qataris, with almost bottomless pockets, took over first?
The sense both publicly and privately is that Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani’s Nine Two foundation has slipped ahead of Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos bid after making a fifth and final offer this month. That said, it is understood both parties were still in active and detailed discussions last week, and few behind the scenes are willing to make firm bets.
That is partly because of the opaqueness of the process, and the uncertainty of the Glazers’ full motives – along with the way Raine, the US bank running the sale, has repeatedly tried to ramp up the price. Even so, most believe we are now in the endgame.
But when the takeover fog does eventually lift, and United’s new owners swan into Old Trafford with smiles and promises, the indelible stain the Glazers have left on English football must not be fast‑forwarded over, or forgotten. It is astonishing, even with 18 years’ distance, to remember that United were once a debt-free and profit-making club – before being loaded with £540m of debts purely so that Malcolm Glazer could make himself owner.
And it is also frankly incredible that the Premier League, and a Labour government, saw no reason to object to Glazer using a leveraged buyout to fund his takeover – even though United fans warned of the grim consequences. It meant that Glazer only had to use £272m of his own money to buy a club valued at £810m – with the rest borrowed using the assets of the company as collateral for the loan. In effect, United paid for their own takeover, as well as their continued upkeep.
Co-owner Avram Glazer has pocketed millions from the club since 2015 despite the downturn in performance. Photograph: Marc Atkins/Getty Images
Even now the debt is still eye-watering. In very simple terms, the gross debt went from almost nothing pre-Glazers, to more than half a billion when they took over, then over £700m in 2010, and now £535.7m in early 2023.
In essence, the Glazers remind one of those insect zombie predators seen on nature documentaries, who drain their hosts of vital nutrients from the inside out, before emerging renewed. And the host? Well, that doesn’t end well.
At least the Premier League has finally appeared to recognise such behaviour isn’t good for the game. Last week it voted to cap leveraged buyouts at around 65% of a club’s value, banning the type of big-debt takeover used by the Glazers. What took it so long?
Meanwhile the rest of the Glazers’ record is little better. You don’t need an MBA to understand that allowing David Gill and Sir Alex Ferguson – your chief executive and greatest football manager – to leave in the same summer was rank incompetence. Until then, the Glazers could use United’s success on the field to deflect from the club’s balance sheets. For the past decade, though, there has been no hiding place.
Yet remarkably, despite the downturn in performance, the Glazer siblings have pocketed millions every year since 2015 when shareholders started to be paid a dividend. The biggest, at £34m incidentally, came in 2021-22, when United finished sixth, Ole Gunnar Solskjær was sacked, and Ralf Rangnick turned out to be a disaster. Success should be rewarded. But abject failure?

All told, the Glazers have taken out £154m in dividends and share buybacks since 2015. As the highly respected football finance blogger Swiss Ramble pointed out last year, no owners in the Premier League have taken out more money over the last decade. Indeed many have put in significant funds, including Manchester City’s (£684m), Chelsea’s pre-Todd Boehly (£516m) and Aston Villa’s (£506m). United might still be the world’s biggest cash machine, but when the team, Old Trafford and the Carrington training facility are no longer world class, it comes at a cost.
And let us not forget the Glazers’ shocking attitude to the club’s fans. It says so much that they only began talking to the Manchester United Supporters Trust in 2021 – 16 years after buying the club – following the collapse of the European Super League. By contrast, MUST’s Chris Rumfitt tells me that both the Qataris and Ineos have made clear that if they are given preferred bidder status they will speak to the trust within days.
For now, however, Rumfitt and other United fans must hold their breath. Some of them hoped that when Avram Glazer chartered a £250,000 private jet to watch United play in the women’s FA Cup final last month, with the club footing the hefty bill, it would be the final insult before the takeover became real. But with the Glazers it was never going to be that simple.

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Sultan said:
Ok. Let me take another route. The Qatar royal family are wanting to purchase the club if we agree Jassim is just a front. What have millions of general Qatari people done wrong to deserve this reputation? If anything the rage should be directed at the decision-makers.

Should we blame North Korea or its people for the wrongdoings of their dear leader?
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Just FYI there are like 300k qatari's. Everyone else there is an immigrant.
 
Raoul said:
It appears Britannica have an article on Sportwashing, led by.....a photo of Qatar (followed by one of Nazi Germany's 36 Olympics).

https://www.britannica.com/topic/sportwashing
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So Britannica chose to put Qatar but forgot its own country, the UK :lol:. Why isnt the UK in the list? they also invaded a country participated in killing hundreds of thousands of people then they arranged the Olympics on the back of their invasion. If anything, Qatar is a tiny drop in the UK's list of people suffering. I call this western journalism. i,e hypocrisy plus an agenda.

Another question, is USA going to be on the list when they host the next world cup?

Nahh. It does not suit the agenda of the western media.
 
Sultan said:
There is a fundamental difference between the functions of autocratic states and democratic states. We in the West get to choose who makes decisions on our behalf. Voting in a government for the first time I agree it's a bit far-fetched to blame we might not be responsible for our elected government. However, if we voted in the same government knowing they are committing wrongs for the second and third time are we not guilty by association?
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Anyone who voted Tory recently should hang their head in shame.
 
SAF is the GOAT said:
genuinely asking : Can't the premiere league do something ? why are they silent if they can ?
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The "fit and proper" test for the Premier league effectively boils down to Q1) ...show us your accounts...do you have enough funds to complete a season of matches...and then Q2) have any of the directors of this company previously bankrupted another club / ran it into the ground?"

Amazingly you can still pass the test even if the answer to Q2 is yes.

They won't ask deep questions about where the funds have come from and work on the basis of only investigating stuff if irregularities are found out. The Newcastle deal took ages to be approved because of the "optics" of giving MBS ownership of a club just after the whole "bone saw" episode which was international news.

Whilst Qatar definitely has it's issues, it's not had a recent example of kidnapping heads of other families and locking them in a hotel until they agree to demands or offing journalists in an embassy building with rusty saws.
 
Wibble said:
I agree but is anyone blaming Qatari citizen's for their governments human rights record? If they are then all of us are more or less stuffed if judged on that basis as most governments do things we disagree with.
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Well you have this poster calling the entire region uncivilized.
 
The most disappointing aspect of this saga is the deafening silence from the Premier League, silent in 2005 and silent in 2023, its as if they don't actually care about the biggest club in the country when they actually need to start asking the Glazers a few tough questions over their intentions and handling of the club.
 
Wibble said:
Anyone who voted Tory recently should hang their head in shame.
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The problem is and will remain, we are a two party country. Both parties are an absolute shower. Unfortunately Both parties like many issues in society now are tribal. Two sets of supporters can't see the wrongs of their tribe.

That Leaves the majority of us with very little voting options. For what it's worth the tories are done and will be out next time round.
 
Rood said:
Blue tick worthy material :drool:

I assume by now that no one is still questioning his actual existence
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He's a beautiful man who knows what he wants and what he's doing.

This week is Sir Jassim week. I feel it in my waters.
 
Rhyme Animal said:
:lol: Shameless, pocco.

And that is absolute bollocks btw.

So if someone gave you free tickets to say, a North London derby in great seats, you’d reject them to stay at home shitposting on the caf…? feck off would you.

Or Spurs / Newcastle whoever are somehow in the CL semis vs Real or Barca and someone gives you tickets and you’re like, ‘no thank you, I’m better than Rhyme Animal’!? Give over.
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100% I wouldn't go. I honestly have no interest in going to watch another PL team! But like I said, I'm not judging you. For all I know all your mates could be CP season ticket holders and it could have just been a chance to go out with the boys at the weekend and have a few beers. It honestly doesn't bother me at all whatever your reasons are, but I just don't get how you could say all that stuff about SJR, knowing you do the same! Somebody else mentioned that his children were raised in London and are Chelsea supporters, so that could be the reason he goes. Would you not agree that it isn't an issue in the grand scheme of things? Come on, just be reasonable at least once in your judgement of SJR and admit it :lol:
 
Micky Targaryen said:
This isn't the gotcha you think it is...
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It's a perfect example of double standards/hypocrisy. You don't know SJR's reasons for owning a ST at Chelsea, yet you'll accept Rhyme Animal's reasons for doing the same thing. I don't care about either person's reasons for going to watch another team or calling them a 'second team'. Doesn't bother me. But this is no different than the 'gotcha' that the pro Qatar lot jumped all over @Nou_Camp99 for. Of course you and all the other Qatar shills will jump to eachother's defence because you're all weird like that, but a reasonable minded person would see this for what it is.
 
glazed said:
Some people here seem to actually believe that. I don't want to upset anyone's feelings by suggesting that view might be a little ... implausible.



Harry left the British royal family because he recognised it was an inherently racist institution. Jassim is still in the Qatari royal family and if you thing he's paying for United from his own money I can only tell you that he doesn't have any. It's all oil money and it comes from the Emir. Or do you think Jassim made it himself? There's no such thing as private wealth in an absolute monarchy.
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He then went on to deny allegations for racism. Think he left to carve out his own legacy and not be the "spare part/donar" for his brother and nephews
 
Rood said:
Actually Ive said many time that I have major issues with both bids but these are the only choices we have and id take either of them over staying with the Glazers who have mismanaged for a decade now.
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Out of interest, what are the major issues you have with the Qatar/Jassim bid?
 
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