Hearing Jim say he doesn't need any money from United is a winner. He is in it to restore us and enjoy the ride in his 70's. INEOS is running well and here he can be an owner that millions of people love. Would be intoxicating to be honest, especially at his age to "restore" us to what we used to be. Sir Matt and Sir Alex type status.
Club Sale | It’s done!
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Sir Matt, Sir Alex, Sir Jim and Sir Dave. United, the club of Knights.
I'm not sitting on the fence. I'm not a fan of Jim Ratcliffe the person. I dont like the glazers either but you can't argue that we haven't been competing financially when it comes to our wage bill and transfer fees compared to other PL clubs. Is Jim suddenly going to have us spending in the right places and appointing the right personnel? I don't know. Let's hope he does but that doesn't mean I have to like him.
Pretty sure he only fecked off from here when he was well into his 60's not like Hamilton and others of that ilk
Don't shoot the messenger.
Didn't read any Times University rankings but this school ranks 16th out of 85 in sport science.
https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/universities/manchester-metropolitan-university
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The good thing about building a new training complex is that is guaranteed to be good. Money well spent!
You can spend 100 million on a player and they turn out shite.
You can spend 100 million on a player and they turn out shite.
Nothing says world class like working with the UKs 6th best sports science uni.
Can you prove that?
Also, his tax exile status saves the guy £4bn. Everyone one this forum would move if it saved them that much, and anyone who says different is lying.
You could say that tax exile is what allows him to buy our club from these shite American owners.
Indeed.
He did, it was about five years ago… year before he paid over £100m in tax.
But he’s rich, didn’t wave his magic wand and make the Glazers disappear overnight so people (who don’t know him at all (neither do I)) will chuck him in with others and make generalised statements.
You are correct. It was reported in September of 2020. He would have been 68ish.
With the clubs own bloody money man, all whilst milking more club money for themselves whenever the opportunity arrives.
The Glazers haven’t invested a penny since day 1 and SJR is already absolutely putting them to shame in those stakes.
Presumably it’s the best one in Manchester, which is probably an important consideration for the club too, PR wise.
Logistically would be a pain in the rear working with somebody like Loughborough for example too.
Seems an odd thing to be facetious about!
Logistically it makes sense and it’s clearly good to work with young adults and a University in the local area.
Odd thing to sneer over.
As well as an estimated £1.1Bn for themselves.
The lying is the problem. Hard to believe the ‘I’m not here to make money’ nonsense when he’s shown to be happy to feck over U.K. taxpayers to keep his money.
Grangemouth Ineous plant - read all the disputes from 2008 to 2022
How he treats unions
Staff not paid minimum wage at Home Grown Hotels
Campaigning for brexit and then decides to move production from Wales to France for Land-rover.
Very vocally opposed to windfall taxes
Rece
Lobbying Osbourne to get rid of union rights
Lobbying against green taxes
Lobbying for government funding and loans
fecks off and avoids paying tax
About to make 100s of united staff redundant.
Do your own research, there's plenty out there. If I was the richest man in the UK I wouldn't be evading tax offshore, how much money does he need?
The man only cares about himself and his back pocket.
I'm not trying to defend the Glazers and I don't agree with the money they've taken out of the club. But when it comes to transfers and wages we have competed financially. That can't be denied. Jim brings money, but it's poor decision making what's been the bigger issue not money.
I’d also assume being based in Manchester is pretty important/convenient for this. Not sure what people think we should be seeing, some oxbridge/MIT/Stanford crossover project? It’s just a research project with a local University which happens to be one of the better in the country at this specific thing.
Again though why would United care about how highly a prospective student would rank a specific course. We aren’t sending players or staff to study?
REF is every decade or so and they scored the Uni very highly for sports research 2 years ago. It’s not really that interesting a story but the standard caf response was brewing of ‘oh look, shit Uni, classic United’ when it’s kind of irrelevant.
It’s a 50/50 call….
Really theres only one way we will ever know. If he buys another team
From SEC 14D9 filling
My take:
- Why Raine kept the line of representative of SJ opened and even exchanged drafts of agreement, if you had strong doubt of their financial capability?
- I think the SJ camp did hand in documents regarding their financing commitment, but it could be *doggy* and not meeting the requirement in Raine's POV, thus "sufficient evidence of the financing and customary financing commitment papers". Both Raine and SJ camp didn't lie about the financing commitment.
- Hamas attacked Israel on October 7,2023.
My take:
- Why Raine kept the line of representative of SJ opened and even exchanged drafts of agreement, if you had strong doubt of their financial capability?
- I think the SJ camp did hand in documents regarding their financing commitment, but it could be *doggy* and not meeting the requirement in Raine's POV, thus "sufficient evidence of the financing and customary financing commitment papers". Both Raine and SJ camp didn't lie about the financing commitment.
- Hamas attacked Israel on October 7,2023.
Can't do that until he disbanded 92 foundation and created Cock and Cheese foundation.
Well almost every reputable source out there (Romano, Sky, Ben Jacobs etc) were toeing in line with the Qatari PR lines which tbf its not their fault either. If SJR came out today saying that he'll build a new stadium then they will report it as that. If he doesn't then its not their fault and its certainly not our fault as fans to believe it. Regarding the money well, that's very difficult to assess isn't it? You'll expect that people would not go in the spot light by buying Manchester United only to run it badly. However I concede that its not the first time that fans (and even previous owners) has had their pants pulled down. Take Massimo Moratti as an example. The guy is a second generation fan, who loved Inter so much that he had placed his own companies at financial risk to make Inter great again. When the financial strain became too big he sold off to someone whom he genuinely believed that would take Inter to the next level. Turned out that Thorir was a fraud. Milan suffered the same fate with Li Yonghong. I am portraying two bad deals but usually these deals are beneficial to clubs.I mean Abu Dhabi, Roman, Saudi, Qatar etc had transformed the clubs they bought.
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United were desperate for external investment. Its cash reserves were wiped out followed Covid, the infrastructure is a mess, interest rates are at the roof, we are buying players through credit card and we losing money. Arnold himself said that there was no guarantee whether we can buy players next summer. Considering that there were no viable alternative to SJR then this was supposed to be a buyer's market. By keeping Jassim in contention I believe that Raine/Glazers were creating a competition to SJR that didn't exist. 1Bish for 25% isn't worth it considering the circumstances and every journalist out there think that INEOS had overspent. Regarding football control, well that would have hurt the average majority owner but not the Glazers. That's because they never gave a feck about it. Look at the former structure (Arnold-Murtough-Fletcher). Do you believe that such structure is the structure of a club whose owners give a feck about the football side?
Or maybe he just milked the offer for United as a publicity stunt. I know if I was going to Davos or something, I could be just another sheikh in a white robe or be the sheikh that might buy the most famous football club in the world.
I don't know what the future holds but For SJR this is a Legacy project. Pretty sure he has enough money to last 10 generations.
He is in here to make a legacy. To be known as the Man who brought Man Utd to its old glory. For starters he has put a billion of his own money. That's something more than the Glazers have done for 18 years. Let's wait and see where it goes...nothing much we can do.
I imagine on Twitter there are some of our fans cursing club been public and the Raine group doing their jobs properly asking for proof of funding.
The Qatar debacle was hysteria and you could tell they were clowns in that bid.
There was a clear price on the table for a country literally printing their own cash who spent 220 billion on a single World Cup yet apparently the second biggest club in world football are “too expensive” for a tiny fraction of the figure.
It’s laughable really the reasoning after they’d already spent 50x the price giving Messi his last dance.
The Qatar debacle was hysteria and you could tell they were clowns in that bid.
There was a clear price on the table for a country literally printing their own cash who spent 220 billion on a single World Cup yet apparently the second biggest club in world football are “too expensive” for a tiny fraction of the figure.
It’s laughable really the reasoning after they’d already spent 50x the price giving Messi his last dance.
Well it sort of is their fault as they should have corroborated the stories before running with them, well at least that's what Journalists and media used to do.
And I'd say with clubs in general it's probably happened more often than it hasn't to be fair with bad owners. And of course in the past we've had complete bulshitters like Michael Knighton, that fake Sheik who tried to buy Portsmouth and others who didn't even have enough money to take over the clubs they were trying to buy.
Well I'm maybe just a naturally sceptical person but the sheers amounts of money they were talking about investing only made sense if it was a state bid, which is still a possibility to be fair. The only source for this was I think that one press release from 92 early on in the process.
Some had already bought into the Qatar propaganda even before they had become our owners. I shudder to think what would've happened if they indeed won the bid.
How can you possibly do that? Owners have various tests that they can rely on (ex the proof of funds one). But those take ages to complete (its not easy to collect 5b even for a multibillionaire) and they aren't 100% fool proof. I mentioned two cases when it failed spectacularly. Journalists don't even have access to those (NDAs) and have to rely on third party information. We fans are a step below that as we don't even know whose that third party information comes from. The fact that this deal was being done by the Glazers (who are secretive by nature) for an asset whose registered in the Cayman Islands (we know the reputation there) while floating in the NY stock exchange makes all this deal an utter mess. May I also highlight that the options were neither great reputational wise. One came from Qatar from a guy who came out of nowhere (though his dad is one of the most respected people in the ME) from a filthy rich country with dubious human rights while the other one came from a tax avoider who lives in France while campaigning Brexit, whose a United supporter but who also wanted to buy Chelsea and Barca and whose company had been tanking in football for quite some time, who had failed to fulfill its promises to Lausanne/Nice fans and had been moving goalposts left right and centre (full ownership, 51% ownership, 25% ownership).
I was a 100% sure that it was a state bid. Turned out that it was probably wasn't at least in the short run.
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Reputable? Romano, Sky and Ben Jacobs? (add the Mail to that list), that’s a poor list, especially the last couple… clickbaity.
Reputable journalists didn’t say this. Reputable journalists try and investigate, not just regurgitate stuff for clicks like some TikTok teenager.
I don’t blame fans at all.
In that case there's no reputable journalists in football.
Ok, you have a certain view on Ratcliffe, that’s very clear, but “had been moving goalposts left right and centre (full ownership, 51% ownership, 25% ownership)” simply isn’t true. He put offers/bids in of differing types and the Glazers rejected them… that’s public record now. So he did what good businessmen do… stayed in the game, got something over nothing but with some clauses that made it more palatable for him and gave him chances/options to eventually get what he wants.
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