Club Sale | It’s done!
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) look forward to a new life under Ruben Amorim. What system will we be playing? What players will impress? and how will it all go? We also say goodbye to Ruud Van Nistelrooy and review United's 3-0 win at home against Leicester City.
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I couldn't be pleased, but then really, what can anyone do? It really feels like we can only accept it - once we win something some will make peace quickly with it if they weren't happy at the begining. Unfortunately though, foreign ownership is the norm in England now and even if not blatant sportwashing, having chinese or yank owners is not much better is it? The ones who seem to have got it right are Leicester's Thai owners, but they really are the exception.
People discredit the stories but Simon Stone has pretty much confirmed the interest 
Its not about the morals of the ME owners. I have no problems with them Sheikh owners, none whatsoever. It's the game in general. Pandemic/War and the current economic crisis - alarming real world crisis and then you have the alternate reality - football world. 100 million for Enzo/Pogba likes, 70 million for modern Andy Carrol, 160 million wage deals for CR7 etc, while ticket prices/tv subscriptions keep shooting up to infinity.
And the crazy part is, despite all my current day struggles, family barely meeting ends, deep down, in my own microcosmic petty tribalistic world I don't care. I love the club - I want us to win, I want us to crush Pool and City, I want us to hoard all the top players - Mbappe, Haaaland and the likes and if this goes through I feel heaven sent. And I don't know why? Dissonance
If they wanted to sell PSG, they'll have to pay off a lot of players, buy out contracts or sell them. Otherwise, no one else is paying those wages in the French league.
If that were to happen, it might be acceptable for most supporters in one way. However, we cannot and should not ignore the humanitarian and negative implications of such a deal! Isn't everything that Manchester United stands for and what they have built over the last 70 years all about the people? The club was the first to take action against hooligans, and in some sense, states like Qatar are like hooligans in the Middle East.
sad really how football has become more about business and not just football....the money they are talking about for the club and the people they are talking about buying the club has NOTHING to do with football but about business
these guys are nothing better than the Glazers just deeper pockets....they aren't football people
these guys are nothing better than the Glazers just deeper pockets....they aren't football people
It is but at % of revenue based.
Generally speaking they don't really matter as long as you don't currently (The new rules as of 2023/24 ) do the following, spend >90% of Revenue on player purchases + wages, make an operating loss of >60million over any rolling 3 year period.
We're nowhere close to 90%, the operating losses are pretty close, but once you remove dividends and debt repayments, that will sort itself out very quickly.
I'm personally devastated. My association with the club will end if a state in any way purchases United. However it is a tough task to ask of fans to turn their back on the club they love and have supported for years/decades
It would be footballing suicide by the new owners if they sacked the best manager we’ve had in 10 years since Fergie left. He’s probably one of the most sought after managers and has dealt with virtually every incident this season to perfection. Most of the time when new owners come in, the manager isn’t always the primary choice for the vision going forward. Having ETH already in place is a problem already solved. There’s no one out there you would have instead of him at this moment in time.AND it seems we get to keep our genius baldy!!
It's obvious a Qatari spokesperson has leaked the news to the press to drum up some favour.People discredit the stories but Simon Stone has pretty much confirmed the interest
Nobody else would know a bid was coming 'soon' apart from them. Just like Radcliffe went public, it seems this is the Qataris turn.
Why people think it's bogus? I think they're just being pessimistic
Not pleased, but what are we supposed to do? I'm not giving up the club because of this, it's not my fault.
What I won't do is glory in it (hello City and Newcastle fans dressing as sheikhs), and I will absolutely riot if there's any hints of racism, sexism, antisemitism or homophobia creeping into the culture of the club because of the ownership. But I honestly doubt that will happen.
Frankly, this all feels like a story you're telling yourself so you don't have to justify where you've decided to put your line in the sand. Debating where the line should be and questioning the logic of where people have set theirs is all well and good. Pretending the line doesn't exist is just dishonest.
i don’t find this analysis very convincing. ‘Sportswashing’ is a no less descriptive term than ‘PR machine for tyrants’ would be. It’s self evident that it hinges on wether the deeds it covers up are evil, cruel, unrightful or bad or what you will. Just like whitewashing with respect to criminal income. And obviously the degree of cruelty defines the degree of atrociousness of it. Of course it is a big difference between helping a criminal to reform, and helping him to launder his money so he can continue doing criminal acts for it. Of course it is different posing with the qatari emir than with a qatari woman, a qatari journalist or a qatari homosexual in prison. To conflate all this is immoral, unethical or ‘evil’ if you prefer that. If you think the emir of Qatar is no worse than a British chemicals billionaire, you’re welcome to have your opinion and explain it too, but you don’t have any grounds to claim that any opinion should have the same moral value for others. If I see the qatari tyrants making actual change towards a more democratic and equal opportunities and less systematically cruel society, it will change things, but what I see is them hiring celebrities to do commercials for them so they can go on oppressing people in Qatar as well as from othe places. And not all oppression is the same oppression. I think doing PR for the Emir of Qatar, or ‘sportswash’ his image, is many levels worse than consorting with ruthless capitalists, which is bad enough.
I won't be watching football anymore if this happens. A shame because I'm so excited for what Ten Hag is doing for us, but I've no interest in supporting a bigger version of Manchester City.
Owners have always been resilient to selling the club. Their mindset has changed. No doubt they had the super league financial rewards in their roadmap. Since that fell apart I’d imagine their desire to own us diminished quickly.
Even though a filthy rich person was a fan of Man Utd, they are also businessmen. They would have had to pay ridiculously over the odds to buy from a seller who isn’t willing to sell.
It’s preparing the fanbase for the takeover with the noise about fan interaction, war chests, and no problem in building a stadium and training ground.
In my mind it’s done now. It was always about if ME money came in or not and it looks like it has
Which is their right. Many people do not share that view. It is what it is I guess.
Two words every man loves
War and Chest
War and Chest
Football really started being a busines since the Argentina world cup. That was the beginning of the end in terms of a
Pure sporting competition.
With the founding of the PL it went into steroids. The super League would have been or maybe the next iteration.
United don't need to do a Man City on it. Just need ownership with the best interests in the club and pulling in one direction. Has to be better options but it's those Glazers idiots doing the selling so I'd fear the worst
All we really need is ETH with reasonably consistent backing. Add state of the art academy recruitment, training and stadium facilities. Back to being the best in class across the board. Then we can be self sufficient again. I don’t want mbappe and haaland. I just want a club that’s run smart and like the biggest club in the country again. Fresh investment and ideas are definitely necessary.
That assumes a new stadium, which I think is ultimately a more realistic outcome under new owners.
A decade(ish) would be in keeping with other projects of that size, from announcement to opening - Wembley Stadium (9 years), Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (11 years), Emirates Stadium (9 years). Everton's new stadium was announced in January 2017 and is due to open in August 2024.
Even if new mega rich owners launched into the planning phase immediately and threw significant funding behind it, a new OT would be unlikely to open before 2030.
such a dumb view.The fans have 0 input to who the new owner will be. Are they giving US the choice of a list of potential squeaky clean billionaires?
Jordan usually has some decent points, but this is a miss by miles.
The Qataris will probably put David Beckham as their front man and if they buy the club then they'll ask SAF to put a public good word with the fans. That will put the locals fans anxiety to bed.
Look at this dick tarring all United fans with the same brush.
This PSG players will have their contracts transferred to Utd.
We're worth 5 billion. The "we want our club back" rhetoric doesn't wash when we have zero say over our owners.
Owners which need to have a bottomless pit of money to even consider a bid. This isn't Palace, Bournemouth or even Newcastle. The range of buyers is extremely limited.
Owners which need to have a bottomless pit of money to even consider a bid. This isn't Palace, Bournemouth or even Newcastle. The range of buyers is extremely limited.
If someone happens outside of our control then our opinions just change.
The fans have 0 input to who the new owner will be. Are they giving US the choice of a list of potential squeaky clean billionaires?
Jordan usually has some decent points, but this is a miss by miles.
Ok, Simon. I’ll get right on that
I hope City's next owners are Glazers so he can finally get it through his head.
The club have already started the precess though from memory.
Fly a few workers over, snatch a few passports. It’ll be open by the start of the new season
I find it very difficult to believe that Simon Jordan is this naive. There are so many differences between the City case and United.
City needed to pay off books and make fake sponsors up to get to a big club status. United do not have that problem.
We can entice the best players to join, the best managers with our club because we are a big club, we have not bought the status, we have created it.
Manchester United is iconic because of its history, having Qatari owners will just mean have owners who not only care about the club but the CIty.
Ask any City fan, they will tell you what they have done to the City. They will improve the infrastructure, the stadium and get our standards back up.
The UK is a hub for Middle East investment, look around everywhere, they own alot in the UK.
Just because 1 ownership bought City and corrupted it, does not mean they are all the same. Thats called stereotyping.
City needed to pay off books and make fake sponsors up to get to a big club status. United do not have that problem.
We can entice the best players to join, the best managers with our club because we are a big club, we have not bought the status, we have created it.
Manchester United is iconic because of its history, having Qatari owners will just mean have owners who not only care about the club but the CIty.
Ask any City fan, they will tell you what they have done to the City. They will improve the infrastructure, the stadium and get our standards back up.
The UK is a hub for Middle East investment, look around everywhere, they own alot in the UK.
Just because 1 ownership bought City and corrupted it, does not mean they are all the same. Thats called stereotyping.
But these are not simply 'tyrants' we are talking about. We are talking about a sovereign state. A recognised one, even if some would try their hardest to not acknowledge their validity.
I am not excusing the atrocities you speak of. I am refuting the insinuation that any subsequent act that is NOT an atrocity is merely an attempt to 'cover up' the atrocities in the first place. Again, this is a sovereign nation state. Not some celebrity or corporation. The complexity and amount of facets to their existence is being severely belittled in favour of a narrow and myopic definition of 'evil doers'. When you start to look at them as an actual nation, the way we look at nations in the West, their deeds do not necessarily have to define them in the same way. This is a country, a 'PR exercise' is massively simplistic, this isn't Mason Greenwood.
The issue I have is the throwing around of the term 'sportswashing' any time an ME state tries to do anything OTHER than behead someone or ban homosexuality is to not acknowledge their credibility as a nation. My argument is that many in the west are too lazy to see them as anything other than 'those barbarians who do x and y', and it would likely be more convenient when the mental imagery of such places were as depicted in movies like Delta Force, with little other than desert land and men in traditional attire in Land Cruisers wielding AK-47s. The fact that the imagery has changed to what would be considered more 'normal' things - leisure, tourism, world-class medicine, architecture and of course - sport is not simply because someone wants to trick everyone into not labelling them as homphobic. It is because all countries would like world class facilities, tourism revenue etc. Not just western ones. Only in Qatar they don't allow you to be gay or drunk while doing it. Which is a valid point to disagree with, my issue is that everything else doesn't start from that position. They are simply developing their countries in the same way Israel has done so post WW2, South Africa has been doing post-apartheid and many others. They are doing it for the betterment of their people. Not for western approval.
The US, for example, is probably the only western state that allows people to simply purchase guns and use them. Unlike the UK and most (all) other western states, their state also kills people. They have a death penalty which others don't. I could list so many more things that the rest of us don't approve of but their actions will never be perceived from the starting position of those things. Perhaps because we have agreed to recognise them as real people and a real country. So as much as I abhor their gun laws, I still go there at least once a year, and I don't view every new attraction in Las Vegas as no more than an attempt to distract from the fact that they have a death penalty. It's just one of their things I disagree with, and there are things that I like. All I am saying is that as a nation, Qatar has the right to be viewed the same. 'Sportswashing', in that respect, I find highly condescending because it would be never be used of a Western State in this day and age regardless of probably anything else they chose to do. So this is not me validating any Qatari practise, it is me taking an objection to the inference that any subsequent act is nothing more than PR. A nation can do both good and bad things. Most of them do.
Equal parts distasteful & amusing.
Clear our debt. Upgrade the facilities. Spend legally within our already massive commercial means. Done.
The fans have 0 input to who the new owner will be. Are they giving US the choice of a list of potential squeaky clean billionaires?
Jordan usually has some decent points, but this is a miss by miles.
No, he usually talks out of his rear end. He gets 1 in 20 right and the rest is unadulterated horse manure. The man has made a career out of being a clueless bellend, and so it remains.
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