Being £500-600m in debt likely wouldn't ever put United out of business. Certainly not in the foreseeable future anyway. We've been hundreds of millions in debt for the best part of 20 years at this stage. Most top football clubs are, even Spurs are over a billion in debt the last I checked. Do you think they're in danger of going out of business?
Our debt is 800m now and ever increasing. Nobody is arguing whether it will be put us out of business, but it does strangle us and the noose gets ever tighter. Yeah, we were in debt during Sir Alex, but we also had a godly manager that could work miracles with shoestring. You willing to bet on that ever happening again because I'm not. Spurs' debt is largely because of the huge loan they took to build their stadium which is an investment. We haven't invested shit.
In the scenario being reported you would imagine INEOS would pay for it. INEOS already have debts amounting to billions of dollars mate, another £600m wouldn't change much for them I wouldn't imagine given their annual turnover. Large companies absorb the debts of other smaller companies they buy all the time. This Ratcliffe guy seems to have done alright for himself, he built a company that makes billions every year and has a personal wealth that made him the richest man in the UK.
But it wouldn't simply be 600m, would they? They have to take debt in order to finance the whole purchase and possible subsequent renovation. Sure, Ratcliffe have done well for himself, but so have the Glazers. By that logic should we keep them as owners? It's not a matter of who has done what, it's a matter of pure financials here and how they correlate to the club itself. INEOS, as big as it is, is going to have to borrow heavily to build United in comparison to their own wealth. And being a company that works for profit and not charity, it would expect to see a return on that investment in the near future. What that means is that there are two likely scenarios - either an era of penny pinching similar to the Glazers in their early years will begin or they won't bother to do anything in regards to the club's infrastructure and just leave it as is. The third option would be if we are to believe that INEOS will somehow work only for the sole benefit of our football club.
Firstly, yes, I agree. We need to just clear the debt and renovate the infrastructure and then we can run on it's own. If you understand that, why the hell would you want ME ownership? If we can be successful without throwing our morals in the drain... why do it at all?
Because the club is in dire straits after more than a decade of neglect? The kind of people that can spend the needed cash in order to bring it up to par again with the best are one of two options:
1. tech giant companies or uber billionaire types ala Musk or Bezos
2. oil states.
First option is highly unlikely because this is a bad money investment. That goes for other people who have that money but are not uber rich - nobody in their right mind is going to spend this type of money with some expectation of a return. The reason the Qataris are doing it is because United, along with Madrid, are perhaps the most prestigious club in the world. This brings a certain influence and exposure to Qatar itself. They'll never make the money back, not even the initial investment, but it brings them other more important things.
Being good owners is not simple. The Glazers are not good owners. They can't simply do it, because they simply aren't it. You make smart business decisions, you hire smart people, not your mates, you don't make the same mistakes time after time, etc. It wasn't a case of flying too close to the stars, we just kept hiring the wrong managers and signing the wrong players. That's all it is.
I beg to differ. I think the Glazers are simply owners who simply don't possess the money to compete. There's no evidence that they are 'bad'. Woodward was a mess, but what did he do wrong? He got the managers that everyone us wanted to get (aside from that Moyes fiasco) like Van Gaal, Mourinho, Ole later, etc. They simply didn't work out. He got them their players we were all excited for. They didn't work out. The difference is someone like Pep can buy a 100 million player and bench him with zero problems. We don't have that kind of flex.
City is great and all right now, but also they have Pep. He'll leave before long and they'll drop down to a more normal level. As we know all too well, you can spend all you want but if you don't have a top manager to bring in the players, then you'll struggle to play like a top team.
City were competing for titles even with the likes of Mancini and Pellegrini
Why do you want me to give you the answers? I don't work in football management
I can say for sure that the Glazers are shite owners as they make the same obviously dumb decisions, time and time again. They hire people who make bad decisions as well. I can say other owners, or other clubs make smart decisions. It's something you can see over time. It's always tough to pinpoint who is doing the good things behind the scenes, but you know at some clubs when it works, and when it doesn't. I want an owner who makes good decisions. Getting ME ownership isn't a guarantee to having smart owners to more or less than having Ratcliffe or some random American in. We simply have no idea what they'll do once they're in charge. We can hope for the best, but that's all we can do. I prefer to be optimistic about new situations so I'd hope that whatever owner we get in is somebody who will be forward thinking, hire smart people who know what they're doing in charge, and not waste 1 billion on mediocre transfers and hand out stupid contracts. We shouldn't just pay up for every player no matter the cost, we should reach points where we pull out of the deals and let other clubs get these players, for better or for worse. It's football. There is always a next thing out there.
I know what increases the likelihood of good ownership - money. Funny how every well run club is rich and the richer it is, the better well run it is.
