Club Sale | It’s done!
- Thread starter JB08
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You act like we have any kind of say in the matter. The Glazers will sell to the highest bidder and that's that.
So team Ratcliffe then
Agreed. It's sad but most football fans just demand constant money and don't care where it comes from. I knew plenty of our fans were no better than City or Newcastle fans but I hope its a minority.
I'd prefer Radcliffe over either. But the Glazers are low level parasites. The Qatari government is worse.
I'd rather us have the chance of winning something.
Sadly people have convinced themselves that you can't win without ME money which is simply not true.
Liverpool have matched City all the way for 4 years and won plenty of trophies. Arsenal currently top and playing great footy. And we've spent the same sums as City have so with better people running the football side of things we could have won more stuff post Fergie.
ME money won't even improve our budgets in the market either. We probably spend close to what we'd get away already compared to our revenue.
It's all very messy this.
We have already have chances of winning things regardless of the Glazers but besides, who cares if we win things because we're the puppet of some dictatorship?
If your sole motivation of supporting a club is so you can brag about them winning just support PSG or Bayern.
Liverpool and Arsenal have proven you don't need ME cash for that. We have spent enough under the Glazers to have won more stuff ourselves.
You really do have to question whether it's worth it or not.
Okay we should just call our Glazer mates and tell them that, and offer them a pound and an old cheeseburger to take the club off their hands?
Football will be ruined fast, soon every club will be owned by some shitty country, and there is nothing we can do about it.
Cash is king.
This is my thoughts exactly, not much I can do about it if the royal families buy the club. That being said I would prefer Ratcliffe because he's a fan, he's british, and he's not got the human rights atrocities that the royal families have.
Lfc are now struggling. They also never won consistently. Arsenal haven't won the league or CL. Even Leicester won the league once.
Ah yes because the other options, including Britain's richest man, are all peasants. Amazing that Arsenal are top of the league without being owned by a country, it's almost as if you don't have to become a political tool for a state to win if you are just competent.
Ratcliffe is a brexiteering, tax-dodging fracker. Hypocritical and willing to damage the environment for generations just for profit which I assume will then fund United.
No but it invalidates the point that unlimited money brings certain success which he used to presumably validate his feelings.Yeah, that’ll invalidate his feelings alright.
In reverse
Arsenal have won the league 13 times, which is the 3rd most of any club in England!
So if the club is bought by some ME consortium, you'd move on to some other club? What are your thoughts on supporting Everton - shite ownership, club struggling on the field and financially. Would be right up your wheelhouse since you would prefer the Glazers anyway.
So it's all about the money then for you? You don't care where it comes from and what it's associated with?
We could have been in a title race every single season even unde the Glazers if only they had hired proper football men. Transfer funds have never been the problem for us. Having the right people in charge of it all has been.
Which makes him a prick businessman. That's not as bad as a sportswashing dictator.
No but I'd care less about United and think anything we won would be tainted. Similar to if we won the league through doping or bribing refs.
And if you just want oil funded titles, go support PSG.
Where did I say I wanted a country as owners?
I stated that we have zero say in who decides to buy the club.
The only way of stopping this crazy way football is heading is for fan ownership, otherwise this is the end of football as we know it.
I think it's been made pretty clear to all that FFP would not allow unlimited funds being poured into our transfer kitty unless whoever comes in fudges the books (highly unlikely given our status and financial strength in general).
However the richer the owner, the more chances for us to have our debt go away, us not being forced to pay dividends, the stadium and infra being uplifted without us being hamstrung for another 10 years, area around the ground improving and the community improving too.
Also, why do yours or anyone's morals be defined by who the owner of the club is. Would you stop working for your organization if they invested in the ME or if some ME state/industry invested in it? I won't suddenly start condoning anti-LGBTQ laws, the repression of women, or any of the other things which I don't agree with right now. I don't have to uproot myself to go live there because they are majority owners of the club I support.
Newcastle and Man City are clearly state owned and I personally would be against United going down the same route.
But if some rich individual wants to buy United and wants the club to be successful then I'd be ok with that, regardless of which country they happen to be from.
I would still strongly suggest you consider Everton as your next club. Would be more to your liking of a struggling club. I am happy supporting United irrespective of the owners.
That ship has sailed. The Gralzers have raped and hollowed out the club over the past decade that its clearly in decline now. The clubs need capital injection just to get back to back to above water. To do that a new owner needs to buy the
Though that was true back then the Glazers have hollowed out the club the past decade and dont have the money or unwilling to invest further. The club is in financial decline. Thats probably why the Glazers want out now. It would take a lot of financial heavy lifting going forward (since they hollowed out the club.)
The January Window illustrated that.
Firstly we just cant make the same sort of money as we did in the past unless we start winning pronto. Our sponsorship contracts are smaller than in the past -- another Woodwardism disproven (he said that winning isn't required to generate huge commercial revenues.) And that isn't possible without some serious financial injection/bandwidth.
The days of being able to self-generate enough funds to enable us to have big transfer kitties are over.
We have too many areas within the club that requires fixing that the current topline revenues/profits aren't sufficient to even paper over these cracks anymore. That fallacy of being able to self-fund the transfer activities or even fix the crumbling infra will come to roost soon enough unless the Glazers get serious investors.
Otherwise, why would they want to sell out if everything was hunky dory? They know they cant do it anymore -- raping the club without blowing up soon.
I just completely reject the premise. Liverpool have competed for several years and Arsenal are currently top, it's difficult but winning is supposed to be difficult. United are so big that they don't need state ownership to compete, they need to be competent. We haven't been competent and therefore we haven't deserved to win anything major, if football was actually fair then we would have dropped a lot further given how many mistakes have been made in the last decade.
Don't like it one bit (to say the least), but there is absolutely nothing any of us can do. I honestly hate Glazers scum. First they bought us and put a massive debt on our back. Then they run us into the ground with zero planning, sense or investement into facilities while taking huge amounts of money for themselves. And as a final gift, overpriced us so much that we can basically only be state owned while they walk off with billions in their pocket. Football crime of the century.
Grim, all together.
People really need to stop this nonsense. There’s no way any Manchester fecking United success will mean nothing because like ‘we’re not a proper club’ or something. Excuse my arrogance but, we are supposed to win. We are supposed to be finishing ahead of Manchester City, who are genuinely supposed to be in the Championship. Let’s stop this trying to make out that City success is the normal order of business and United success requires explanation.
Again, I feel this is clear nonsense. The ‘connotations of oil clubs’ is for clubs who have gained overnight relevance due to finding themselves fortunate beneficiaries of oil money.
We are talking about comfortably the biggest club in the country. Not Manchester fecking City. We are talking about a club that long before any Sheikh walks through the door generates a lot more money than every other team jn the country. And we are talking about a club who, long before any Sheikh walks through the door has broken transfer record after record in this country.
This notion that from here on, any money spent is some sort of result of fortune is just something to help others sleep at night. It’s denial. City or Chelsea have no business buying a player for £150m, but generally speaking, Manchester United could. Before any Sheikh enters the building. We have been mismanaged, that’s all. Yet we’ve still outspent most of the league in that period and pay the biggest wages.
People trying to spin subsequent PL titles by the team who has won the most PL titles (by far) as some sort of equivalent to Southampton suddenly winning titles is simply laughable. United, as we are right now, are generally accepted to be performing below what is expected of them. A successful United is expected, Sheikh or no Sheikh because they are the biggest club in the land and generate the most money.
I won't stop supporting United. I have already said that. I'd find it impossible. That being said I'd not feel great about it nonetheless.
Too many people getting carried away with the Mbappe pipe dream stuff. You have to remember that even the Jim Ratcliffe offer would be 10 times better than what we currently have.
Exactly this. I can understand rival fans spinning it like this (simply because they are worried about what an unshackled United would mean for their clubs), but our own fans lapping it up like it's gospel is surprising. Some "fans" even saying they'd rather have the Glazers stay than an ME investment as majority stake holders.
I don't think too many people are carried away with the thought of having an Mbappe play for us. It's more around us becoming the behemoth we once we're and about having our stadium and infra improved without shackling us for another decade or so.
As I said earlier, we have been pillaged for nearly 20 years, I will happily take lady luck shine on us with rich and generous owners who will improve our ground, facilities, infra and set us up to go back to the top of the pyramid where we belong.
And the thousands of migrant workers who died and the awful human rights of Qatar in general is worth it to you?
I do think many who are saying yes to that might change their minds later down the line. Money is clearly clouding people's minds. Same thing happened to City PSG n Newcastle. The gaslighting they come out with is ridiculous.
The Glazers are blood sucking parasites of course but they haven't killed anyone as far as I'm aware and they aren't anti human rights. I suppose it's where do you draw the line?
Sure, you only have to watch the state owned club win the league 9 out of 10 times, and the real clubs can share that one championship once every 10 year.
In a perfect world we get owners that just let us do our thing and let ETH develop us to become champions, without all the downsides that new owners will bring. But that owner doesn't exist. Either we get sportswashers, or we get some vultures that want to steal our earnings. Both are shit and we will be unhappy either way.
The only thing we can focus on is what happens on the pitch or leave this sport in its own demise, because we certainly have no say in who becomes the new owners, which was my original point to that Arsenal fan.
Again, you think them owning us would mean I am condoning them, as if their moral compass would be transferred to me. No, I still will be against it but that does not change the reality of stuff. We all still buy stuff from other behemoths like Apple, Amazon etc despite knowing about their employee treatment, sweatshops etc. Does that mean we condone that or align ourselves with those thoughts?
This ‘Mbappe’ narrative that has been created and run with has also become nauseating. But again, even IF we signed Mbappe at some point - so fecking what? I’ve said already in this thread but, he’s simply a professional footballer. He has to play somewhere. You would imagine that somewhere should be at a handful of clubs. If Manchester United are not in that group then who the feck should be? Newcastle? Manchester City? The best players playing at Manchester United isn’t some sort of ‘the game’s gone’ moment, and even in this hypothetical doom scenario of United getting new owners and buying Mbappe - there’s no controversy or excess about it. Unless fans have convinced themselves that good players are only allowed to play for Real Madrid, which to be fair has always been the case on here.
People have taken this minor footnote of the last 5 years or so to convince themselves that we have become Southampton or something. United signed Pogba from the biggest club in Italy when he was comfortably the most sought after midfielder on the planet. If we went and bought Mbappe so fecking what anyway?
This is the first story this week, about Qatari interest in United, that I take very seriously.
RMC has good links into PSG. The senior bods at PSG should have a sense of how serious Qatari interest in United is.
Let's see if anyone goes on the record over the next week.
You're doing right there exactly what I described. It's this whataboutery which makes me laugh.
The whole Nike have sweat shops so we can have ME money running us thing doesn't wash with me really tbh. You want the ME because of one thing. Money.
If they were the poorest option of the 5 parties interested your opinion on this matter would be the exact opposite would it not? You'd be saying we can't have them running our club.
This is what I have been saying. Fans are gaslighted so so easily.
I didn't say I wanted a struggling club. I want an actual club rather than a state owned project.
I have decided the same, I don't like it one bit but I love this club and it's been a part of my fabric for 40 years... Hope the new owners keep our identity with focus on youth and style brilliant team building. Fans coming on here telling us we should be ashamed by the oil money can stuff it. We are one of the biggest sporting franchises on the planet even though we are being bled dry with nothing to show for it. We did that before the current owners and will keep in doing it after the new ones leave.
I'm not sure why a substantial proportion of people favour the Glazers over potential Qatar/ME ownbership in general, except by some mix of ideological norms and, tbh, xenophobia. Ideally, we shouldn't be owned by anyone except community consortia on behalf of the fans and local area, at best with Presidents from within the local business/philanthropic community elected on short-terms to invest in and manage the club but accountable to the wider fan group. Unfortunately, none of that looks feasible any time soon (it would have to be essentially multilateral, given the current set up of the premier league, with the kind of radical overhaul no one in the political establishment is interested in).
The truth is that families, groups and corporations like the Glaziers have done as much as anyone to ensure that practical -if not formal -democratic processes have been captured by wealthy people, safety nets and opportunities for the most vulnerable have been cut by financial-index corporatists they've backed across both US parties, climate change has been accelerated, have plundered community resources and been culpable in deaths of despair almost as directly as the Sackler's and their oyxcontin boosting, particularly when you take into account their direct ties to money-laundering tied banks . Frankly, I'd go as far to say that the Glazers have been an unalloyed moral evil, although they’re just following the logics and compulsions of your average corporation functioning around utterly 'private', myopic interest with no sense of regional or global community beyond a marketing drive. Groups like QSI or ADUG, at least when it comes to sports, are more analogous to earlier (particularly) American resource monopolists and tycoons), who were also directly or ‘structurally’ coercive during their time in terms of business practices, union-busting etc but did at least leave endowments in the arts and sciences, museums etc. Those are complicated legacies, and in the case of , Carnegie, arguably not justified by their posthumous endowments but the Glazers and the historical class of raiders and financiers and failchild hedge-backed scions they represent don’ t even have that sense of recompense or whatever; even a nefarious outfit like the Sacklers have tried to ‘wash’ their ill-gotten wealth through research which doesn’t solely contribute to their own bottom line. Likewise, the City lot/ADUG have at least invested in the community in a way which may be 'sportswashing' and geopolitically expedient to a substantial degree but isn't solely extractive and invites a more nuanced view of benefit/harm .
If the issue is around rights, then, certainly most of these states people fulminate against ought to be more accountable to citizens -starting with extending the category of citizenship itself in certain cases, and that accountability would undoubtedly mean a certain degree of further liberalization around gender rights and less draconian punishment, as well as economic freedom in the sense of less horrendous economic inequality etc: nevertheless, as a side note, I think you can overestimate how different some of these regulations would be even if people were suddenly granted more agency- - parallels in the ‘West’ might include substantial minority disagreement with campaigns in Iraq or extension of the campaign in Afghanistan after the initial entry; policies you could well argue were counterproductive for themselves and the global community, but enjoyed majority either 'active' support or absence of opposition, despite that visible and legitimate minority protest. And the US elite certainly weren’t barred from investing or doing philanthropy/sportswashing off the back of that, despite supporting politicians responsible for potential ICC violations etc.
If anyone wants to lobby for 51% fan control across all clubs within UEFA and or all clubs having to demonstrate independently adjudicated levels of stewardship or best practice as well as best practice or CSR on the part of their ownership groups more broadly, then that’s fine and those things might be worth supporting and using time/political capital to fight for, even with the other hardship and systematic legitimacy issues facing us right now. In the meantime I think there's a lot of signalling and self-flattering of consciences in the face of what the Glazers in particular have done to the club above and beyond the more widespread hyper marketization (branding, corporate experiences etc), to this space of regional heritage, one of the few things people can invest hopes in and derive joy from outside of their families and friends in catastrophic times. There are a lot of hidden opposition fans jumping onto this and astroturfing outrage (which also goes for other issues; there's no way, for instance, arsenal should have a certain player starting for them given the broader discourse around sexual assault and the publicly available evidence pertaining to them, but as a fan community we've been too meek compared with the understandable outrage around YKW, and narratives are being boosted and manipulated on social media by fake 'fans'). If they’re going to talk about principle and the importance of symbolic stances, commenters ought to consider a little more exactly what it is they’re affirming and who they’re claiming to speak for....
The truth is that families, groups and corporations like the Glaziers have done as much as anyone to ensure that practical -if not formal -democratic processes have been captured by wealthy people, safety nets and opportunities for the most vulnerable have been cut by financial-index corporatists they've backed across both US parties, climate change has been accelerated, have plundered community resources and been culpable in deaths of despair almost as directly as the Sackler's and their oyxcontin boosting, particularly when you take into account their direct ties to money-laundering tied banks . Frankly, I'd go as far to say that the Glazers have been an unalloyed moral evil, although they’re just following the logics and compulsions of your average corporation functioning around utterly 'private', myopic interest with no sense of regional or global community beyond a marketing drive. Groups like QSI or ADUG, at least when it comes to sports, are more analogous to earlier (particularly) American resource monopolists and tycoons), who were also directly or ‘structurally’ coercive during their time in terms of business practices, union-busting etc but did at least leave endowments in the arts and sciences, museums etc. Those are complicated legacies, and in the case of , Carnegie, arguably not justified by their posthumous endowments but the Glazers and the historical class of raiders and financiers and failchild hedge-backed scions they represent don’ t even have that sense of recompense or whatever; even a nefarious outfit like the Sacklers have tried to ‘wash’ their ill-gotten wealth through research which doesn’t solely contribute to their own bottom line. Likewise, the City lot/ADUG have at least invested in the community in a way which may be 'sportswashing' and geopolitically expedient to a substantial degree but isn't solely extractive and invites a more nuanced view of benefit/harm .
If the issue is around rights, then, certainly most of these states people fulminate against ought to be more accountable to citizens -starting with extending the category of citizenship itself in certain cases, and that accountability would undoubtedly mean a certain degree of further liberalization around gender rights and less draconian punishment, as well as economic freedom in the sense of less horrendous economic inequality etc: nevertheless, as a side note, I think you can overestimate how different some of these regulations would be even if people were suddenly granted more agency- - parallels in the ‘West’ might include substantial minority disagreement with campaigns in Iraq or extension of the campaign in Afghanistan after the initial entry; policies you could well argue were counterproductive for themselves and the global community, but enjoyed majority either 'active' support or absence of opposition, despite that visible and legitimate minority protest. And the US elite certainly weren’t barred from investing or doing philanthropy/sportswashing off the back of that, despite supporting politicians responsible for potential ICC violations etc.
If anyone wants to lobby for 51% fan control across all clubs within UEFA and or all clubs having to demonstrate independently adjudicated levels of stewardship or best practice as well as best practice or CSR on the part of their ownership groups more broadly, then that’s fine and those things might be worth supporting and using time/political capital to fight for, even with the other hardship and systematic legitimacy issues facing us right now. In the meantime I think there's a lot of signalling and self-flattering of consciences in the face of what the Glazers in particular have done to the club above and beyond the more widespread hyper marketization (branding, corporate experiences etc), to this space of regional heritage, one of the few things people can invest hopes in and derive joy from outside of their families and friends in catastrophic times. There are a lot of hidden opposition fans jumping onto this and astroturfing outrage (which also goes for other issues; there's no way, for instance, arsenal should have a certain player starting for them given the broader discourse around sexual assault and the publicly available evidence pertaining to them, but as a fan community we've been too meek compared with the understandable outrage around YKW, and narratives are being boosted and manipulated on social media by fake 'fans'). If they’re going to talk about principle and the importance of symbolic stances, commenters ought to consider a little more exactly what it is they’re affirming and who they’re claiming to speak for....
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