They don't need to fix the stadium immediately, they will feel they can put it off for another few years and then perhaps sell the club at a higher price.
Club Sale | It’s done!
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They don't need to fix the stadium immediately, they will feel they can put it off for another few years and then perhaps sell the club at a higher price.
I certainly don't believe it isn't state backed but some are pushing that narrative.
Significant investment in the team and infrastructure.
The investment came at a time when they'd neglected the structural side of the club (both youth & first team) where Man City were signing the likes of David Silva, Aguero, Toure etc, unchallenged and were beginning to dominate the greater Manchester area for young talent. And we were being told there was no value in the market. And when Fergie retired they left Woodward to run the club and after his countless mistakes he still remained at the club for almost a decade. And when he finally resigned due to the ESL debacle, the Glazers reportedly tried to persuade him to change his mind.
They inherited the family business from their father who didn't live long enough to run the club. And they've run the club with great incompetence where for a decade they allowed Ed Woodward to make mistakes without any accountability.
But what it looks like (to me) is it didn’t go as in depth or hard hitting as posters wanted so it’s somehow a puff piece. I can’t even think of what questions they could even go hard on him with if he is simply a son of a former PM. This thread gets lost in an echo chamber in itself when someone asks a question or proof, they don’t get it but posters quote other posters talking about how obvious it is.
That’s two so called financial experts from that region saying the potential owners are long distanced away from the royal family. It’s beginning to look like we could be bought with the fruits of corruption and the result of state funds rather than being state owned in itself.
I asked a question last week if it was possible for someone to branch out on their own rather than having the royal family literally control every penny that leave Qatar. Despite all the nudges and winks I haven’t seen anything that points towards shadow regimes.
Do you think they've been investing sufficiently in the last 5 years?
They can borrow to buy out the other siblings. That's the whole idea of folks like Elliot popping up offering their money.
They are not legitimate questions for a fan to ask though and they aren't being asked either, people have just dismissed two articles from credible sources as paid propaganda. The Raine Group and the PL will ask these questions but the energy invested in tarnishing these guys whilst absolving Jim clearly shows that the accusations of racism and/or nepotism arent exactly farfetched.
Last week the Athletic had an article where it was suggested that HBJ's wealth was vastly understated and the pro-Jim corner dismissed it offhand. It also said that the Emir and HBJ had frosty relations which you also dismissed.
Now you are questioning the stated position that 'no debt will used' that was put in a legally binding bid process whilst you spent the whole week defending Jim's 'all new debt wont be foisted on the club' stance. You aren't giving both sides a fair hearing.
I am certain Joel and Avram want to stay but I don't think it's possible for them to do so. So I'm still hopeful we will be sold.
Couldn’t some investment firm come in and do a deal with them. Split it however they like for the investment to buy out their siblings.
Awful situation.
There seems to be a multitude of elements that are factors in the Glazers sale and perhaps the biggest is the common disorder amongst the siblings for continued ownership. The articles that covered the first financial quarterly statements give further indication why they are selling. Loss of cash reserves causing further credit to be acquired which fulled the summer spending when the team needs a similar outlay to remain competitive probably over thr next two windows. Additionally add the stadium investment and any plan to reduce the outlay of debt due to interest. It doesn't make sense financially for the owners to remain. Buying out their siblings with leveraged money is totally nonsensical.
It doesn't go into any depth and it's not hard hitting at all. It just reads like a 500 word essay about how amazing he is.
Now, that's fine, everyone does PR it's how the world works.
one question they could ask is "where are you getting 8 billion quid from mate?"
Yes but who's going to take on this debt? They can't possibly add it to the club.
The two bros aren't as savvy as Malcolm
No I don't, because the investment was being made through Ed Woodward, who should never have been allowed to carry on making bad decisions.
If there isn't accountability from the top, then a football club will haemorrhage money.
Anything is only worth what someone will pay for it. What is noticeable for me is how few bids have been received. You could argue that will make the Glazers walk away from the sale, or you could argue they now know what the club is worth is and conclude that if they don't take the Qatari cash they are unlikely to get a better bid - after all, there doesn't appear to be anyone else interested at the price level asked.
I think there will be a little dance around the price until the Qataris say 'this is our final offer, take it or we buy elsewhere', and they will mean it, and the sale will be agreed.
Sorry to Ratcliffe backers, I believe they're in it for the money, or at the very least not to lose much, and they will drop out, even if they haven't been outbid already.
How would that even be possible?
They'd have to borrow 4 billion, whoever invested that amount would want 75% ownership of the club.
The Glazers wouldn't be in full control anymore. It's just not feasible.
Their time is up, they're going.
So let me get this straight. Joel and Avram want to stay but the other 4 siblings want out. So their solution is to buy out their other 4 siblings shares. Okay. Great. They don't have the finances to invest in the stadium, facilities or team, so they've been seeking outside investment and have opened up a £200m overdraft on the club, on top of the debt they are already servicing for buying the club in the first place. An investment firm is interested in giving the Glazers money to improve the stadium. Fantastic. That still leaves training facilities investment and the team, along with the £200m overdraft and debt repayments and now they have an investment firm who will be seeking a return. Now they're in an even bigger financial hole than they were previously, not taking dividends, and they also have a pissed off fanbase who will ward off any potential sponsors to get them gone.
Yeah, it's fecking stupid, non-sensical and has no chance of happening. They. Are. Selling.
Yeah, it's fecking stupid, non-sensical and has no chance of happening. They. Are. Selling.
Article reads like just covering their bases. Most interesting thing is the apparent lack of other bidders, I had thought it seemed weirdly quiet on that front.
Yeah because the PL have a stellar record in terms of only allowing people with the best intentions to buy PL clubs. Glazers, Shiniwatra, Abramovic etc.
Raine work for the Glazers so whoever has the most cash to hand the Glazers at point of sale, regardless of the source of that cash is who they'll recommend. They don't give a flying fiddlers if the money is borrowed or if that bid is the best bid for the club long term.
So of course they are legitimate questions for fans to ask, as who else has the clubs best intentions at heart.
Legally binding bid process? Yeah OK mate.
I'm not pro Jim or anyone, I've simply been pointing out that it makes no sense for any buyer to load billions of debt onto a football club. That majority of fans against the INEOS bid seem to think it's another leveraged buy out.
Before we start panicking people need to remember that the wantaway four will only walk away at valuations matching what they would have got had the club been bought. The Qatari know this and they will up their bid soon and this will only add more pressure.
Having established that, buying out their siblings is only the first step. Say a minority investor comes and buys out the Glazer siblings, what about the infrastructure issues and the squad investment required? Consider that the fans will become considerably more toxic meaning that partners and sponsors will be hard to come by.
How can you say there hasn't been accountability from the top when Woodward is gone, replaced by new management?
And my question was if capital was made available to the senior team. You are answering that the investment was being made through Woodward. This is not answering the question.
why not?
we just had 20 years of Glazer ownership, I think fans have the right to ask difficult questions
Depends on if they need 4bn for Avram and Joel to remain in charge. Perhaps 2bn to buys the other siblings out would be enough, if the two remain hardball.
Fact of the matter is there isn’t that many bids for Raine to sift through, and the whole things been on hold up for over a week now. Clearly they’re not just considering selling up completely.
They said there was little interest last week days before Qatar bid. I’m struggling to know who their sources involved in the process are - if those sources were actually good ones high up in the process then they would either know if there were more bids or not - these sources seem to be good enough to base an article on yet they don’t know definitively who has bid and merely think it likely that there are no other bidders. This also goes against what the Times, WSJ, Telegraph and Keegan have said - all have whom have actually had exclusives during this process unlike the Athletic.
Lets assume that the Glazers think that will be big success and therefore bigger sponsorship dals coming up. (I am sure there have been projections provided to them by Arnold for the next five years -- bad, realistic and optimistic scenarios.) They could borrow based on the hope that the most optimistic revenue scenario come true. They would keep cost at a minimum -- incl infra upgrading.
The loan can structure the loan like a hockey curve where there are very low-interest rates for the first few years then it ramps up in return for increasing equity in lieu of failure to keep up with the payments.
Failing that folks like Elliot swoop in.
A debt free State backed bid , and a genuine billionaire United fan bid, both of which at a level that seems well beyond what is fair price, how many of these types of bidders were they expecting?
They'd do well to remember it's 2 more bids than Liverpool got.
Ed Woodward resigned and it was reported the Glazers tried talking him out of resigning. That's not holding him to account but further proving their incompetence.
The new management came about by chance and not because the Glazers proactively attempted to make changes after Woodward's resignation.
If capital is made available for the senior team, and a banker is put in charge of making hiring and firing calls and not a DoF, then that investment is bad and further highlights the incompetence of the Glazers.
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The bidders need time to go through our financials
That isn’t a fact at all. We do not know that. All we know is there was a soft deadline and it has been reported before that deadline and since by the WSJ that Raine would take the next week to narrow it down to the best bids before bidders would get a detailed look at the financials. Keegan said last weekend there could be 3 rounds of bidding.
They may not want to upgrade any infrastructure for now -- leave it to the next buy later when the market improves? Spend the minimum to still retain control.
They don't have the spend that money immediately, especially major upgrades.
Squad investment is annually budgeted regardless.
Not allowed to post memes here but this makes me think of Rhys Ifans in his pants at the door in Notting Hill.
Come on, man, you are smart enough to know fan feedback is not a reason they'd sell. The reason the other 4 parasites want out is because they stand to make hundreds of millions and perhaps think the club has reached it's maximum valuation, not because someone wrote a mean email to one of their companies. Sure, maybe it was of some annoyance, but that's all it was. And even then they will only fully sell if their valuation is met, something which is unlikely to happen.
If they pull the plug, then they've calculated that and are prepared to take any backlash. Because how exactly do see it panning out? Do you seriously think they will call the sale off, then get scared of protests, and suddenly call Qatar and Ratcliffe back to the table? That's just not realistic, it's just not going to happen. But I'm also certain there won't be any big protests in the first place. The Super League united the football world against it and drew the attention of governments. The Glazers instead have a disjointed fanbase to deal with. A fanbase, which can't even agree who should be owner. A fanbase they know how to placate. Remember how easy for them it was to wipe it all away after the Super League? Where we the protests that summer? Why did they stop? Because they had a fall guy, made some empty promises, bought some players, done. It will be the same now. They will promise to invest into the stadium, buy Osimhen, De Jong, whatever, and all will be swept under the rug, especially if the club manages to win something. It will be doubly easy for them if they make it seem like it was them or Qatar. Order a few articles how Qatar were the only serious bidder, but in the end the Glazers decided not to sell. And just like that they will have the paladins of justice on their side, who will not go out to protest, if the alternative is Qatar. Divide and conquer. The government getting involved is nonsense.
People relying on fan unrest in case the sale falls through have another thing coming.
Not pointed at you, but another point I'd like to address is the common misconception that the Glazers need to this and that. No, they don't need to do anything. Want and need are not the same thing. They don't need to renovate/rebuild the infrastructure. They don't need to invest massively in the squad. The only thing they need to do is keep the club relevant enough, and they've been fairly successful at it. Now they also have the right guy to do it for them. Even 5 or 10 years down the line the club will still be worth at least 5bn, probably more.
The Glazers are staying. No doubt in my mind about it.
It depends what you mean by immediately.
Not sure how they turn down £4-£5 billion now, and expect the asset to grow for it to be worth £7-£8 billion in 5-6 years time without doing the infrastructure work in the meantime.
Why would they ask those questions? According to the PL Manchester City is privately owned, and Newcastle is ran independently from the Saudi state.
It would take several billion to buy out the rest of the family.
They don't have billions in liquid cash, and the club cannot support that kind of finance and remain even remotely competitive. As in, they could not even afford to maintain the current wage bill, let alone buy new players.
Have you worked for a publicly traded company? Every senior leadership change is done through resignation and not through sacking because of company image and reputation reasons.
Why did Woodward resign? What were his reasons?
It is fairly obvious, at least to me, that he was replaced because results did not meet expectations and objectives.
And to answer my own question, yes, capital was made available. So, going back to your original statement - investments are needed. And such have been made available.
Do you think the newly installed management is capable of allocating the available capital adequately?
What they said in their initial bid will inform the whole process, if the Glazers found out that they lied they could sue.
What is clear is that Jassim isn't being given the same treatment as Sir Jim. You haven't considered that at one time HBJ's common ancestor with the Emir, be it grandfather or great grandfather, was once an Emir and HBJ, and by extension Jassim, may have inherited some great fortune before HBJ's time in government.
Lets consider Prince Edward's grandson who happens to inherit his dukedom then worked at upper echelons of a corrupt government where he was in control of government funds and how they are invested. For interest sake, lets say when HBJ entered government with the former Emir in 1995 he was already worth millions by virtue of being a descendent of a recent sovereign! Given what is being said of his financial skills and access to corrupt deals can we imagine what he is worth?
For me its not implausible that these guys are worth around $20b to $30b and they are willing to use a third of that to buy into United and raise their profile so as to become too famous to touch for the current Emir. Or they have his blessing but they are doing it for their own family and their interests with the Emir just happen to align, he was reportedly encouraging more forrays of this nature after seeing the impact of the world cup.
Firstly we are in a global downturn so prices would be depressed anyway. Maybe they expect more optimistic prices like 4-5 years down the line?
Also, we have no access to the business projections within United. But maybe there have been some optimistic numbers being generated? The shirt sponsorships are up, there could be a bunch of other revenue streams that are growing faster than we are aware of.
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