It’s simply a game of bluff and double bluff, by showing SJ and SJR the accounts, they not only showed the strength of the brand potential but all the debt and I don’t just mean the £680m but the debt owed for player transfers, if your good at selling players as well as buying them, you also receive amortised transfer fees to offset at least half of the fees going out yearly. It was recently reported the club owes over £300m at the net position.
An example of one of those payments are £13m per year on Maguire’s existing 2 years owed to Leicester which is frightening, it means we would have to sell him for £26m on a two year contract to wipe off that debt and hope united have not defaulted on any payments owed to other clubs. The player loan deals in January where the club scraped the bottom of the barrel shows just what a perilous cash position the club is in, the Glaziers even with new investment and new crippling high interest payments to service the debt would probably make the club bankrupt in 3-4 years under the new FFP sustainability rules and with having no friends in Uefa to help, just listen to Neville recent interview with president Alexander Cerefin to see what he thinks of them!
UEFA going after Barcelona is revenge and a warning. The Glaziers led by Joel and Avram have told the other 4 we can squeeze £6-7bn out of Qatar, providing we stick to our guns, we will use the media to to let them know we don’t want to sell unless we get £6bn, the truth is both SJR and SJ are too smart, crunched the numbers, realised that popular sentiment is with them and will send a moderate but still obscene bid but with certain caveats, stating that if this can’t be done this summer, the value starts to diminish due to more stringent FFP rules next summer and beyond and their bid would subsequently reduce.
The Maximum figure they are getting in this current financial climate is £5.3-5.6bn for their 69.5% of their shares, if they and the Raine group are smart, they should take 24 hours to sleep on it and then realise they, themselves have paid nothing and their Father leveraged the club on debt then finally do the honourable thing and ride off into the sunset with their billions.