Could United potentially go the way of Leeds?

Nah you will be fine.

First of all your squad isnt as bad as it's playing at this moment.

You will get some reinforcements in during the summer.

You will challenge for Top 4 at a minimum next year and I'd be pretty confident that as the start of next season approaches you will be at least 4th favorite for the title.

If Ten Hag can get more than the sum of your players parts you may even finish 2nd or 3rd (Depending on the other teams of course , I don't expect you to hit 90 points + but I'd expect 70+)

Even if your owners are parasites they still need to keep the host alive.

I think you will probably need them to leave for you to have sustained success again but if the shit really hits the fan there will be a line of buyers (look at Chelsea) a mile long to try and make you the best club in the world again.
 
Could, yes. Will, no.

This has been a disastrous season, yet we’re still in the top half if the table and relegation was never a serious threat.
 
OverratedOpinion said:
I am unsure what you mean by "the way of Leeds".

Get relegated? This is our worst season in 30 years, it has sparked wholesale change throughout the club and will probably spark absurd spending in the summer, we are currently 6th. Very unlikely.

Run into financial trouble? Very, very unlikely. Over a billion has been taken out of the club in debt repayments, dividends and other unnecessary costs, we have had very little success and still managed to be one of the highest spending clubs in Europe and still very financially stable. We could also absolutely spend less money and get better results if done properly and worst case scenario if the owners believed our position and as such value may become untenable then they would sell to ensure their profit. "Too big to fail" is a bit of a myth but "so big that it is incredibly difficult to fail" is true, Leeds were never anywhere near that level.

Be far worse than we previously were? We already are.

I honestly feel we are in a far better position than we have been in 10 years. Purely because the banking professionals seem to finally realise that this is beyond their expertise. Restructuring the recruitment, bringing in Rangnick (terrible coach as he may be), potentially Paul Mitchell, Ten Hag. Results like today are terrible but if we get talented and experienced people in the right positions then with our resources we should see a big improvement. Just putting in a new manager would have not been enough at this point but it seems like in the background, slowly there is some common sense in what we are doing finally.

What we are seeing now is the result of bankers, Norwegian league coaches and American trust fund babies. That has taken us to 2nd and Europa League finals. Lets not panic and see what happens if we get some people in who have an actual track record of doing well in professional football.
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This is actually a fairly good take.
 
Not quite, we're just the 90's and early 00's Liverpool without the players who actually care and put in shifts.
 
Today was embarrassing, but the crappest thing this week by far (for me at least) was watching Chelsea (& Abramovich) seemingly "getting away" with their situation & being delivered into the hands of an owner who will (According to Radio 5) be spending £1.5bn on the squad. I don't know where to start with that. Obviously the elephant in the room is the Russian Crook who was allowed to own the club for years and lead the way in bending football finances out of shape & setting the bar for club ownership sportswashing. He was given bags of time to sort himself out by the Govt before any sanctions were put on him, nice and gently. Then there was some talk of sanctions for the club. But nothing happens. Then they end up with a rich benevolent (non-controversial?) owner. Nice. All the while we're still just being milked as the now "Once successful Manchester United". Seemingly trapped with a squad full of over-paid players who we had to overpay to convince them to come, but now we can't get rid as they won't get as much money elsewhere.

Where we are today is EXACTLY where we feared we would be if we were owned by people who wanted us for our financial value and money making potential and nothing else. Who obviously realise that football economics differs from economics elsewhere, in that fans don't desert the club for a more successful one in lean times. They stick with them and continue to watch and buy merch. It's exactly where we'd be if we didn't act decisively to secure the succession of a long-standing successful manager. Mainly as thing were allowed to slide for the last few years of his reign as well. Woodward takes over, Moyes saunters in in July/August, other valued staff leave. The rot starts. But we're a club not toughened and prepared for a merry-go-round of managers like, say, Chelsea.

We'll not go the way of Leeds. We're going our own unique way really. Still a great scalp to get for other teams, yet not really much of a challenge. Under way more scrutiny than other teams and always in a massive crisis, even when it's not really a crisis. And now too many fan-cam "fans" buy into the hyperbole of this. The media is dominated by anti-United feeling, so they're loving it & Rio, G Nev and co are just getting paid to heap misery onto our players. That's not helping.
 
We don't spend beyond our means, so not immediately.

However...

We have gone a while living on our legacy when it comes to sponsors. If success fully dries up, that will suffer, and if that happens over a protracted period then yes - we will run out of money, and we will need to re-align our expectations.

This is all part and parcel of Glazer/Woodward happiness with Top 4 and "brand legacy" rather than actual, current, success. If we want to see boom times again we will need to switch back to prioritising sporting success. Otheriwse, I can only see a slow bleed out until the Glazers decide it's prudent to sell.
 
I'm confident we'll be back in the top 4 next season. We are 6th in our worst season in the premier league era, so no. we aren't on our way to be relegated.
 
It is actually a case of monstrously misusing or really abusing (criminally, this just needs to be investigated) the colossal financial resources sustainably generated by an asset ever-present within the top 5 most powerful brands in its field, by all metrics and rankings one can find. Never say never, but it is hard for me to imagine a case where we will be too deep in the red, heaven forbid, throughout one of the biggest disasters to mankind in modern history we could still afford to waste money for a return of zilch so far from we spent on, without much harm to the bottom line.

Those in positions of power just have to be qualified to make the decisions utilising the gargantuan earnings in the right way. We will see starting from this summer after a decade of false dawns whether they have been enlightened enough.
 
It is possible to get relegated. Not ruling that out.
 
more like going the way of Liverpool. Fergie brought in to copy them and someone forgot to say "stop". Now we've gone full circle and are still going: heading for 30 years without the title...
 
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