Hail to the King!
Sir Alex Ferguson's ambassadorial contract has been axed
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
- Start date
Bang on.
Spot on mate
You are probably right. But in that case, why have they done this if he's making money for them?
Lete face it he's an elderly man and his ambassadorial role has been diminished since his illness. He was at Ibrox when we were playing Porto a couple weeks back for example. Ratcliffe probably thought we weren't getting enough bang for our buck and let him know with very good grace. No need for all the drama.
We are also bleeding money... Money that's required for us to invest and improve the team. We've spent the last two summer windows counting pennies for the PSR in order to complete deals.
Nobody is doubting his legacy. However, he was paid accordingly throughout his career for that. He has earned ~GBP 20m since retiring as a golden handshake. Does the club continue paying him indefinitely? What metric of output would you attach to the ~GBP 2m/year payment to SAF? What is the net performance or business gain?
Sorry but when ordinary staff on minimum wage are getting laid off, I have no issue with this. It's been handled appropriately. I support the decision.
You make it sound like a handout, but he was earning this money. It is basically a salary/retainer, not a gift. As others have said, it's plausible that he earns the club that much or more through these appearances, adverts etc. Things like the tv advert with Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney which went viral.
None of those 4 things have happened
You can read the funniest things on here, I swear
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Yeah but some people have morals you know...Ineos have done enough bad stuff to the environment anyways, and yet they're still incomparable to a whole ass despotic regime
And that's the real question. I suspect that there's a lot more to this than simply saving many (which as I've already indicated is probably not the case since his Ambassadorial role is probably helping to generate, directly or indirectly, a lot more than £2 million pounds due to the reasons outlined). For all we know (which is quite likely) he's clashed with someone behind the scenes. He can't be very happy seeing the freefall we're in, and the image of United he helped build up being destroyed bit by bit.
I don't buy for a second that SAF is so important to our commercial operation that it can't manage without him.
Businesses that sponsor United are making much more sophisticated calculations than whether they get to shake hands with the Boss.
If ever a thread summed up the international break, this is it
I hear they're taking down his statue.
Edit. Oh my god, they're burning it !
Edit. Oh my god, they're burning it !
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Amazing. We all want a more disciplined, better organised, more focused team on the pitch, managed unsentimentally and judged on performance. But at the executive level, hey all bets are off! Does SAF bring in money? Nobody knows, but let's give him £2m on the off chance! But he's a legend! Well he is but we don't play players on reputation, why should it be different for the people who set the rules?
If we want to start winning again, we have to start being a bit more demanding about what everyone brings to the table and that should apply to everyone, legend or player.
In the footballing world he's an icon, and that's where his value lies. To get a year of his services for £2m is probably good going in terms of advertising etc. There's lesser celebs that make more than that through advertising. Hell I bet there's z-list influencers that make more than that. You see £2m and think it's some crazy number, but for somebody like him it absolutely isn't.
Except the people best equipped to make that judgement are the executive team at United and they've made it. Who are you or I to disagree? All we have is past memories and that's just not enough.
Also, he's 82. C'mon.
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I was talking about the Glazers btw
Yeah but some people have morals you know...Ineos have done enough bad stuff to the environment anyways, and yet they're still incomparable to a whole ass despotic regime
The great man once again leading the club.
SAF to jim “Enough is enough, use my salary to pay this man off before its too late”
SAF to jim “Enough is enough, use my salary to pay this man off before its too late”
He'll probably outlive Brexit Jim and get the last laugh.
His age is only relevant if it matters to him. Otherwise why does it matter if he's happy to do it? Which he apparently was.
Ok, I'll leave you to trust every decision made by this club. The last 10 years has taught me to do the opposite of that, and that'll be the case until they build some trust again with supporters. But this isn't some high level financial decision, it's £2m a year for representation by the man who built the club. People will have opinions, even if he's not earning that £2m.
Even if it's a salary of 2m/year to keep Sir Alex away from OT the man has earned the right to the salary. United today is inconceivable without Sir Alex.
It may well be that Ferguson is tired and done and if it was a mutually amicable agreement then so be it, but if he was told this was the decision of INEOS then shame on INEOS.
It may well be that Ferguson is tired and done and if it was a mutually amicable agreement then so be it, but if he was told this was the decision of INEOS then shame on INEOS.
I hear he's now seeking remuneration for use of his likeness with the statue outside Old Trafford.
My bad!
Much ado about nothing. Must be an international week.
The bloke certainly doesn’t need the money anymore
Wasn’t he massively rewarded financially during his tenure??
Wasn’t he massively rewarded financially during his tenure??
According to The Mirror, which I acknowledge is a lowlife publication:
The legendary Scot has held the role since retiring as manager, earning an annual salary of around £2m. Ferguson was made aware that the role was being axed in an amicable meeting with Ratcliffe, while the former boss remains welcome at the club.
But it now appears that Ratcliffe has gone even further in getting his feet under the table. According to The Times, Ferguson and other members of the club’s board will now be prevented from entering the team’s dressing room after games.
It is a tradition that has been in place since Sir Matt Busby’s time at Old Trafford. Ferguson has not regularly taken up the invitation but Sir Bobby Charlton was a regular visitor during his time as an active board member.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/manutd-ferguson-ratcliffe-sacked-33900676
The legendary Scot has held the role since retiring as manager, earning an annual salary of around £2m. Ferguson was made aware that the role was being axed in an amicable meeting with Ratcliffe, while the former boss remains welcome at the club.
But it now appears that Ratcliffe has gone even further in getting his feet under the table. According to The Times, Ferguson and other members of the club’s board will now be prevented from entering the team’s dressing room after games.
It is a tradition that has been in place since Sir Matt Busby’s time at Old Trafford. Ferguson has not regularly taken up the invitation but Sir Bobby Charlton was a regular visitor during his time as an active board member.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/manutd-ferguson-ratcliffe-sacked-33900676
The Club has hired a no. of ex-players and staff as Ambassador, Consultant etc.
Fergi's contract was clearly a "keeping your mouth shut" package. A no. of do-nothing Ambassadors, plus may be a few "travel and party" Ambassadors, are clearly under spotlight, when hundreds of staff are being cut.
I am not saying that those staff should be kept, because number wise we are obviously over-staffed, so some cost control measure is justified. It is however, hard to justify these measure when you are paying millions on perks.
Fergi's contract was clearly a "keeping your mouth shut" package. A no. of do-nothing Ambassadors, plus may be a few "travel and party" Ambassadors, are clearly under spotlight, when hundreds of staff are being cut.
I am not saying that those staff should be kept, because number wise we are obviously over-staffed, so some cost control measure is justified. It is however, hard to justify these measure when you are paying millions on perks.
The next time Ratcliff took a private jet. He should take economy because 250 low paid employees are being laid off
How's that relevant? He's earning every penny of it. It's called salary.
Oh you have a nice salary, so let's write off your pention scheme?
"You're number 1....... on the sacked list"
Without the break it'd be much worse I reckon. Shit performance and all that.
A Lot posters said the decision is ok and also SAF is ok with it but what you expect when you put it in front of him.
Actually its a PR disaster now. Ineos is starting to get some queations from some fans and the more will come when it adds up latter on. SAF's name is dragging to the mud now because of the 2m salary and fans started calling all the name to him. Ineos should ask SAF to call this shot when they agreed on the decision because then he wouldnt have to be associate with being greedy (when you put money figuer on the headline, deep down people will get uneasy and on his back more or less and will try to rationalize the decision and support it).
Actually its a PR disaster now. Ineos is starting to get some queations from some fans and the more will come when it adds up latter on. SAF's name is dragging to the mud now because of the 2m salary and fans started calling all the name to him. Ineos should ask SAF to call this shot when they agreed on the decision because then he wouldnt have to be associate with being greedy (when you put money figuer on the headline, deep down people will get uneasy and on his back more or less and will try to rationalize the decision and support it).
I didn’t bring up this Jassim vs Jim argument. It’s been done to death.
Yeah but some people have morals you know...Ineos have done enough bad stuff to the environment anyways, and yet they're still incomparable to a whole ass despotic regime
The point being though judge what we have now not the alternative that didn’t happen. What we have now isn’t going well and the deal made is keeping glazers as majority shareholder indefinitely. We’re in a bad way and it’s Jim’s fault.
It’s very relevant
People saying he deserves every penny seem too be completely forgetting that he was paid enormously during his tenure for all the amazing work he did whilst manager, they rewarded him plentiful already.
He certainly doesn’t need no pension scheme ffs
Oh as long as the little guy has been getting shafted for decades, that's just fine then. The state of this post. SAF will always embody Manchester United to myself and billions of others (fans and rivals alike) but he has become a very wealthy man for the job he did for us and yes it was a job as he was paid handsomely for it. He has written books about his time here and made a lot of money from it. At a time when the club's finances are a mess, do you not think it makes sense to remove one man from the wage bill instead of literally hundreds of low paid staff?
SAF's personal fall out over a race horse led to the Glazers taking control of this club and putting it in the current state. So it's no wonder the Glazers wouldn't be the ones making the call to remove him from the wage bill.
I actually cannot believe that this is even a debate. SAF himself is a life long socialist and Labour supporter, he would tell you that he'd rather a rich man lost his job (this wasn't even a job) than to see hundreds of poor working class people lose the ability to feed their kids. These sorts of posts on a football forum are truly mind boggling, this is the sort of stuff you'd expect to see on a tory forum.
You can say SAF earned every penny but it was a grossly excessive payment to attend a few football games and charity events.
Ultimately, if it was generating more than it was costing, INEOS would have kept it as there'd be a business rationale to doing so. It is clearly not generating any additional revenue which can be measured, or at least none which would be worthy of reducing the payment.
The combination of it being grossly excessive in it's reward and not having any underlying commercial rationale, means it is nothing more than a golden handshake scheme. Axing that after 10 years of generous payments is not worthy of some of the hyperbolic reactions on here.
I disagree with all of this. I don't see how "we're in a bad way" at all. You need to zoom out a bit IMO, and realize a few things.
1. Ratcliffe and Ineos almost certainly want to be here for the long-term. By that, I mean 15 years at least, but probably decades, if they're successful. Ratcliffe will probably never get to sell his any of his United shares at this point, as he's in his 70s. He will also almost certainly keep acquiring more and more until he has the whole club.
2. They will make mistakes, but they can't really make mistakes they cannot recover and learn from. I don't think there are faultless owners in world football anyway. Abu Dhabi made a lot of mistakes in their first years at City. Pérez has made huge mistakes at Madrid before. FSG have made big mistakes at Liverpool too. Arsenal under the Kroenkes have done foolish things. Chelsea, with all the advantages they had in even Abramovich's early years, they still didn't achieve as much as they should've. You can argue that they've been incompetent cheats in the last 21 years...PSG, Bayern, etc. all the clubs even with a lot of money and resources available make mistakes.
3. They've shown a lot of ambition, and that's far more important than the current manager's future. Who the manager is right now, doesn't really have a huge bearing on how the next 5-10 years will unfold.
4. A megarich on their own club, like United, with megarich, ambitious owners operating it, is almost guaranteed to be successful IMO. The Glazers were incompetent and stingy too, to put it lightly. Even a half-decent (competency wise) owner who's willing to put a lot of money in will manage to make an astronomical difference just in a few years' time. We have been a statistical anomaly in the last 11 years and by far the richest club to not win a PL or CL during that time. I think Ineos will be very good owners, but like I said, they just need to be half decent in order for United to return to the elite again.
Seems like a logical idea to me, I mean, we've had Evra promote the raw chicken we serve in the kitchens.
By that logic you can't criticize the Glazers' running of the club either. Who are you and I to disagree with their judgements?