So, the Glazers. Are they parasites? Blame game topic.

Henrik Larsson

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Is the pope a Catholic? Is Juan Mata one hell of a sexy man-person?

Anyway, since our dear friend Edward Woodward is getting blamed in his own thread, I thought there should be a topic on the Glazer family. How much are they to blame, I mean someone has to be blamed and flamed, right? Surely it can't be just Ed Woodwards incompetence alone?

And what will happen with all the criticism if Louis van Gaal gets our squad fired up and we become serial-winners again? Are the Glazers c.q Woodward still to blame if they get some decent deals done before the end of this window?

One of the Glazers was called a "parasatic presence" in an article in 'the Indepedent' today/yesterday:

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...d-their-responsibility-no-longer-9673580.html

,,His family have taken £200million from the club in share sales and must be called to account."

,,The Glazers, whose avarice and opportunism have cost United £700m in assorted debt charges, can no longer avoid their responsibilities."


How come other club owners like Abramovic, Sheikh Mansour, or the Paris Saint-Germain owners don't seem to have any problems getting deals done? Is it simply because they are wealthier than the Glazers and don't need to leech from the club?

Looking at the consensus about the state of our squad and our presumed reluctance/incompetence to get the right deals done, I thought it was worth discussing.
 
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It's getting to the stage that Woodward appears so incompetent it can't be his fault. How can someone work in such a position and be so feckin' crap?
No, ownership dictates a lack of spending to compete. We all know this yet we're treated like morons from the club. The club is full of absolute bullshit.
 
I think it's hard not to argue the squad is in the state it is now due to a lack of investment under the last few years of Fergie. Our net spend during that time would back it up as well. It remains to be seen if the Glazers are prepared to invest heavily to the level required. We'll have an answer to that by September 1st I think.
 
They get away with it. There was a mini protest in 2010 and then it stopped.

Fans hire pathetic planes for Moyes, yet the Glazers get away with it. I think if we don't make any signings than I can see this being the final straw for a few people and we can see some big protests again.
 
KiD MoYeS said:
It's getting to the stage that Woodward appears so incompetent it can't be his fault. How can someone work in such a position and be so feckin' crap?
No, ownership dictates a lack of spending to compete. We all know this yet we're treated like morons from the club. The club is full of absolute bullshit.
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I absolutely agree. I'm going to wait till Sept 1st to make a final decision, but I'm pretty sure they're not going to invest.
 
I think the Glazer's have been great, it's not there fault a manager pays £30m for a toilet brush (Felliani).
 
120 million on players in a year and zero improvement. Who would not be reluctant to let Woodward and co at it for another 100 million?
 
The Glazers are businessmen. They don't care about results. In the last few years, and most specifically with our new 10 year Adidas contract, they have turned this club into a cash cow. Results help to keep that going, but they are sitting on a gold mine. They know nothing about the sport, nor do they care. They bought the club as a business venture and now it is paying off handsomely. They made this work for them , but that does not mean it will work out for the club or the fans in the long term. We have to wait and see if they actually reinvest the massive money coming into the club coffers, or simply take it out and look for some new business venture to grow their empire.
 
1) Its been clear to me that any difficulties keeping up with city/chelsea in the post SAF era will stem from a poor quality squad. Same for Moyes as from LVG. LVG is a good man to rebuild the squad.

2) We paid 100s of millions in interest, like almost 700m pounds. Now we don't have big interest bills it's time to make up for 10 years of spending less than even clubs like liverpool who weren't even in the CL. We have some catching up to do and spending 200m this summer wouldn't even fully solve the problem.

3) It's not the glazers fault like they've made mufc very successful commercially and now assuming that the match the spending that we need for the next 2-3 windows they will have helped with the blueprint to make us the most successful club in the world again. We just have to see good backing now (assuming LVG wants it, its possible his arrogance will see us plow on)

4) I personally don't care if we come 5th a couple of seasons trying to build a new team, but I know that LVG will be sacked and so on and so forth if this is the case. So in order to have any continuity in this club we need to spend to get us to top 4 right now
 
NoWinNoFee said:
I think the Glazer's have been great, it's not there fault a manager pays £30m for a toilet brush (Felliani).
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They've be decent but not great. They put us into debt in the first place and they're parasites.
 
Without a doubt they are parasites. We're in debt because of them ffs! I can't imagine where we'd be if we hadn't been burdened by their debt and had the spending power a club the size of United truly deserves.

Admittedly, they have done well for us over the years, bringing in titles after titles and big sponsorship deals, all the while expanding our global appeal but that was because we had Fergie in charge. Now we have a incompetent CEO, a shite squad and no miracle worker in Fergie (no offence to LvG).

The squad needs desperate investment, something it's needed for quite some time, but it's gotten to a point where all the chickens have come to roost. The deep seated problems such as our midfield have been there for all to see and particularly our midfield has stagnated so much over time that it's not even midtable level at the moment and to add to it, our defence is a walking disaster.

As the shrewd businessmen they are, I don't see how the Glazers and Woodward don't see fit to invest in the team as without it, the club is only going one way and it's not up.
 
I refuse to believe Woodward is sat with £200 million and licence to spend it yet he's failing.
I refuse to believe that three different managers have been unsure about whether/how to sort out our problems.

The Glazers have spent some of the money they should have spent years ago (like when we sold the best player in the world for £80 million). It's too late now, and the squad has suffered and still needs investment. We aren't proactive enough for a club of our size and ambition. Reactive signings like Mata don't impress me.

Being proactive would have seen us spend more last summer, and the need to spend this summer would have decreased. Nobody would be asking for top players right now. But they'd rather wait until it's almost too late.
 
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WyoManU said:
The Glazers are businessmen. They don't care about results. In the last few years, and most specifically with our new 10 year Adidas contract, they have turned this club into a cash cow. Results help to keep that going, but they are sitting on a gold mine. They know nothing about the sport, nor do they care. They bought the club as a business venture and now it is paying off handsomely. They made this work for them , but that does not mean it will work out for the club or the fans in the long term. We have to wait and see if they actually reinvest the massive money coming into the club coffers, or simply take it out and look for some new business venture to grow their empire.
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They've invested £120m in a year and probably will spend more this window, how much more do you want them to spend?

The mess we are in is not the Glazer's fault.
 
I guess we'll see. I don't think success is as important as people think. Being relevant is far more important - and we'll always be the most famous club in English football. As long as we find a way to be relevant/in the news etc we'll continue to attract sponsors and make a shit load of revenue. All they have to do is cut down our expenses (transfer spend and wage) and they can still take home a lot of money.
 
NoWinNoFee said:
They've invested £120m in a year and probably will spend more this window, how much more do you want them to spend?

The mess we are in is not the Glazer's fault.
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I didn't blame the Glazers. I have never been yelling for them to go. I am simply making a statement in contrast to people who call them parasites. The problems at our club run far deeper than the Glazers. We have spent a lot of money and got very little in return.
 
Partially plagiarised but;

We replaced Ronaldo with Valencia,
Tevez with Michael Owen on a free
Giggs with Ashley Young
Scholes initially with Cleverley
and haven't bothered replacing Vidic and Ferdinand

Transfer policy is one of the most important factors in the long term success of a football club- whether its lack of funds due to the owners skimming- or just piss poor scouting/ squad assessment over the years- it's false economy, its going to cost far more to replace those players properly from a position of weakness than it would when we were champions and pretty much guaranteed to be playing in Europe every year.
 
KiD MoYeS said:
It's getting to the stage that Woodward appears so incompetent it can't be his fault. How can someone work in such a position and be so feckin' crap?
No, ownership dictates a lack of spending to compete. We all know this yet we're treated like morons from the club. The club is full of absolute bullshit.
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You have to remember in the last 3 windows we have spent over 100m. That's not that little by any stretch and more than many years for United.

It's very hard for me to know what's going on to be honest. We can all speculate. LVG can't be so shit that he doesn't see the urgency to sign players. Woodward can't be so shit that he isn't working 30 hours a day to go for targets if they are there given the state of our team. And the glazers can't be so shit to not see that their club is going down the drain unless they spent.

The problem is, I think it's a combination of all of them being on some level fecking stupid.
 
Years of Glazer penny pinching has caught up with us.

We probably need to spend £300-£400 million to get us back into a position to be Europe's number one team again.
 
I do think the FA has to shoulder some sort of blame for this. How the likes of Glazer boys, Stan Kroenke, Vincent Tan etc got into leveraging these prestigious football institutions is beyond me. Isn't there a "fit and proper test in place" ? Anyway these clubs ultimately belong to the English people yet these folks walk in and in the case of our "owners" and Kroenke siphon off hundreds of millions while adding nothing of their own in terms of value to the club.

Yes they've spent about 100 million in past year but is it enough to catch up with 10 years of minimal expenditure ? Where's the Ronaldo money ? Why did we only sign Valencia, Obertan and Owen despite losing the best player in the world ? With the money United reels in annually, not only should there be multiple world class signings, but there should be upgrades at Old Trafford which has stagnated in capacity for the past decade while Anfield and Emirates are poised for expansion.

Would be livid if I were in the place of local fans and seek higher forms of political intervention TBF. Football is meant to bring joy to normal people, not for profiteering by billionaires. Look at the German semi-fan owned model with dirt cheap ticket prices, concession stands and supporter feedback. That should be the blueprint going forward. Do United fans even have a say in the club ?
 
NoWinNoFee said:
They've invested £120m in a year and probably will spend more this window, how much more do you want them to spend?

The mess we are in is not the Glazer's fault.
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They have to take responsibility for some of the mess we're in. Our squad didn't become this weak overnight. It's from years of lack of investment. We are one of the best richest sports teams in the world, we should have been investing 100 mill in our squad every summer. It's not until Fergie's master touch went we have decided to splash out and then we have bought quite badly.
 
Parasites, with benefits. They are clearly here just to make money, but they have done some good things for the club as well. I don't really blame them for anything but I do hate the fact they own United. They bought a business to make money and they are doing that.
 
rpitroda said:
You have to remember in the last 3 windows we have spent over 100m. That's not that little by any stretch and more than many years for United.

It's very hard for me to know what's going on to be honest. We can all speculate. LVG can't be so shit that he doesn't see the urgency to sign players. Woodward can't be so shit that he isn't working 30 hours a day to go for targets if they are there given the state of our team. And the glazers can't be so shit to not see that their club is going down the drain unless they spent.

The problem is, I think it's a combination of all of them being on some level fecking stupid.
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Is about right.

LvG's comments about analysing the squad in mid-August on the eve of the new Premier League season were a bit farcical. Everyone knows what our problems are, you don't need nearly two months to see that. Woodward is a buffoon who I wouldn't trust with a bag of lettuce and the Glazers are just parasitic leeches who won the lottery of lotteries in buying us.
 
Jagga7 said:
They have to take responsibility for some of the mess we're in. Our squad didn't become this weak overnight. It's from years of lack of investment. We are one of the best richest sports teams in the world, we should have been investing 100 mill in our squad every summer. It's not until Fergie's master touch went we have decided to splash out and then we have bought quite badly.
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Investing 100 million in our squad every summer would make us Madrid/City like spenders. Do we really need to spend so much for success?
 
We've been very successful under the Glazers to be honest. I don't believe they are the Anti-Christ like some fans do but I do believe profit is in their best interests not the club itself.
 
Garethw said:
Years of Glazer penny pinching has caught up with us.

We probably need to spend £300-£400 million to get us back into a position to be Europe's number one team again.
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IMO it would cost around £150..... That's Vidal, Di Maria and benatia and we can challenge for anything.
 
daniel9988 said:
Investing 100 million in our squad every summer would make us Madrid/City like spenders. Do we really need to spend so much for success?
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No, but we need to spend more than that right now to get back on track.
 
Señor said:
Is about right.

LvG's comments about analysing the squad in mid-August on the eve of the new Premier League season were a bit farcical. Everyone knows what our problems are, you don't need nearly two months to see that. Woodward is a buffoon who I wouldn't trust with a bag of lettuce and the Glazers are just parasitic leeches who won the lottery of lotteries in buying us.
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It's just so strange because transfers seems to be only thing we are ballsing up. We've got a good manager in, we are investing money (4 transfers in 12 months all of which are 30m there or there abouts isn't really underinvesting), and commercially we are pioneers in football.

I just find it staggering how pathetic we have become in the transfer market.
 
If they hadn't had Fergie making miracles with average players, everyone would hate them. As it is, SAF is no longer there to defend them and we've been hearing for over a year now how there'll be major investment in the team. I believe it'll happen because it's just beyond incredibly stupid not to do so. But if there isn't, I think Van Gaal is not any sort of a puppet who'll smile when he's asked to...
 
Kevin said:
120 million on players in a year and zero improvement. Who would not be reluctant to let Woodward and co at it for another 100 million?
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Yeh let's not overplay the spending....

Most top clubs spend £60mil a season, what makes uniteds spending so special??
 
How many here feel the Glazers are going to invest more in the next 2 weeks? I don't think we will.
 
daniel9988 said:
Investing 100 million in our squad every summer would make us Madrid/City like spenders. Do we really need to spend so much for success?
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Kill 'em all said:
No, but we need to spend more than that right now to get back on track.
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I agree with KEM. City and Chelsea spend 100m on top of what is already a strong position.

No one is suggesting we spunk 200M a year. But right now, it will need spending of that proportion to propel us back to an elite team. If not, it'll take years of building a team the normal way to get us back there as well as some lucky transfer buys and youth players who somehow become world beaters.
 
daniel9988 said:
Investing 100 million in our squad every summer would make us Madrid/City like spenders. Do we really need to spend so much for success?
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Nobody is asking for that much to be every summer.
 
Most of the blame has to be leveled at them and not Woodward. They have been an absolute travesty since they have arrived and burdened the club with an inordinate amount of debt, and while Woodward has proven unsuccessful in making the acquisitions the club so desperately need, he has proven excellent in the commercial side of things - as he did in his previous role - while expanding the brand and making us a global behemoth. The Glazers promoted him to CEO and the added responsibility of securing signings, but they will allow Woodward to continuing being inept in the role, because of the amount of sponsorships he's made.

They are rotten through and through. If we actually has a board and owner that put the success of the club ahead of anyone, while still having the same squad, manager, coaching staff, CEO, etc, we would see a far quicker turn in fortune given the wealth of the club.
 
Crackers said:
How many here feel the Glazers are going to invest more in the next 2 weeks? I don't think we will.
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The problem is look at how much we have spent in 12m. You can't say we haven't had money. The biggest problem is the past 3 years of underinvestment and we are playing catch up. I'm one of te few who genuinely believes Ferguson was the most important person for NOT spending the money.
 
Kill 'em all said:
No, but we need to spend more than that right now to get back on track.
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Agreed. Shaw and Herrera are good transfers.

As much as I like Mata, spending 37m on him and 28m on Fellaini was what caused such imbalance in the team. The management really should have spent that amount of money on 3 players, at least a winger, defender and midfielder who are upgrades on feckin Jones/Smalling - Clevs/Fletcher - Young/Valencia/Nani. And that's not really hard to find 3 players rated around 20-25m who can perform decently enough for United to get us back into the top 4, is it?
 
I never gave the Glazer talk much credibility, choosing to listen to SAF's opinion.

However, that recent cashing in of shares made me uncomfortable.
 
Skills said:
I guess we'll see. I don't think success is as important as people think. Being relevant is far more important - and we'll always be the most famous club in English football. As long as we find a way to be relevant/in the news etc we'll continue to attract sponsors and make a shit load of revenue. All they have to do is cut down our expenses (transfer spend and wage) and they can still take home a lot of money.
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Bingo.
United won when it truly mattered, and are in an unbelievable place as a brand. By far the biggest club in by far the biggest league. Extremely fashionable brand. People underestimate how big the club is.
 
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