That is true. But I still don't buy the 'top stars won't move to Manchester argument'. They move to City. Pre 2005 Ferguson had no problem breaking records to attract top talent. The game moved on with City/Chelsea budgets. But the reality is when you look at our revenues we could compete with those clubs. The fact is our owners policy has been not to. They've have taken one of the biggest clubs in world sport and hamstrung us.
So, the Glazers. Are they parasites? Blame game topic.
- Thread starter Henrik Larsson
- Start date
That is true. But I still don't buy the 'top stars won't move to Manchester argument'. They move to City. Pre 2005 Ferguson had no problem breaking records to attract top talent. The game moved on with City/Chelsea budgets. But the reality is when you look at our revenues we could compete with those clubs. The fact is our owners policy has been not to. They've have taken one of the biggest clubs in world sport and hamstrung us.
I think I'll take a neutral position on the Glazers atm, while acknowledging we have spent less than we might have in recent years - possibly a bit of an ''OK while we're winning'' perspective but you could also say a winning team doesn't require massive investment or need disrupting. So 50/50 there. But also leading to problems when numbers of key players decline/leave simultaneously.
But I feel that there are other pieces of the jigsaw to consider
1) SAF short-termism as he moves towards retirement - Berbatov & RVP, and Valencia even - these being 3 proven performers who did enough in varying ways of maintaining the status quo where Utd = Champions or very serious contenders
2) Clear Fail in the ''buying for the future policy'' or at very least key positions in the hands of potentially good players but we don't really know. The origin of this policy we are not clear about but it clearly hasn't worked as we sit here now.
2a) Someone mentioned complacency a while back - 3 Champs Lge Finals in 4 years was it? Tough to improve on that unless you're Barcelona with Messi
3) Moyes - complete waste of a year, Shaw and Herrera are 12mnths late arriving
3a) Woodward - similar timewasting to 3 and also may be useless/probably is useless
4) Poor buys - add Fellaini & Zaha to this list and there's not a lot of success apart from the 3 proven performers prev mentioned. Kagawa, Hernandez, Young, Nani, Anderson, Jones, Smalling should be big players by now if continuity was going to be sustained.
And here's that list again. The last half is patchy at best and illustrates how/why we are here in my view.
http://www.barriesview.com/2013/05/sir-alex-fergusons-104-manchester-united-transfers
5) None of the more speculative purchases have come in, either - compared say to OGS and going way back Andrei Kanschelskis & Schmeichel even - perhaps our scouting edge has been eroded, everybody knows everybody these days.
and edit -->
6) As has been said, no one ever seems to leave do they, so we accumulate players that other clubs seem to move on/loan out, and now we've managed to have too many of variable quality in some areas and simply not enough numbers elsewhere. Anything other than 'healthy competition for places' in other words.
But I feel that there are other pieces of the jigsaw to consider
1) SAF short-termism as he moves towards retirement - Berbatov & RVP, and Valencia even - these being 3 proven performers who did enough in varying ways of maintaining the status quo where Utd = Champions or very serious contenders
2) Clear Fail in the ''buying for the future policy'' or at very least key positions in the hands of potentially good players but we don't really know. The origin of this policy we are not clear about but it clearly hasn't worked as we sit here now.
2a) Someone mentioned complacency a while back - 3 Champs Lge Finals in 4 years was it? Tough to improve on that unless you're Barcelona with Messi
3) Moyes - complete waste of a year, Shaw and Herrera are 12mnths late arriving
3a) Woodward - similar timewasting to 3 and also may be useless/probably is useless
4) Poor buys - add Fellaini & Zaha to this list and there's not a lot of success apart from the 3 proven performers prev mentioned. Kagawa, Hernandez, Young, Nani, Anderson, Jones, Smalling should be big players by now if continuity was going to be sustained.
And here's that list again. The last half is patchy at best and illustrates how/why we are here in my view.
http://www.barriesview.com/2013/05/sir-alex-fergusons-104-manchester-united-transfers
5) None of the more speculative purchases have come in, either - compared say to OGS and going way back Andrei Kanschelskis & Schmeichel even - perhaps our scouting edge has been eroded, everybody knows everybody these days.
and edit -->
6) As has been said, no one ever seems to leave do they, so we accumulate players that other clubs seem to move on/loan out, and now we've managed to have too many of variable quality in some areas and simply not enough numbers elsewhere. Anything other than 'healthy competition for places' in other words.
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We've been the highest net spenders in the past 5 transfer windows. It's time to stop peddling the Glazer crap and admit, if we hadn't spent on shit we wouldn't be in this mess.
Imagine if you were the head of a business and had just invested 165M only for that money to be pissed away, what would you do in the future? I'd be more cautious.
Imagine if you were the head of a business and had just invested 165M only for that money to be pissed away, what would you do in the future? I'd be more cautious.
It's not exactly been pissed away though has it? Mata, Shaw and Herrera are good signings, Fellaini money was pissed away i'll give you that! What we are doing now is catching up for the previous years of underinvestment in the squad.
But could the Mata money and arguably Herrera money have been spent more wisely? The way I am looking at it is that Mata doesn't justify a £37M upgrade on Kagawa and that money could have been spent trying to lure Kroos before Madrid took him away. Herrera is probably the best buy we've made post-RVP but after LVG's recent comments about seeing him more as a No. 10 and they way he is being asked to play in a deeper role, not really aiding the attack, I can't help but feel the club had already invested too much time and effort to say no to him regardless of what LVG thought.
Shaw, I think, will turn out like Rio. A top signing for the club who may seem a bit expensive now, but will justify the pricetag when he's our no.1 LB for the distant future.
Fellaini was a major fail.
A-fecking-men.
It is simple, we lost money by signing such a long term deal - whats difficult to understand?
Having a deal comparable to Chelsea is nothing to be proud of - we are far superior in global terms, as reflected by our new deal. It will be interesting to see what Real manage to negotiate for their next deal, only then will it become clear whether its a good deal or a great one - my guess is that it will still stand as a great deal.
What in the world ?
We didn't just have a deal comparable to Chelsea almost a decade before they did. We had a deal comparable to Barcelona almost a decade before they did (their current deal is just €1 million higher in an era of Messi, Xavi, Iniesta) and just €6 million lower than Madrid's almost a decade before their deal that started in 2012 and runs till 2020 at a time when they have Ronaldo, Bale, Benzema, Di Maria, Modric, Ramos and still €10 million higher than Bayern Munich which has the biggest commercial revenue in football and their deal also started in 2012 to 2020.
How was that poor value when the two biggest teams in the world with the biggest revenue are just 6 million and 1 million ahead will deals starting about a decade later and the team with the third highest revenue is 10 million behind us with a deal that started exactly 10 years later even now when our deal started from 2002 ?
It's unfathomable how one could argue otherwise. Isn't the Adidas deal only 3 years shorter than the Nike deal plus it has CL clauses while Nike had none ?
Yes the new deal is 10yrs vs 13yrs for the previous one.
Im not even saying the Nike deal was terrible or anything, just that we have clearly lost out as a result of it.
The huge uplift we just got from Adidas shows that we had been underselling ourselves for years - thats always the risk of fixing things too long term I suppose, gives you stability but you might lose out.
Im actually quite suprised myself at how much more we have managed to get compared to Real who only got a new deal 2 years ago - I do wonder if there are some details of these deals that we dont know. The exact terms of our Adidas deal are not yet clear anyway, the CL clauses have come out but there could well be other conditions for bonuses/penalties.
Fair points of course. Comparing Chelsea's current kit deal with one made a decade ago is a bit silly.
However, favourable comparisons to other leading teams only hold if their current kit sponsorships mirror the Nike arrangement (kit sponsorship plus management of the entire merchandising operation). I suspect this isn't the case for all the teams you mention.
It would be interesting to see how kit sponsorship has progressed for other leading teams since 2002. A then and now comparison would indicate how the market has moved in the interval. Is a three fold increase exceptional or par for the course? Of course, it would also indicate the opportunity missed by not having a shorter contract (which is Rood's point).
Apparently (courtesy of the latest prospectus) there is a 10% reduction (about 2.5m) applied to Nike's minimum guaranteed payment if we miss out on euroball.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did the business of players using United's interest to get pay rises etc start when Woodward took over transfers.
NO way you label Jones, hernandez, and Smalling as bad buys but not Berbatov.
That's as old as prostitution.
OK, I'll say Berbs doesn't quite fit the crude binary categorisation that I've used to put everyone else into convenient little boxes to suit my overall point. As I remember, he started slowly, scored heavily one season and then faded as SAF lost faith after he missed some easy chances and wasn't running around enough.
48 or 49 Lge Goals in 82 though, is not that shabby. And Golden Boot/Shoe winner one season. (says the interweb research I have just done)
Those 3 have not performed at THAT level and the jury is still out on Jones/Smalling. Most folks have given up on Hernandez recently haven't they?
So, I'm definitely right, really, aren't I?
It's not like we haven't been in for the top bracket players, we just stop short of paying what's required to get their signature. Recently Hazard, Moura and god only knows how many in total we've lost to Chelsea over money.
No value in the market was the excuse but when a 20 million bargain pops up like RVP and seemingly Valencia, Nani, Anderson were onto it.
Our problem hasn't been a lack of investment per se but it's the penny pinching, the lack of real top tier players we actually pay the money for, Mata broke our transfer record held by Berbatov from 2008, for a club supposedly competing at the very highest level that's just ridiculous. Wengers Arsenal are currently blowing us out of the water ffs.
No value in the market was the excuse but when a 20 million bargain pops up like RVP and seemingly Valencia, Nani, Anderson were onto it.
Our problem hasn't been a lack of investment per se but it's the penny pinching, the lack of real top tier players we actually pay the money for, Mata broke our transfer record held by Berbatov from 2008, for a club supposedly competing at the very highest level that's just ridiculous. Wengers Arsenal are currently blowing us out of the water ffs.
No they arent - they have bought 2 big players in the last 2 summers but we have spent far more than them in last few years, probably double
http://www.theguardian.com/football...ule-out-selling-manchester-united-five-years?
Kind of a non-article. But I do have the feeling they won't be here as long as Abramovich – for example.
Kind of a non-article. But I do have the feeling they won't be here as long as Abramovich – for example.
Jamie Jackson... Does that mean they'll be selling the club any minute now?
And if they were they'd hardly tell him.
I've always thought that the idea that they would try and live off its revenue a little unlikely. I reckon the Glazers' plan is clear. Take over the company, maximise its income and hence its value, sell for maximum profit. I don't doubt they're prepared to utilise the business' income to their own ends, but I doubt it's their end game.
If we're looking at a 5+ year time scale, that tells me that the owners think the club has a good few years worth of growing revenue ahead of it. Since the value of the club seems to be circa 4X its revenue, they presumably think that revenue is only going one way. Why sell now for (say) £2Bn when you can wait 5 years and sell it for £2.5Bn? The only time they'll definitely want to sell is the entire football industry begins to plateau.
Good news for United short term I would say - as long as they can balance the books year on year, its absolutely in their interest to invest in the team. They need the value of the business to continue to boom. Its completely self-defeating at this point to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
The worry comes in the year(s) immediately preceding the sale. It wouldn't surprise me to see them restrict spending for a year or two to make a positive impact on cash in bank, or to post major profits in their accounts. That could add another few percent to the value of the company.
Relatively untapped American market - they're all trying so hard to break, atm. Both individually & collectively. Lots of lovely revenue stream there.
Watch your own League (MLS) and get into the ''proper footy''** too is what they all want the USA to do.
(**Best league in the World)
Watch your own League (MLS) and get into the ''proper footy''** too is what they all want the USA to do.
(**Best league in the World)
Both huge signings and ultimately game changing.
When Wengers record signings are bigger than yours you know your falling behind.
Yes but it is not the case that Arsenal are spending more on their squad than us as you suggested - we have actually spent more than double of what they have in recent years.
TBF I would prefer that we had a bit more focus on quality over quantity over the past 2/3 years but I dont think that has much to do with the Glazers, it is more about transfer policy and the kind of things being discussed in this thread: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/is-transfer-policy-rather-than-spending-the-problem.395003/
I think this is pretty much on the money:
http://www.theguardian.com/football...hrive-manchester-united-flounder-ed-woodward?
You've not read the initial post of mine that you responded to then. We have been in for quality players we've just stopped short at spending the big money.
Lack of investment has been Arsenals achilles heel for just shy of a decade during the time they paid for the emirates and put simply they've won nothing. Now there is money available and they are chasing and landing the quality players, just as the Champions and Chelsea have been doing. United on the flip side have a solid enough squad but it does need a huge injection of quality to compete at the very top and it's time for our owners to show their true colours and break the bank.
Any arguments on net spend are flawed because of the amount of players that have left/retired/been out on loan.
Just using the first teamers as an example.
Since 2010.
Van Der Sar - Retired
Gary Neville - Retired
Ferdinand - Free Transfer
Vidic - Free Transfer
Evra - Sold for not a lot
Buttner - Sold for not a lot
Scholes - Retired
Park - Sold for not a lot
Giggs - Retired
O'Shea - Sold
Wes Brown - Sold
Darren Gibson - Sold
Berbatov - Sold and made a huge loss over his 4 years
Anderson - Been out loan, will probably go for small amount
Owen - Free Transfer
Hargreaves - Free Transfer
Pogba - Went on free, now worth 40 million?
I don't just think the Glazers are to blame. We have signed a lot of rubbish for large amounts of money and then let them go for virtually nothing. Fergie, Gill, Woodward, Moyes and the Glazers getting the likes of Nani on big contracts when most would have known his time was up at the club.
Ever since we sold Ronaldo, there has been no planning.
Just using the first teamers as an example.
Since 2010.
Van Der Sar - Retired
Gary Neville - Retired
Ferdinand - Free Transfer
Vidic - Free Transfer
Evra - Sold for not a lot
Buttner - Sold for not a lot
Scholes - Retired
Park - Sold for not a lot
Giggs - Retired
O'Shea - Sold
Wes Brown - Sold
Darren Gibson - Sold
Berbatov - Sold and made a huge loss over his 4 years
Anderson - Been out loan, will probably go for small amount
Owen - Free Transfer
Hargreaves - Free Transfer
Pogba - Went on free, now worth 40 million?
I don't just think the Glazers are to blame. We have signed a lot of rubbish for large amounts of money and then let them go for virtually nothing. Fergie, Gill, Woodward, Moyes and the Glazers getting the likes of Nani on big contracts when most would have known his time was up at the club.
Ever since we sold Ronaldo, there has been no planning.
I agree it's been a mess. But before the Glazers it was Gill/Fergie. Afterwards it was Gill/Fergie for most of the time. And there was a marked difference in transfer ambition and decisiveness. To say the Glazers weren't at least a major factor in that doesn't seem to square to me.
I do think that Fergie and Gill underestimated how much other clubs would gear up and come to compete with us financially. Gone are the days when we could unearth an Ole for peanuts, for example. The youth supply also didn't deliver well enough – and I have no idea why because it should have producing more top talent by then.
Everythings points to bad leadership and poor succession planning, which is why we need a DOF moving forward or we are bound to keep repeating the mistakes of the last 2 transfer windows over and over again.
Yes, it looks that way.
Am I going crazy, or does the graphic from a recent article in the Guardian (link here: http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/aug/20/glazers-thrive-manchester-united-flounder-ed-woodward) show net spend on players to be less than zero in the past few years? That is not consistent with United's audited financial statements.
This is net spend from United's investor presentation.
This is net spend from United's investor presentation.
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Source: Guardian Research
Good job, guys.
Good job, guys.
Ok I'm after someone who knows how these things work inside out out, just a few questions on a some scenarios re our ownership.
Would it be possible for the Glazers to buy back the shares they have sold using United's money, and de-list us form the stock exchange.
Could they use United's money to dissolve the ownership of some of the equal shareholders (ie the Malcolm Glazers kids).
When they do sell could they do so to a similar ownership setup as their own, or are leveraged buyouts now better policed by the FA.
Cheers.
Would it be possible for the Glazers to buy back the shares they have sold using United's money, and de-list us form the stock exchange.
Could they use United's money to dissolve the ownership of some of the equal shareholders (ie the Malcolm Glazers kids).
When they do sell could they do so to a similar ownership setup as their own, or are leveraged buyouts now better policed by the FA.
Cheers.
Yes. Of course they are. They are horrible cnuts.
DDGFD
DDGFD
In answer to the thread title. Yes, of course they are parasites and they will continue to be whether they spend another £100m this summer or even another £200m
That's an interesting list. From a footballing perspective it shows that SAF wrung every last drop out of his older players in that period. Doing enough to keep us winning against bigger spending rivals. He attempted to maintain the age profile of the squad but the top quality players were mostly in the older (nearing retirement) range.
Part optimism perhaps about youngsters like Cleverley, part looking for an undiscovered gem, at a time when the football market was getting more efficient and part, I'm sure, the financial constraints on transfers and wages. It's left us with a lot of players now whose wages are too high for us to sell, but whose transfer or renewal fees we could handle.
Real Madrid have been mentioned a few times in the thread and if ever a team shows that money (alone) doesn't buy you trophies it's them. However their financial model is quite informative. Over the past 5 years (including the Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema summer) their net transfer spend has averaged around £60m per year, affordable in other words.
This summer we're playing catch-up, but without CL football we're doing it the worst possible time and with one arm tied behind our backs.
That's an interesting list. From a footballing perspective it shows that SAF wrung every last drop out of his older players in that period. Doing enough to keep us winning against bigger spending rivals. He attempted to maintain the age profile of the squad but the top quality players were mostly in the older (nearing retirement) range.
Part optimism perhaps about youngsters like Cleverley, part looking for an undiscovered gem, at a time when the football market was getting more efficient and part, I'm sure, the financial constraints on transfers and wages. It's left us with a lot of players now whose wages are too high for us to sell, but whose transfer or renewal fees we could handle.
Real Madrid have been mentioned a few times in the thread and if ever a team shows that money (alone) doesn't buy you trophies it's them. However their financial model is quite informative. Over the past 5 years (including the Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema summer) their net transfer spend has averaged around £60m per year, affordable in other words.
This summer we're playing catch-up, but without CL football we're doing it the worst possible time and with one arm tied behind our backs.
Its all well and good shelling out 30 million on Herrera but his wages would be considerably lower than what Kroos would be asking for I would imagine.
Sponsors won't be happy if the green and gold campaign goes in full flow. There's no Sir Alex or a squad full of talent around to stop it this time around and the protests this time around will be much more fierce unless they make a couple of marquee signings in positions that we desperately need strengthening. This is the moment the Glazers need to up their game to bring us to the top, if they don't it might be too late to expect a short-term recovery. 2 seasons out of the Champions league doesn't look too good for a club that should be aspiring to be at the top.
Just a polarity problem- the graph needs to be inverted (multiply data points by -1).Am I going crazy, or does the graphic from a recent article in the Guardian (link here: http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/aug/20/glazers-thrive-manchester-united-flounder-ed-woodward) show net spend on players to be less than zero in the past few years? That is not consistent with United's audited financial statements.
This is net spend from United's investor presentation.
That's an example of us trying to correct the damage caused by years of under investment. It's certainly not the norm, that's for sure.
The owners will never be forgiven in my eyes, they put our club from a position of strength straight onto the edge of financial ruin.
That for me will never be forgotten.
That for me will never be forgotten.
Pretty lame mistake, n'est ce pas? The author makes a big deal about ticket price increases at OT without benchmarking against other teams and uses cash on hand as of the end of the FY as an indicator of fiscal health--without indicating that cash on hand is volatile given ins and outs.
I thought it was a poorly argued article.