Source please? This does not look to me to be remotely close to true looking at the numbers.
The uncomfortable truth - United’s current finances.
- Thread starter Plant0x84
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Source please? This does not look to me to be remotely close to true looking at the numbers.
I chuckled at that one. I really hope they don't control money in their work or personal lives!
How do you work this out? A decade of making insane purchases and giving out insane wages on huge length deals eventually had to give.
From financial side, why are Glazers still here? We are sinking in financial terms and football terms. Value of club is dropping and revenue is dropping.
When will they "again" try to sell this club?
Also, help me out about one thing; lets say Glazers sell their whole share to someone. Is INEOS role in "football stuff" in some contract? Because that is potential huge deal breaker. Who would want to spend 3-4 billion to allow minority owner to run football stuff.
When will they "again" try to sell this club?
Also, help me out about one thing; lets say Glazers sell their whole share to someone. Is INEOS role in "football stuff" in some contract? Because that is potential huge deal breaker. Who would want to spend 3-4 billion to allow minority owner to run football stuff.
That's the worst case scenario. United is just an asset to them. I doubt very much whether they'd want to lose it but the unpalatable truth is that they have no personal liability for the debt. If United went down the shitter, the Glazers would still have their Florida properties, NFL franchise, and whatever else. We'd be left holding the baby. According to The Daily Telegraph the club has paid a staggering £815 million in interest payments since 2005. And another thing. Fees accrued as part of Ratcliffe's buy-in amounted to close to £40 million.
The Glazers are waiting for the Super League to come back around
Well that's true if we do or don't sell Garnacho.
He's completely right, what are you talking about?
I assume he means that the addition of INEOS means that while the situation won't be great, the Glazers won't help to sell the club.
I can't stand this guy, he's such a knob.
Good point.
Incredible how he has that platform.
The club owes something like £319m outstanding on players we already signed.
I hear that £154m of that is due to be paid this year, before we even talk about signing any new players.
It doesn't leave any headroom for purchases, when the club is losing money, year on year, while continuing to borrow to keep going.
One big sale will allow the club to bring one or maybe two players in, but it's only treading water while the tide is rising.
Significant cost cutting is the only solution, so we need to get at least 3 big earners off the books ASAP.
I hear that £154m of that is due to be paid this year, before we even talk about signing any new players.
It doesn't leave any headroom for purchases, when the club is losing money, year on year, while continuing to borrow to keep going.
One big sale will allow the club to bring one or maybe two players in, but it's only treading water while the tide is rising.
Significant cost cutting is the only solution, so we need to get at least 3 big earners off the books ASAP.
A club can only spend so much, hence a rich owner cannot buy all the players he want from his own pocket. Taking up huge loans - and spending that money instead - it's not any different. You simply cannot do it, regardless of if you are paying it back the day after or not; it's still money spent. Clearing the debt would mean paying less interests, though, so it would help reducing the costs and balancing the budget. How we ended up with all this debt in the first place, is a different story. It wasn't used on players.
The unconfortable truth. United have had the least money injected in from Ownership (including INEOS) than any club in the top 10 in the PL and even less than some clubs in the bottom 10.
Yes the spending has been bad (due to miss management from the owners) however lack of investment from ownership has been even worse.
Yes the spending has been bad (due to miss management from the owners) however lack of investment from ownership has been even worse.
Whilst this may be true the reality is the club does spend money. We are just atrociously bad at it. This season we are top 3 gross and net spend in the Premier League. And fans still want more signings in January. We can’t keep spending like this as it’s not sustainable. We are one of the highest spenders in world football since Sir Alex retired.
Our biggest issues is lack of recovery selling players, selling any players at all, the ridiculous salary and extended contracts given to players. Off the pitch we’ve also been throwing away money. Even the fact Sir Alex was getting paid £2m is ridiculous. Do you know another business that pays someone after they retire?
I backed the INEOS bid because I didn’t want the club to become a sports washing tool for a nation state. It was nothing to do with perceived chances of success.
He didn’t say the club doesn’t spend, he said the owners don’t inject as much as other owners. Two different things. The club spends the money it can generate, but it’s rarely the owners’ money.
And I would even argue that these owners take money out the club while other owners invest their own money into theirs.
Cool. Because it was definitely back one or the other. There was definitely not the option of thinking both were a terrible idea.
Anyway what I find more frustrating is the number of people who want to now pretend every questionable or just outright dumb decision Ineos make was actually a good one, or come out with the "I don't care" crap when Ineos start taking out their own bad management on the fans or low paid employees.
No one's pretending the Glazers aren't the route of the problem but it's ineos who are now facilitating them and in the process sh*tting on all of us
Well you can call it whatever you like. ‘Backing’ or, simply, preferring, on the basis that I expected someone to end up investing in the club.
Quite a few businesses pay ambassodors after they retire. The fact you think its an issue shows the clubs propaganda is working, right out of the Glazer play book. My post also addressed the miss management in spending.
Fixing that requires investment to clear debts and proper football structure to manage player acquisition and sales. Up to this point the investment isn’t there as the post mentioned, but hey at least we made some dinner ladies redundant (drop in the ocean compared to the cost of flying the Glazers in for games and paying their legal fees for pretending to sell the club)
I don't know if anyone already replied to this but if the Glazers decide to sell the club then Ratcliffe has to sell too. I think that clause comes into play later this year. It's called "drag along".
And you are ignoring the huge operating expenses that United have. Barca makes a lot of revenue too, but they are broke.
It's not how much you make, it's how much you spend. United spends.
Hojlund, Onana, Mount, Martinez, Antony, Casemiro, Malacia, Sancho, Ronaldo and Varane. Over 500mm Euro's on those players and not one of them is a player United needs to keep. (Some have already left.) Not one core player from that spending spree. Not to mention the 200 million Euro's they spent this past transfer window.
700 million Euro's spent on players the past 4 years. That is why United is broke. Not only did they overpay on the transfer fee for most of the players, they are also overpaying on the wages of players.
Surprise, Surprise. United hasn't made a profit for 5 years. Gee, I wonder why? Why look at the waste of money spent on wages and transfer fees. That is why. Even better, United still owes some 300mm on installments for this fine collection of players they have purchased over the past few years.
Hate to break it to you, but United isn't exactly as flush as you think they are. Of course they are telling investors that things are fine, because they have a plan for fiscal responsibility, and you aren't going to like it. They are going to limit spending, which you all will moan about. They are going to try and increase revenue from increased ticket prices, which you will all moan about. They may sell naming rights to Old Trafford, which you will all moan about. They may sell Garnacho, which you will all moan about. They have already cut employees expenses, which everyone has moaned about.
United needs 2 really good years in a row to get back into better financial health. In 2 years, they should be able to slash the wage bill from players transferring or their contracts expiring. They will spend less in the transfer window, and possibly recoup money via sales. (Garnacho and others.)
Does it suck? Yes it does.
It's not ideal, but when you are broke, these are the sacrifices that need to be made. I know broke people who make 500,000 a year-- I know people who make 50,000 a year who will retire at 55. Revenue is one thing, but when you spend more than you generate-- you aren't in good financial shape. Manchester United went on a big spending spree the past 4 years and the bills are coming due. Just like people who rack up massive debt from spending on cars, clothes, jewelry and what not. Eventually you have to pay the piper.
The good news is United has the means to pay for this once they get their expenses under control, but it is going to take time to control their biggest expense, which are the players. It is going to take time for them to shift the bad contracts off of the books, while at the same time, hoping to not repeat previous failures of overspending on transfer fees and wages.
Arnold, Murtough and ETH really screwed over the club with their 2 terrible summer transfer windows. But the past is the past, and now United has to clean up the mess they made. It's going to take time. Since a small % of our fanbase has zero patience, this is going to be a rough couple of years for you.
Do the Glazers still take dividends
I hear you… I was not part of the debate of SJR and Sheik Jassim. The fact is that SJR is running the club, he’s the managing partner. Most people / partnerships / companies own just one club and therefore don’t have a lot of experience. He has Nice FC and so ostensibly has some experience in this. Also, he’s self made, not like the Glazer kids, so he must have some level of competency.
As for the redundancies, it is sad, but wasting money on carrying a large group of employees who don’t contribute in a meaningful way isn’t a helping the on field product either… this is capitalism, and no one is guaranteed a job for life. Mankind tried the other way as well, and that was even worse (communism). I think it’s healthy to take stock of your needs as a company and make changes to keep up or innovate.
T
The source is the Swiss Ramble. Feel free to google and go from there…
Yep, do we really need another thread. Surely the op could have gone into one of the others.
Not even with all the tens of millions in salary off the books?
Don't worry, I'll wait for you to get the answer from Uncle Jim before you reply.
But leagues have rules with debt limits that clubs can carry. If an NFL or MLB team are bought the buyers are allowed to carry only a certain amount of debt. It doesn’t change either. If an owner tries to exceed this threshold and can’t rectify the issue they ultimately are forced to sell by the leagues.
Conspiracy theory indeed, but I have often wondered the same. Not necessarily to destroy united, but to stop the inevitable dominance of united. The best team in the league at the time, best manager and reletivley endless transfer/wages cash. Murdoch is an odious character, but at least he would have been better than the Glazers.
Have you seen the actually anything like the real "numbers" ?
How do City and Chelsea and other teams around the world circumvent this FFP/PSR ruling? Chelsea a couple of years ago spent a shitload on many players all in a season. City under investigation have just upped Haalands contract and bought 3 players. If they can find loopholes, surely Ratcliffe/Ineos can, or are they using it to hold off paying out this window, which then asks another couple of questions. Why bring in Amorim in November if you are not backing him in January and longer term, why buy into the club if you are not going to do as you say and build a top team again?
They're good at selling
There is no but involved, the poster stated that LBOs were illegal in the US, they are not. They are also not illegal in the NFL but they are made impractical by league bylaws which is something that I already mentioned.
Helpful. I have a subscription to his Substack, you're not able to link the article you saw this in? That would seem to be an extremely easy way to answer my question...
Because I've read the recent one's where he goes through every single PL club positions post PSR and there is absolutely nothing in those that suggests Utd can spend £100m this window without breaching PSR.
Well as mentioned above there is a Swiss Ramble article doing a good job on breaking down the current PSR cycle and the likely pre-tax loss United can afford to make for the 2024/25 season before non-compliance.
We obviously only have Q1 numbers so far for this season, but I did my own very quick estimation of how this season may look in the 'How bad is it really (Financials)' thread and all logic would suggest United are very tight on PSR again without making any sales. To suggest they have £100m to spend - especially when cashflow is also a problem - is rather absurd without any evidence to the contrary.
City are operating from a position of profitability and no massive debt pile.
Despite being built up on years of bogus, overinflated sponsorship deals from mostly Abu Dhabi companies, they now have large bona fide contracts with genuine corporations. They don’t need loopholes anymore.
The summer before last, Chelsea went on that massive splurge of signing loads of players, but despite the huge headline costs, they came out of that transfer window in profit on transfers !
The reason being, they also offloaded a large number of players, many for decent fees, but importantly, they got their inflated wages off the books.
At the same time, many of the new players coming in, were signed on unusually long contracts, meaning that for PSR/FFP purposes, the outgoings are amortised over a longer period of time, representing less expenditure each year.
The club’s annual losses are more manageable as a result.
United by contrast, have been losing money for years, borrowing money to buy players and increasing our debt on top of the outstanding debt from the Glazer purchase, all those years ago.
We’ve now maxed out the credit card, have finally run out of headroom and are stuck with huge fixed outgoings in the shape of ridiculously high wages to a group of players, most of who happen to be surplus to requirements.
INEOS haven’t come into this to lose money and make the situation worse worst.
They are trying to deal with a situation that is increasingly dire and really could end up in bankruptcy.
Whatever happened over Ashworth and ETH will not be revealed for some time, if we ever find out, so speculation and conspiracy theories are a useless distraction and not worth thinking about.
It cost us money, but how do we know if that was incompetence or the inevitable cost of trying to put right an unavoidable situation?
I don’t for one minute think any of the new management, or SJR are happy about whatever happened, but it doesn’t matter now.
All water under the bridge.
Whatever happens on the pitch, the new executive team have to stop the haemorrhaging of cash across the board.
The biggest being player wages.
If that could be solved in an instant, a waving of a magic wand, it’d solve a lot of problems, but it can’t be.
Unfortunately, they can’t just lay off or sack players on tightly worded and sometimes complex contracts, to save the money.
That is going to be difficult to address and take time.
Meanwhile, they’ve found bloat and waste all over the Utd business.
That also had to stop, whether it’s multi-millionaire SAF being paid a stupid amount of money, just to turn up and mingle in the hospitality suites, or low paid workers who are not being efficiently employed or whatever.
It all has a negative effect on cash flow.
Liken it to bleeding from dozens of minor cuts. Cumulatively very damaging, so it has to be done.
We are where we are.
A deep hole the Glazers and their past, reckless appointees have put us in.
No magic fairy or rich Arab prince is going to riding to our rescue.
SJR has sunk a vast fortune into his involvement (mostly going into the Glazer’s pockets) and he hasn’t done it to fail and lose that money.
It will be a fine balancing act to eventually get rid of the Glazers, while trying to minimise the disproportionate amount of benefit that goes into their pockets, rather than into the club.
We can only hope that what happens on the pitch can be turned around in the near term.
The business side is going to take longer.
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Really?! Thanks. Didn't know that.
In August apparently. Although, INEOS can match the offer and get 1st preference I think.
No. It was written into contracts, otherwise Jim would effectively be funding their dividends when he put money into the club.
We’re obviously at the extreme end of it due to how much we’ve spent on transfers, but it’s normal for clubs to owe lots of money on transfers. We’re the only club that gets talked about this way because the information is publicly available. Most transfers are paid off in instalments, so yes we owe £154 million, but we’re not also going to pay for all of our transfers this summer upfront.
Sadly, true.
All very true, but we are doing it from a very poor and precarious financial position.
It leaves very little room for new signings, unless we can get money in from sales.
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