If the plan of the Glazers was to gradually de-sensitise United fans to the idea of winning trophies, the last few years have proved to be a master stroke. Years on from our last trophy of any description, we are no closer to winning the PL title. Yet the boardroom level outrage that you would expect to see at our fellow big club rivals appears to be completely missing.
Whatever one says about the managerial merry-go-rounds at Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona PSG, no-one can say that those clubs are not run by people who see silverware as the sole currency of success. Conversely, at United, profit is the singular motive of the Glazers and silverware seems all but incidental to that goal. The tragedy is that we are in a virtual death spiral with the Glazer family. They have found ways to keep United continually profitable, without it needing to be successful. Not only that but massive wages have created inflated egos and relative to investment, produced poor on-pitch returns.
The amateur hour efforts at succession planning in the wake of Sir Alex's departure are the clearest evidence if it were needed, that those running the club are utterly clueless. As we amble towards the summer and the appointment of a permanent manager, can we be confident that an appointee is being sought to suit the board or the club? As painful as it may sound, if it means that United can finally break free of the Glazers, years out of the Champions League and a declining global brand may actually be the best thing for us.
What do others think?
I wholeheartedly agree with your thread title that the deterioration of financial results might be a blessing in disguise for us. However, I disagree with your assessment of the root cause of our problems - it is not the profit motive. Let me explain.
Due to being a commercial behemoth, we have long been in an enviable position of not needing to face a trade-off between financial sustainability and being competitive. In simple terms, we did not really need a sugar daddy (who would pump the money into the club and not care about profit) to compete on transfers, wages, facilities etc. - like Chelsea/City did.
Why is it relevant? If we had owners who are profit-motivated but adequate in other respects - it would not be a problem at all. Sure, it would be nice to have "sugar-daddy" owners, but we could have been easily upgrading our facilities, outspending everyone on wages and transfers AND be profitable. So the absence of profit motive would be just a pleasant bonus "on top". But for that 2 conditions should have been fulfilled from owners' side:
1. No leveraged buyout. Anyone who has a bit of a clue about both finance and football would tell you that football clubs are generally unsuitable targets for such buyouts. A good target for a leveraged buyout is a "cash-cow" business with limited need for investment. Top football clubs may generate lots of cash from operations, but need considerable investment in players (with top players being a rare commodity) and facilities to stay competitive. Had they bought United without saddling it with debt, but with their own money - we would have had close to additional £1billion to spend on players/wages/facilities over the years (even if they still paid dividends to themselves!). We would have avoided "no value in the market" era.
2. Being able to pick right people for the top management jobs, especially CEO. "Right people" means (among other qualities) people who are able to create a functioning structure on both footballing and commercial side, recognize their own limitations and delegate. With this ability we would have handled post-Fergie years a lot better.
I do not need to explain in detail how woeful Glazers are with both (1) and (2). First, Ed "sold" them the deal, which had a completely unsuitable structure. Then they picked him to run the club, and over the years failed to pull the trigger on him - whereas every man and his dog recognized that he was not the right fit for the job.
On the contrary, the owners of Chelsea, Man City and Liverpool did not saddle them with debt and did (perhaps not ideally and with bumps along the road) but considerably better on installing a functional structure on the footballing side.
Why they were able to do so better? Well, my explanation is - Liverpool and Chelsea are owned by successful businessmen. E.g. Roman is no saint, but he was not from a rich family and had to work his way to the top (am not judging means here) and still had to hire right people to run his business successfully. Sheikhs on the other hand might not have earned their money - but seem to recognize their limitations and lack of footballing/commercial knowledge and delegate these matters completely. Glazers are worst of both worlds. They are children of a successful businessman and Joel (who is the ultimate decider) is a United fan. His career was completely due to his father, and he (as many children of billionaires) seems to not only be incompetent, but also to not realize that he is incompetent (partly due to being a United fan - and each of us, of course, as a United fan knows best how to run the footballing side of United
). Which resulted in him and Ed being involved in footballing decisions, which should have been delegated down completely with a proper structure created, after studying the experience and structure of successful clubs.
Now to the thread title. As said, I agree with the general idea. Up until recent years, due to us historically being a commercial powerhouse and having more expertise on commercial side both historically and in present we were doing ok financially. It was thus still possible for Glazers to convince themselves that it is all good, just some bumps on the road on the footballing side but that we will be competing for major trophies soon and keep doing good commercially. Now the underachievement on the pitch is finally catching up with us financially.
We were loss-making in 3 of the past 4 seasons, so even before and after empty stadiums. Many of our rivals now grow commercial revenue a lot faster than us and are likely to overtake us soon (Man City beating us on revenue is just the first of many bad news to come on financial front). If we fail to make CL (especially if more than once in a row) we would need to ramp down spending significantly or Glazers would have to pump new money into the club (unlikely) or we will have to borrow - and we do not have much capacity to do so.
Thus, we have finally come to the point when we desperately need success on the pitch to avoid a quite dire financial situation. Combined with 3 failed managerial appointments in a row - I think it has become too much for even Glazers to ignore and they cannot pretend that it is all rosy any more. So Ed was finally moved on, and Ralf brought in with a promise of a consultancy role. We as fans can only hope that Glazers - if not sell the club outright - but at least finally allow for a creation of a proper footballing structure with no meddling from owners or CEO. Not getting my hopes high though, but one can dream
